Amsterdam has announced that it will repay €100,000 in recognition of the money the city made from tram tickets to take 48,000 Jewish people on towards Nazi death camps during World War II.

Following the release of the film Verdwenen Stad (Lost City) by Emmy-winning film director Willy Lindwer, investigating the role of the city tram service in collaborating with the Nazis, the city has announced a repayment and memorial boards at major stations.

“The question was never answered of how is it possible to get 80,000 people out of a city like Amsterdam, in a little over a year,” Lindwer told Dutch News. “What we discovered is that the Amsterdam tram collaborated in a massive way with the Nazis…The first step is to put memorial boards at all of the places. The second is to give back €100,000, and the third is an official apology and damages. But this is a very emotional moment.”

In Lindwer’s film, he and author Guus Luijters ride a tram 8 around key sites, interviewing Holocaust survivors. They highlight the role of night trams in carrying away 48,000 of the 63,000 Jewish Amsterdammers who were murdered. The rest went into hiding, like Lindwer’s parents, or fled.

Their research highlights new evidence of the tram journey that brought Anne Frank and her family from the Weteringschans prison to Central Station on August 8, 1944 after their “secret annex” hiding place was discovered. Amsterdam transport company the GVB employed a debt collector for two years to try to reclaim 80 guilders for this journey after the war.

When the documentary came out, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema told the Parool: “The collaboration with the occupier fills us with horror and shame. This cold accounting once again confirms how inhumanely our Jewish fellow citizens were treated by officials.”

Now, Amsterdam has pledged to pay €100,000 to the Centraal Joods Overleg Jewish organisation, in an initial recognition of the amount – equivalent to €61,000 – the city charged for the tram tickets. Compensation is expected to follow after an official study on the role of the city in collaborating with the Nazis later this year.

The municipality said in a press release that it has a “historic and moral responsibility to account for the cooperation of the municipal tram in deporting Amsterdam Jews” and the GVB tram service has expressed “heartfelt and sincere regret”. Permanent memorials will go up at the Beethovenstraat, the Victoriaplein and the Plantage Middenlaan stop, where there is a new Holocaust museum and memorial site.

The GVB will also include information in its travel app on “the appalling events at these stops”.