Lost City
Original title: Verdwenen Stad
‘Lost City’ reveals: as late as 1947 the Amsterdam transit authority hired a debt collector because they never received payment from the Nazis for the deportation of Anne Frank. The news made shockwaves in the Dutch and international press, when the film premiered in The Netherlands, March 2024. ‘Lost City’ shows the untold story of the Amsterdam city tram that collaborated with the Nazis and deported tens of thousands of Jews, including Anne Frank. We experience their last tram ride. The film is a road movie with the original tram, passing the beautiful but guilty places where the drama unfolded. A survivor: “Everybody knew, everybody saw it, and nobody took action. People looked away”. ‘Lost City’ shows a new perspective on the murder of the Amsterdam Jews. The city lost its Jewish soul forever.
“Documentary on deportation of 48,000 Jewish Amsterdammers during Holocaust prompts city to act.” … “The film also reveals evidence that for two years a debt agency was employed to get back the 80 guilders for Frank’s last tram journey.” - The Guardian
“Amsterdam’s public transport operator demanded payment from Germany for the unpaid costs of trams used to transport Jews, including Anne Frank, to concentration camps two years after the Second World War ended.” - The Telegraph
“A new archival discovery is shedding light on an oft-disregarded accomplice in the murder of Anne Frank and tens of thousands of other Dutch Jews: The GVB Amsterdam Public Transport company. The find, unearthed recently by filmmakers Willy Lindwer and Guus Luijters, includes an invoice for 80 guldens (the equivalent of about $4,500 today) that GVB had issued to the German occupation forces — and later to authorities in West Germany — to obtain payment for the tram ride that took Frank, her family and dozens of other Jews to train stations en route to being murdered in death camps.” - Times of Israel
“The documents included a list of deportees featuring the names of Anne Frank and her family, and receipts and unpaid bills from the GVB to the German railway. They are being brought to light thanks to “Lost City,” a new film and book about the tram company’s Holocaust history, produced by the Emmy Award-winning Dutch filmmaker Willy Lindwer and his colleague, the historian Guus Luijters. For the film, Lindwer and Luijters traveled through the city on an original tram used to transport 48,000 Jews out of the city and interviewed the last survivors. The revelations “fill us with horror,” the GVB management said in a statement this week.” - Jewish Telegraphic Agency