Treffpunkt Erasmus
In the Summer of 2011, the archives of the Jewish community of Bussum (20 km east of Amsterdam), which had been stashed away for decades, were finally disclosed. They contained a complete archive of over 150 years, including the entire correspondence during World War II.
Among these documents, I found an amazing story of two young Wehrmacht soldiers, Johannes Gerhardt and Werner Klemke, who at great risk saved the lives of the Jewish van Perlstein family by forging their papers. Together with the van Perlsteins, Gerhardt and Klemke then continued helping save dozens of people from deportation. Gerhardt unfortunately died in 1944, Klemke survived the war and returned to Berlin. There he started a career as book illustrator and became one of the most renowned illustrators of the former DDR and far beyond.
With World War II and the Cold War as backdrop, I will portray in the documentary Rendezvous at Erasmus the heroic struggle against injustice, a great love of books and a deep friendship that lasted a lifetime.