#Bergen Belsen 1945

[girlactionfigure]

[somos-deseos]

“No veo la miseria que hay, sino la belleza que aún queda”.

— Annelies Marie Frank, conocida como Ana Frank {Fráncfort del Meno, 12 de junio de 1929-Bergen-Belsen, febrero o marzo de 1945}.

Photography Collection: Emily Warmoth.

[camillasgirl]

Queen Camilla's speech to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, 23.01.2025

Survivors of the Holocaust, Survivors of Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen. As Patron of the Anne Frank Trust UK, it is an honour and a privilege to join you to remember the victims of the Shoah and of genocides since the end of the Second World War. It is also an opportunity to renew our commitment to two simple, but powerful, words: “Never Forget”.

This year we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the death of Anne Frank in Bergen Belsen, at the age of 15. Had she lived, she would be 95. Miraculously, her father, Otto, survived. He had been one of the 7,000 people freed on 27th January 1945, when the Soviet Army marched under the gates of Auschwitz that bore the sign, “Arbeit macht frei”, “Work makes one free”.

Words, as I said just now, have power. Those over the gates of Auschwitz represent one of history’s greatest, and most evil, lies. But Anne knew that they were always there to offer truth, comfort and hope. A year before she died, she wrote a promise in her diary: “I’ll make my voice heard, I’ll go out into the world and work for mankind!”. She was never to do so in person. However, over subsequent decades, and thanks to Otto’s tireless efforts, Anne’s diary has become the enduring embodiment of that promise. We can only guess at what she would have made of her legacy. Yet her story demonstrates that even the quietest, loneliest voice in the wilderness can change the world. That is the true power of words.

Anne’s life and death continue to inspire an anti-prejudice movement across the globe, including the Anne Frank Trust here in Britain. Last year, you reached 126,000 young people in this country alone, with your distinctive combination of Holocaust history, education about discrimination and youth empowerment. I am proud to be your Patron and grateful to all of you who support the Trust in its vital work – thank you.

Five years ago, I heard another survivor, Marian Turski, a Polish Jew, speak at a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. During his testimony, Marian said this:

I shall not be telling you about the very worst experience, the tragedy of being separated from my nearest loved ones and sensing what awaited them after the selection. I want to talk with the generation of my daughter and the generation of my grandchildren about themselves…. Don’t be complacent, whenever you see the past being misused for current political purposes. Don’t be complacent, whenever any kind of minority is discriminated against. Democracy itself lies in the fact that the rights of minorities must be protected. Don’t be complacent… Because if you become complacent, before you know it, some kind of Auschwitz will suddenly appear from nowhere and befall you and your descendants.'

Today, more than ever, with levels of antisemitism at their highest level for a generation; and disturbing rises in Islamophobia and other forms of racism and prejudice, we must heed this warning. The deadly seeds of the Holocaust were sown at first in small acts of exclusion, of aggression and of discrimination towards those who had previously been neighbours and friends. Over a terrifying short period of time, those seeds took root through the complacency of which we can all be guilty: of turning away from injustice, of ignoring that which we know to be wrong, of thinking that someone else will do what’s needed – and of remaining silent.

Let’s unite in our commitment to take action, to speak up and to ensure that the words “Never Forget” are a guiding light that charts a path towards a better, brighter, and more tolerant future for us all.

As Anne wrote in her diary on 7th May 1944:

"What is done cannot be undone, but at least one can prevent it from happening again."

Thank you.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

"In these last few months of war, from January to May 1945, the inmates of the German concentration camps died in very large numbers. Perhaps three hundred thousand people died in German camps during this period, from hunger and neglect. The American and British soldiers who liberated the dying inmates from camps in Germany believed that they had discovered the horrors of Nazism. The images their photographers and cameramen captured of the corpses and the living skeletons at Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald seemed to convey the worst crimes of Hitler. As the Jews and Poles of Warsaw knew, and as Vasily Grossman and the Red Army soldiers knew, this was far from the truth. The worst was in the ruins of Warsaw, or the fields of Treblinka, or the marshes of Belarus, or the pits of Babi Yar. The Red Army liberated all of these places, and all of the bloodlands. All of the death sites and dead cities fell behind an iron curtain, in a Europe Stalin made his own even while liberating it from Hitler ... The ashes of Warsaw were still warm when the Cold War began."

