Remembering Westerbork.
Learning with Interviews
Westerbork was established in 1939 as a camp for Jewish refugees from Germany. In the wake of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, it came to serve as a transit camp from which over 100,000 Jews, resistance fighters, Sinti and Roma were deported to the Nazi extermination camps. Only 5,000 of them survived. After the war, Westerbork acquired yet another function as an internment camp for alleged Nazi collaborators. The complex history and memory of the site is made accessible here through the stories of two Jewish victims of Westerbork: Hans Margules and Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef.
Listening to their testimonies and engaging with their stories allows for a greater understanding of the history and meaning of Westerbork and to prepare a visit to the memorial. Questions and suggested tasks support a dialog with the interview films in the classroom. Additional material, a time-line and a glossary provide support in contextualizing two unique biographies.