Testimonies

Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp
Judy Rosenzwieg:
"Suddenly we were marched into Bergen Belsen, that's where we were taken. In Bergen Belsen it was absolutely the worst of them all. It was not blocks; not organized. It was in the streets. We were just thrown in there between the electric wires, and wherever you could go-you go, and wherever you want to sleep-you sleep. No food. Only once or twice a week they were handing out some of that horrible grass soup."
Source: Yad Vashem O.69/102

Shmuel Judkiewitz:
"The horror in that camp is indescribable. Worse than all the other camps."
Source: Yad Vashem O.69/216

The Liberation of Bergen Belsen
Judy Rosenzweig:
"All of a sudden out of the blue sky we saw tanks rolling into the camp…We had no idea what kind of tanks they were. Is it the Americans? Is it the Germans? Is it…We just didn't know. We just suddenly panicked…
And loudspeakers started speaking loudly in German and in English:
'You are liberated.'
'We are the English Army - You are liberated.'
'Stay away from danger and stay inside and we'll help you.'
'Stay alive. Try to hang in there. We're here to help you.'
And we knew we were liberated. Needless to say, our feelings were very mixed. So we were liberated. So thank God we are alive. But are we really thankful? Who are we? Where are we going to go? What are we? Nothing. That's okay, we're alive."
Source: Yad Vashem O.69/102

From Concentration Camp to Displaced Persons' Camp
John Fink:
"I stood still when this camp was burnt down by British flame throwers. Then I was evacuated to the former German military camp in Bergen Belsen. It was a complete military installation for one division, and thousands of people that survived were there."
Source: Yad Vashem O.69/116

Life in the Bergen Belsen DP Camp
Paul Trepman:
"Teachers established good schools, from nothing. People produced quality newspapers that were worth reading, even without a press. Actors established a theater. All of this was in addition to meeting the daily needs of the new Jewish community in the camp. Of course, over time, we received help from outside. But we laid the foundation for this new community, we built it and ran it ourselves. We received food and books from outside, but we did the work and we can be proud of our efforts,
Those who survived will always remember April 15, 1945 as their second birthday - in many ways more important than their first."
Source: Kleiman Yehudit and Springer-Aharoni Nina, The Anguish of Liberation, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1995, p. 18.
Source: Belsen. Tel Aviv: Irgun Sheerit Hapletah Me'ezor Habriti, 1958, p. 119. (Hebrew)

Marriage at Bergen Belsen
John Fink:
"Coming back to Bergen Belsen, I met the people from the Jewish Relief Unit from England and the Joint American Distribution Committee. In 1946 one of the nurses who came from England was a former Berlin girl, Alice Retlick, and we got to be friends. We got married on the 20th of June 1948 by the Chief Rabbi of the British Army, Chaplain Levy, and our Rabbi Asaria Helfgott. It was a great day."
Source: Yad Vashem, O.69/116

Childbirth at Bergen Belsen
Judy Rosenzweig:
"It was not an easy decision on my part at the very beginning of my liberation to ever bring another Jewish child to the world. But soon enough my life began to take a more normal route, so to speak. And God blessed us with two beautiful children."
Source: Yad Vashem O.69/102

Menachem Rosensaft:
"In the spring of 1946, less than a year after the end of World War II and the liberation of the infamous German concentration camps, a child was born in Bergen Belsen, the place where only a short time earlier tens of thousands had perished. This child was the first of over two thousand who were born in and around Bergen Belsen, of parents who had survived the Holocaust.
The song went: 'Under the green trees of Poland, Moishelach and Shloimelach do not play any more…' The birth of this first child of Belsen meant that Moishelach and Shloimelach and Ruchelah and Lealach would play again under the trees…in Israel and in other countries… We, who call ourselves the children of Belsen, believe that we are a part of Belsen. We may not have lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, but we can and do feel its tragedy. We have tried to learn about it, so that we can help our parents in keeping the world from forgetting it."
Source: Menachem Z. Rosensaft, ed. Bergen Belsen Youth Magazine. New York: World Federation of Bergen Belsen Survivors, 1965, p. 5.

Conclusion: Destruction and Rebirth
Josef Rosensaft:
"Bergen Belsen, or Belsen, is a double symbol in the history of the years after the second World War; it is not just the name of a town in Northern Germany.
The name 'Belsen' invokes tremor in Jews' hearts. Belsen is engraved in the Jewish consciousness as one of the most cursed places in Germany, where the bones of tens of thousands of Jewish victims are buried. The Belsen camp is, in Jews' memories and in the memories of all people in the world, a camp of starvation, and unbelievable filth which caused diseases and plagues. Belsen has become a symbol of man's inhumanity to man.
On the other hand, Belsen is also the camp that was liberated on April 15, 1945, and then became a symbol for renewal and rebirth, and the 'return to life' of the survivors."
Source : Belsen. Tel Aviv: Irgun Sheerit Hapletah Me'ezor Habriti, 1958, p. 29. (Hebrew)



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