25th Oct 2015, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

In the film ‘Respite’, Harun Farocki gives a new understanding of fragments taken from films that were shot at Westerbork. To what looks like daily life routine, the voice-over in the background gives a different interpretation. This text – ‘74 Pers’ – was written on one of the doors of the train trailer. Later, when a mistake in counting was discovered, the number changed to 75. According to the voice in the film, for the pedant Nazi soldiers, every person, every number was very important. Not because of the value of life, just because work has to be done perfectly when talking about numbers.