The photograph above is of Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach. She was a Sinti girl who was murdered in Auschwitz. I have written a few blogs about her in the past. This blog is about the man who took that picture.
It is a still from a film called, The Westerbork Film, which was shot by Rudolf Breslauer. He was A German Jewish man, born in Leipzig, where he was trained as a photographer and as a printer. In 1938, to escape Nazi persecution, he fled to the Netherlands, where he lived and worked in Leiden, Alphen and Utrecht. In 1942, Breslauer, his wife Bella Weissmann, sons Mischa and Stefan and daughter Ursula were imprisoned and deported to Westerbork transit camp. Camp commander Albert Konrad Gemmeker ordered Breslauer to make photographs and films of life in Westerbork. Breslauer and his family were transported to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944. His wife and two sons were immediately killed upon arrival on October 21, 1944, Rudolf Breslauer died a few months later, on February 28, 1945, in an unknown place only mentioned as somewhere in middle Europe. Their daughter Ursula survived the war.
Following are just some of the photographs he took in Westerbork. Some of the pictures were used by the Nazis, to give a distorted view of Westerbork. Portraying it in a better way than it was.
Jewish celebration in Westerbork camp. Hanukkah.
Westerbork. Penalty group of potato harvesters, August 1943.
Both women wear a sleeve band with an S on it, S for Penalty Company. the punishment was to work in the fields.
The assembly of a part of a downed aeroplane in the so-called industrial barracks.
The Central Warehouse of Camp Westerbork.
In this photo Adolf Naftaniel, head of the warehouse.
Two boys painting while wearing the Star of David, in Westerbork, 1943.
Narrow gauge transport train in Westerbrok. Used for transport coal, wood etc.
A Different Type of Transport
A still from the Westerbork film by Rudolf Breslauer. May 19, 1944. Nearly 107,000 people were deported from Westerbork camp in 97 transports. On July 15, 1942, the first transport left for Auschwitz-Birkenau. From March 2, 1943. to November 16, 1943, there was a weekly schedule: every Tuesday a train departed with a thousand to sometimes more than three thousand people. The last transport left on September 13, 1944.
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/121714/werner-rudolf-breslauer
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History of Sorts 
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