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands, 311-312

[theworldatwar]

Bergen-Belsen camp is destroyed by British forces from the 11th Armoured Division after being liberated - April / May 1945

[captain-price-unofficially]

Before the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945, the Nazis killed 50,000 people there. The photo shows Mass Grave No. 3. The man standing among the countless bodies is the camp physician Fritz Klein, who was hanged for his role in the December 1944 massacres. Klein's job was to decide which of the prisoners was still fit for work.

[loser-user-girl]

I think about Holland 1945 a lot

Pretty long post under the cut

The only girl I've ever loved

Was born with roses in her eyes

This is a great opening for the song, and as can be seen by the rest of the album, it's referencing Anne Frank. What he means by roses in her eyes is innocence, I think. Like viewing the wor d through rose colored glasses, she sees it innocently.

But then they buried her alive

One evening, 1945

With just her sister at her side

This really seals the point that it's Anne Frank. "Burying alive" in this sense is talking about how the holocaust came so quickly and took away so much. She had "died" as soon as the holocaust started, many people had, because of lost opportunity. The sister verse is talking about how Anne and her sister Margot lived together in the Bergen-Belsen camp.

And only weeks before the guns

All came and rained on everyone

This talks about when they actually died, in 1945. Only weeks is talking about how close the holocaust was to ending when they died.

Now she's a little boy in Spain

Playing pianos filled with flames

This line is about reincarnation, saying after her death she became someone else. I think the little boy in Spain is referencing Pepito Arriola, a piano prodigy. That makes it line up with the piano line. Arriola was also seen as a reincarnation of talent, and music, which explains why he's a prodigy.

On empty rings around the sun

All sing to say my dream has come

I never figured out what the second verse of this means, but im pretty sure empty rings around the sun is about hopelessness during the holocaust, and with every year or birthday (ring around the sun??) There was not much hope.

But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

This is again about reincarnation, but I think its relates to a later point in the song where he talks about his friend that committed suicide. How he just kind of needs to move on I guess? But not really, he's just trying to remember their lives so that he can live a happy life

And now we ride this circus wheel

Wheel!!! Reincarnation, again I think. The cycle of life of Anne Frank, like earlier in the song

With your dark brother wrapped in white

Says it was good to be alive

But now he rides a comet's flame

And won't be coming back again

Ok ok this is the part I was talking about about his friends suicide. He's riding a comets flame, knowing it'll crash and kill him. And obviously he won't be coming back from the dead. The dressed in white part is i think talking about how angels are dressed. This verse really always gets me sad

The Earth looks better from a star

That's right above from where you are

This is bringing it back to the holocaust. From space, you cant see the terrors of the world, I think that's what this is talking about. How from far away, the tragedies of the holocaust and humanity are unseen, even if you look straight in their direction.

He didn't mean to make you cry

With sparks that ring and bullets fly

Maybe this is about God possibly? Like asking God why the world is so terrible. Especially during the holocaust, which makes sense with the second verse of this. The warfare and belligerence is definitely enough to make someone cry.

On empty rings around your heart

The world just screams and falls apart

I dunno what the first line means, maybe about how much being in hiding or living through war hollows out a person. War is hell

But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

Just da chorus again

And here's where your mother sleeps

And here is the room where your brothers were born

Indentions in the sheets

Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore

I hate to admit i really don't understand these verses well. I just thought they were talking about the deaths during the holocaust, especially of children, how their lives were taken from them so quickly

And it's so sad to see the world agree

That they'd rather see their faces filled with flies

All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes

Ok so this is definitely about the holocaust. How Jews were seen as less, and that somehow gave reason for killing so many of them. The white roses part does also mean innocence, like in the beginning of the song, but we can also see it as referencing The White Rose during the holocaust. They were a group of non violent resistance fighters who were anti-nazi.

