How can you pay more attention to important transport data from Camp Westerbork to extermination camps? The memorial center will do so starting tomorrow with theater on the camp site. Actors from Stainless Theater from Diever play about the transport to Sobibor and they practice until the wee hours.
It is pitch dark on the former camp site. You can hear the raindrops fall through the silence and a flying bat stands out in the otherwise motionless darkness. But at the very back of the camp area there is a light. In the barracks there, the series of performances Sjiwwe for Sobibor is rehearsed until the wee hours.
“I hope that students will soon realize that it was not just a war. That really violent things happened,” says 15-year-old Hateya Bruinewoud. She plays an important role in the performance together with other actors of the Rust Theater from Diever. “I can tell the dates on which the Jews were restricted and I can also do different things.”
The decor and the place where the piece is played impresses her. “It’s very special,” she says. “When we play, there is the realization that we are at Camp Westerbork. But the realization comes especially when we are silent with everyone for 77 seconds towards the end of the performance. Then you feel the wind, you hear the birds and the raindrops that are there today and then the realization comes more and more. At that moment you can really think about what happened.”
See what the performance will look like below. The text continues below the video.