“They performed for their lives,” says the flyer for Seattle actor/writer David Natale’s play, The Westerbork Serenade. And that’s precisely what happened. During World War II, a group of Jewish cabaret performers at the Westerbork transit camp in Holland delayed their ultimate fate by putting on shows for their fellow inmates and captors.
The Westerbork Serenade is an 80-minute solo performance in which Natale plays 15 characters. He based his script on accounts from Westerbork inmates. Songs from the Westerbork cabaret shows are woven into the text, with recorded accompaniment by the Seattle Wednesday Klezmer Kapelye. Period recordings of the original artists can be heard during the pre-show interval.
On one level, Westerbork was simply one of many way stations to the Final Solution. It began as a Dutch refugee camp for German Jews fleeing Hitler. Under Nazi occupation, it became the principal place where Dutch Jews were gathered and held until they could be transported to the death camps. Every Tuesday morning at 8:00, the transport train rolled east with its quota of 1,000 or more Jews.
But unlike most Nazi camps, Westerbork preserved the appearance of normal life. The inmates lived in barracks, but kept their own clothes and hair. The camp had cafés, schools, even a well-staffed hospital.
And from 1943-44, Westerbork probably had the best cabaret in Nazi-occupied Europe. Some of the most famous Jewish artists from the German and Dutch entertainment worlds ended up there, including film star Camilla Spira, composer Willy Rosen, and the Dutch musical duo Johnny and Jones. Their director was Max Ehrlich, the colorful German-Jewish theatrical luminary.
Presiding over the camp was the paradoxical, cabaret-loving Commandant Konrad Gemmeker — an efficient SS officer who sent over 80,000 people to their deaths. Yet he arguably treated his prisoners more humanely than at any other Nazi camp, giving Ehrlich a scenery and costume budget out of SS funds, and protecting the key artists from deportation until his superiors reorganized the camp and shut down the entertainments.
Beyond the obvious life-and-death drama of the Westerbork story, Natale’s play examines the complex symbiotic relationship between the Commandant and Ehrlich. It touches on the conflict between German and Dutch Jews. And it poses a question that many inmates asked themselves: Which was more important — that the cabaret provided welcome comfort to the prisoners, or that it aided the Nazis by keeping the camp pacified?
The Cleveland-born Natale first became aware of the possibilities of solo performance while an undergraduate at the Yale School of Drama. There, he saw the work of the Italian playwright and director Dario Fo. Natale recalls Fo’s performance of the Christian parable of the raising of Lazarus from the dead: “He played the entire population of Jerusalem as characters from the Commedia. It was amazing.”
The Westerbork Serenade originated as a 20-minute solo performance Natale created over a decade ago, while completing his Master’s degree at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater. After the Old Globe, Natale lived in Seattle, where he performed at the Annex Theater. Then he spent eight years in New York, where developed his Westerbork piece further for a fringe theater festival.
In New York, Natale interviewed three Westerbork survivors: Louis de Wijza (who sang fragments of the cabaret songs), Hannelore Cahn and Hans Margules. He read the writings of Etty Hillesum and Philip Mechanicus, who left detailed records of camp life. He kept discovering new information. “Each time I thought I was finished with it,” recalls Natale, “I felt obliged to keep going.”
In 2004, Natale returned to Seattle, where his sister now lives. His most recent major performance was as John Lennon in the Seattle Public Theatre’s production of Just Like Starting Over, and his voice has been heard on Imagination Theater on KIXI-AM 880.
Gin Hammond is Natale’s director. She received a Helen Hayes Award for her solo performance in the national tour of The Syringa Tree, in which she played 24 characters.
Switching between multiple roles is challenging, says Natale, “but thanks to Gin, it’s doable.” He used to rely more on props to help distinguish between characters, but now uses mostly acting technique — voices, body attitudes, and angles of focus. Different characters focus on a different section of the audience, creating an effect like camera angles in a film.
Says Hammond, “When you see all of these characters coming through one person, including rather nasty characters, and you see all these aspects of humanity being embodied right there, it is a very useful reminder of what we’re all capable of, for better or for worse.”
Both actor and director bring a multi-ethnic perspective to the work. Natale was raised Jewish, but has a Jewish-Italian mother and an Italian father. Hammond is half African-American. Her aunt witnessed the aftermath of lynchings in pre-war Texas, then saw Auschwitz in 1948. Hammond is working on a theater piece about her aunt’s encounter with Auschwitz and how it changed her, and she is interested in eventually weaving her piece and Natale’s into a single work, while Natale would like to eventually take his performance to schools. Both artists see The Westerbork Serenade not only as a Holocaust story about Jews and Nazis, but as a universal cautionary tale on the destructiveness of prejudice and racism.
The performance was produced with support from Eclectic Theatre Company and Theatre Artists’ Alliance, and grants from Artist Trust and King County 4Culture.
Performing for their lives