That's about it for the song I guess?? Listen to it

[fdelopera]

When the Jews of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were liberated on April 20th 1945, they sang Hatikvah. At the end of the anthem, British Army Chaplain Rabbi Leslie Hardman, cried out, “Am Yisrael Chai – the Children of Israel still live!” (x)

Am Yisrael Chai is a very old phrase. Hundreds of years, at least. It states that the Jewish people are still living, despite every attempt that Romans, Christians, and Muslims have made to mass murder us over the last 2000 years of world history.

We are still here.

The Jewish people are still here, despite every attempt that has been made to culturally appropriate our history, our culture, and our religion.

When you read the "Old Testament," you are reading OUR Tanakh. You are reading a JEWISH sacred text. When you read about Joseph, and Moses, those are JEWISH figures. They are Yoseph (יוסף), and Moshe Rabbeinu (משה רבנו). Moshe was not a Christian, and he was not Muslim. Moshe was a Jew. Never forget that.

Am Yisrael Chai: The Story Behind The Bergen-Belsen Recording

by Milad Doroudian (x)

"Am Yisrael Chai!", shouted Rabbi L.H. Hardman who had finished conducting the first pre-Shabbat sermon that many of the Bergen-Belsen camp survivors had not seen for 6 years. Although weakened by hunger, disease, and the death of their loved ones, on the 20th of April, 1945 many whose spirits still remained strong began to sing “Hatikvah” ("The Hope"), so the world can hear that they were there, and they survived.

There is a very good chance that you have heard this emotional recording, but have you ever stopped to truly consider the story behind it? Despite the sadness, yet immense hope in the voices of the singers: Who were they? How did they get there? And perhaps most importantly: What happened to them?

These questions are almost impossible to answer as history does not afford us many recorded accounts. Yet, this was the case in 1945. After the death of 6 million Jews in Europe, and an atrocious war which took the lives of 65 million. Confusion was normalcy. It was those amid the confusion such as Patrick Gordon Walker, a reporter for the BBC, who wanted to record the stories of what happened that managed to collect the few stories that we have left today. Nothing could have prepared him, or the soldiers who liberated the camp days earlier, for the horrors that lay inside.

The Bergen Belsen camp , which was established in 1941 in the middle of Germany served as a death camp for Jews, homosexuals and political prisoners. The exact number of how many people died during those years is not known, however when the British and Canadian 11th armoured Division liberated it, they found 60,000 people, most of which were extremely emaciated and suffering from typhus.

Walker entered the camp five days after its liberation to find people who could no longer possibly function because of hunger, only to be greeted with the sounds of “God Save The King” played on an detuned piano in order to honour the British and Canadian liberators. People were joyous, despite their condition and the fact that many were still dying. In fact, they sang, and talked with their liberators who gave them food, and comforted them by reminding them that they were human beings.

“What I saw there will always haunt me” said Walker in his famous broadcast, and this was the case as there were truly more dead in the camp than living. One soldier’s account of how he saw a mother and child dying of sickness right in front of him, was only one of hundreds when the soldiers first found the abandoned camp.

Yet, perhaps what is more interesting is not simply the survivors who sang the Hatikvah (The Hope) after liberation, but those who did when they were being led to their deaths. The account of Jan Michaels, a Polish Jew who saw a group of Jewish Czechs singing the future national anthem of Israel, while they were on their way to the gas chambers. Michaels said that the SS guards could not stop them from singing, as their hope was unstoppable even in the face of certain death.

Yet, why is this so important to remember?

However melancholic it is to remind ourselves of these horrible stories, it is essential that we remember all those who have perished, as well as those who lived on to sing the Hatikvah after their liberation, as it is was their hope to be reunited with those they loved in Eretz Tsion. Now, today, Israel still faces enemies who want its people abolished, but that will never again be possible.

To answer the first questions:

Who were they? They were just like you and I. How did they get there? Through unbelievable xenophobia, hatred and ignorance. What happened to them? They live on in all Jewish hearts, and more importantly they live on through Israel.

