Memory, loss and resilience in the 80th year since the liberation of Bergen-Belsen — Jewish Renaissance

Sunday’s commemoration brought together survivors and their descendants, including those born in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, alongside international dignitaries. Their testimonies, rich with memory, pain and quiet strength, served as a powerful reminder not only of what was endured, but of what was rebuilt. A tribute to resilience and to the lives that carry its legacy forward.

The weather remained beautiful the entire time we were in Bergen Belsen – sunny skies, birdsong, wildflowers dotting the grass. At times it felt too beautiful. I thought of my mother enduring the cold, heat, rain and wind; barefoot, starving, afraid. Now, here we were, bottles of water passed down our rows, the sun warming our backs. The Appellplatz (roll call area), once a place of terror, is now a quiet, grassy expanse. And the marked mounds of the mass graves could be mistaken for hills, until you read the inscriptions: “Here lie 1,000 dead … Here lie 2,500 dead.” And on, and on.