Screenwriter Edwin de Vries and director Jean van de Velde
announced on Wednesday that they are working on a film about
Westerbork transit camp. The project's working title is
Westerbork Blues. De Vries is now writing the screenplay,
and the film will be produced by IDTV Film. Current planning
envisages that the film will be released in 2012.
Westerbork Blues is based on the true story of the young
Jewish actor Rob de Vries, who fell in love with a Jewish girl who
was transported to Westerbork in the Second World War. With the
help of friends who are active in the resistance, De Vries manages
to board a postal train to Westerbork using a forged identity card,
and smuggles the girl out of the camp. But the film's main focus is
on the cultural life in the wartime years and in the camp. De Vries
performed in plays staged at the Joodsche Schouwburg (the name that
the German occupying forces gave to the Hollandsche Schouwburg) in
Amsterdam, while the girl took part in the cabaret that was put on
every Tuesday evening in Westerbork, after the departure of the
train bound for Auschwitz.
'The cabaret performed in the camp in those years was the best in
the whole country', comments the screenwriter Edwin de Vries, the
son of the real-life protagonist of Westerbork Blues. The
camp commandant was a great lover of cabaret. 'All the Jewish
acting and musical talent was in that cabaret, including some great
German Jewish actors who had fled to the Netherlands before the
outbreak of war.'