[ginandoldlace]

On 15th April 1945, soldiers from the British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

In this photograph, soldiers and civilians watch on as the camp's final hut is destroyed as the Union Flag flies, marking freedom. 1945

[uss-edsall]

Brigadier General Derek Mills-Roberts (on the left), a British commando with the 1st Commando Brigade, accepted the surrender of German Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch (on the right) on 4 May, 1945, apprehending Milch on the Baltic Coast. Milch handed over his staff-of-office, a command baton, to the British officer.

Mills-Roberts had been present for the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Horrified and disgusted by the vulgarities of the concentration camp, Mill-Roberts demanded an explanation of what he saw there from the field marshal. Milch was the son of a Jewish father and was considered 'mixed-race' under Nazi racial laws; he was the only field marshal in the Nazi military of any Jewish descent.

Milch's response was, "These people are not human beings like you or I."

Mills-Robert's response was to beat Milch over the head with Milch's own baton until it broke, fracturing Milch's skull.

The next day, Mills-Roberts reported to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and apologised for losing his temper with a senior German prisoner. It broke the laws of war, despite what Milch had said. Montgomery merely covered his head and joked, "I hear you've got a thing for field marshals!" Nothing more was said about the incident.

Milch was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, it was commuted to 15 years in 1951, and he was paroled in 1954 having been imprisoned for only seven years.

[girlactionfigure]

15th April 1945 - despite being badly beaten by guards, this Jewish woman somehow manages a smile on being liberated from Bergen-Belsen by allied forces. Our thanks to Tom Marshall, who colourised the photograph in 2020.

Likud Herut UK

[irregularincidents]

Over the course of 25 years, Albert Pierrepoint killed between 435 and 600 people, with his last being in 1956. He was Britain's most prolific hangman, and in late 1945 he was brought to Germany with a specific task: Executing Nazis.

A private man, both Albert's father and uncle had been hangmen before him, and over the course of his career he killed a variety of people, conventional criminals, serial killers (plus an innocent man a serial killer had framed for his crimes), and spies.

He didn't particularly like advertising his side-gig as someone who killed people on behalf of the state (for obvious reasons), but due to his reputation for efficiency (anecdotally he would figure out in his head the length of rope required to kill someone as quickly and relatively as possible just by eye) General Sir Bernard Montgomery, one of the senior figures in the British armed forces during WWII announced his involvement to the press.

Arriving in Germany, Albert was first assigned the task of executing the captured Nazi war criminals that had been operating the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps, including such people as the 22 year old Irma Grese, nicknamed Hyena of Auschwitz by her victims. He hanged the women individually, the men he hanged in pairs. Reportedly starting with the younger criminals first, under the reasoning that they would be the most scared.

Pierrepoint travelled several times to Hamelin, and between December 1948 and October 1949 he executed 226 people, often over 10 a day, and on several occasions groups of up to 17 over 2 days. After the Belsen executions, he was moved on to Nazi sympathisers, including the American-born fascist William Joyce, who had been granted the nickname Lord Haw-Haw due to his broadcasts across the English Channel in a fake posh accent trying to convince the British to surrender. He died 3 January 1946.

It is notable, however, that despite some claims to the contrary, Pierrepoint was not the hangman assigned to the war crime trials at Nuremberg (which fell under the jurisdiction of the Americans). It's notable in contrast to Pierrepoint, whose grim expertise in killing people with rope was such that he was hired to teach his methods to hangmen in Austria (reportedly their method was to let people strangle to death rather than their body weight breaking their necks like they did with his way), the American hire... err... wasn't that?

In fact, in contrast with Pierrepoint's... for lack for a better word consideration for the people he was killing, the American's choice, John C. Woods, had no prior experience as a hangman (reportedly lying that he had served as one as back in the US... in states where state-backed hangings had been phased out decades prior), and was notably at being kind of terrible at it? While Pierrepoint was all about killing people as quickly, painlessly and quietly as possible (both for the benefit of the prison staff as well as the victim), Woods deliberately botched executions to make the Nazis suffer as much as possible. Under the gallows operated by Woods, Nazis would dangle for minutes as they slowly strangled to death. Which considering the crimes that they had been convicted of, fair, but the contrast between the two men is fascinating.

