March 4, 2012
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Amsterdam, Netherlands
A lazy day in Amsterdam. I checked the film agenda for various Amsterdam cinemas in the morning and saw that a film I had wanted to see, Süskind, was playing in the Kriterion film theatre just east of the city centre. In the early afternoon I walked there.
It’s often jokingly said that Dutch films are obsessed with either sex or the World War II. It’s a weird combination for sure, but it’s true, an unusual high percentage of films made in this country deal with sexual themes in quite a visual way and, equally, a high percentage of Dutch cinema takes places in the years 1940-1945. Süskind falls in the latter category. I wanted to see the film after having seen it filmed on a canal just behind my new apartment last summer. I was curious if the scene I had witnessed, of main character Walter Süskind on a bike in front of his house, actually made it to the final cut (turned out it hadn’t) and also because it got me interested in the historical character of Walter Süskind.
Often described as the Dutch Oskar Schindler, Süskind, a German refugee Jew who ended up living in Amsterdam, was responsible for saving hundreds of Jewish children from transport to the concentration camps in Germany and Poland because he was put in charge of the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theatre that had been turned into an assembly point by the nazis where Amsterdam Jews needed to report before they were put on transport to Westerbork and then on to the east – and a near certain death. He was criticised for the very same reason: not only did he help Jewish children escape the horrors of the nazi camps by finding them places to hide with Dutch families, he was also part of the machine that facilitated the smooth transport of more than 100,000 Jews to the east. Almost none returned.
In no other country was the ratio of Jews that were taken away from their homes by the nazis as high as in this country. It was due to many Dutch people collaborating with the occupier (or preferring to look the other way) but also because there was a meticulous administration of Jewish families and where they lived in place already, bizarrely enough because of the thorough work done by the Joodsche Raad, Jewish Council. It’s left quite a deep scar on Dutch society and that might help explain the disproportionately high ratio of World War II films that are still being produced to this day.
Süskind was a fascinating film. Not only the story of the main character kept me captivated, but also the story of this city, Amsterdam, as it was told in the film. To see Amsterdam, now such a free city, as it was only three generations ago, was quite shocking. The same houses, the same canals, the same people – really – that you can see nowadays (the picture was taken after the film, as I walked to the swimming pool via Prinsengracht), but under a dark and suffocating blanket of an oppressive and criminal occupying regime… Scary.
If you check public transport tables in Amsterdam these days, you will notice that there is no tram line with the number 8. It seems not really relevant. After all, there is also no tram line with number 6 (it was scrapped a couple of years ago) or number 11 for example (also scrapped.) But it’s been a long time since there was a tram line with the number 8. You would have to go back to World War II, when it was mainly that tram line that was used by Jewish families, as it ran through the city’s main Jewish quarter. After the war the city decided to retire the number 8 trams and never let them return to the city’s streets – out of respect for the many Jewish families that didn’t return to Amsterdam. And there, in Süskind, there it was again. A single car tram taking Jewish people to the Hollandsche Schouwburg. A tram with the number 8 on its front.
