Bergen- Belsen Memorial Day

Having served in Germany during the Cold War and being aware of the treatment of my mother and her family in Germany in the period leading up to and during the war, I decided in my capacity as an AJEX standard-bearer to visit the concentration camp site and take part in this year’s ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation. I arrived on the day in a drizzle which made the event even more sombre as people without umbrellas were huddled together for shelter. In one way, it was comforting to see strangers getting close to one another for a common event. In another way, I myself – with no umbrella – felt we should be braving the elements with heads bowed stoically and respectfully towards the prior occupants of the concentration camp. Those inmates would have had to endure such extremes that we – for once – could have/should have cast aside our comforts and attempted to connect to the feelings they must have had toiling in the rain with no protection or watching relatives being killed whilst standing in the rain with no shelter. I almost felt like telling people to put their umbrellas away and endure – to be strong as they tried to be. Are we – especially the survivors of the camps and their surviving generations – so soft that we don’t think twice about our own comforts and how lucky we are to be here? The first ceremony of the morning was at the main memorial at the back of the camp site for the other faiths, colours, political views and sexual orientations, reached by a stone path winding its way past mounds of earth which marked the places where the open pits had been filled with bodies, some too numerous to count. These had been used only because the process of taking small groups into the forest, making them dig their graves and shooting them to fill the graves had been too slow. Even in the nearby Hohne Garrison camp, during the Cold War troops were told not to dig in the grounds of the camp as it was likely more bodies would be found buried beneath and they needed to remain undisturbed. Following the morning ceremony, the Jewish contingent moved to the Jewish memorial for a further service, which was attended by exserving soldiers from the German, Dutch, American, Belgian, French and British soldiers, some in uniform and some veterans in their blazers and representatives of AJEX. The Forces Padre, Rabbi Reuben Livingstone, took the service, which was also attended by HRH The Duke of Gloucester and German President J o a c h i m G a u c k , members of the nearby Hannover Jewish community, and Jewish youth leaders. A British veteran who had been in the regiment that liberated Belsen was present too and was interviewed by German TV news – for his age he was doing remarkably well. Due to the service overrunning from the morning event, the Jewish memorial service began late but everyone waited patiently. Following the ceremonies at Belsen, courtesy buses were laid on to take visitors to Hohne Garrison for a lunch in the great ballroom at the Round House. The troops still stationed in Hohne acted as hosts and took care of visitors’ parking and moving around. Due to the return of troops from Germany, the camp is due, in a couple of months, to be handed back to the Germans from whom it was captured. The camp played an important role for Belsen survivors as they were taken from there and housed in the barracks, the ballroom being made into a massive hospital and recovery room. Unfortunately, many survivors who saw liberation didn’t see freedom until many years later and some died at the camp. They had no homes to come back to and the process of finding family and places to go to took time and some felt resentment towards the British hosts for keeping them there for so long. Daniel Millan