Not least due to their later perspectives of their careers, with Albert returning to Britain and operating as a hangman for a further decade or so to retire to the pub in Preston that he had bought with the money from his executions back in the 1940s which he ran with his wife, Annie Fletcher.

It's notable that in the years following his retirement, he became opposed to the death penalty in Britain, and his obituary would quote his option opposed to the idea that capital punishment deterred crime,

'If death were a deterrent,' he wrote, 'I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them at the last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. 'It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.'

Albert passed away in a nursing home in 1992 at the age of 87.... while with his former colleague John, his own view of his time as a hangman was a lot more glib.

I hanged those ten Nazis … and I am proud of it … I wasn't nervous. … A fellow can't afford to have nerves in this business. … I want to put in a good word for those G.I.s who helped me … they all did swell. … I am trying to get [them] a promotion. … The way I look at this hanging job, somebody has to do it. I got into it kind of by accident, years ago in the States …

For his part, John would himself die in 1950 at the age of 39, when he accidentally electrocuted himself to death while stationed in the Marshall Islands.

[satinea]

Le 12 mars 1945 Anne FRANK mourait à Bergen-Belsen, assassinée, comme 6 millions de Juifs, pour la seule raison qu’elle était juive. 

« Je me sens comme l'oiseau chanteur dont on a brutalement arraché les ailes et qui, dans l'obscurité totale, se cogne contre les barreaux de sa cage trop étroite. "Sortir, respirer et rire", entends-je crier en moi, je ne réponds même plus, je vais m'allonger sur un divan et dors pour abréger le temps, le silence et la terrible angoisse, à défaut de pouvoir les tuer. »

[popclture]

Otto Frank visits the attic where the Frank family hid from the Germans troops during World War II (1960)

The family was discovered in August 1944, after spending 761 days in hiding. It is widely believed they were betrayed by someone familiar with their hiding place, though the identity of the betrayer remains unknown. The entrance to their secret annex was concealed behind a movable bookcase but how the Nazis were alerted to or uncovered the hidden door is still unclear.

Following their arrest, Otto’s daughters, Anne and Margot, were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In March 1945, both tragically succumbed to typhus during a massive outbreak, just weeks before British forces liberated the camp. Anne was 15 years old and Margot was 19. They were buried in a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen and their remains were never individually identified.

Otto Frank and his wife, Edith, were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the most notorious concentration camps. Edith died of starvation in January 1945, only weeks before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops. Otto survived and dedicated his life to preserving Anne’s diary, ensuring her voice and story would reach the world.

Otto Frank was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. He passed away in 1980 at the age of 91. While he is buried in Switzerland, where he settled after the war, Edith’s body was never recovered, as she perished in Auschwitz.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Irmgard Ilse Ida Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945), the "Hyena of Auschwitz". A volunteer Camp SS guard at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and served as warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen.

Grese was convicted of crimes involving the ill-treatment and murder of Jewish prisoners committed at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, and sentenced to death at the Belsen trial. Executed at 22 years of age, Grese was the youngest woman to die judicially under British law in the 20th century.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, June 12 in 1942, the German-Dutch Jewish diarist Anne Frank (1929-1945) received a diary for her thirteenth birthday while in hiding with her family during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Frank and her family were famously captured by the Gestapo two years later in 1944 and transported to various concentration camps, where at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Anne and her sister Margot died a few months later, probably of typhus.

The diary, which Anne Frank edited and rewrote portions of for an intended reading public, was retrieved by two women who helped hide the family and given to Frank's father Otto Frank, the family's only survivor, after the war ended and Anne's death was confirmed. The diary's ultimate publication in 1947 made Anne Frank one of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and arguably one of the most celebrated diarists in Western history.

The diary was originally published in Amsterdam by Contact Publishing under the Dutch title Het Achterhuis, which is usually translated as The Secret Annex but literally means "the house behind" or "back of the house." We hold the first French edition, published as Journal de Anne Frank in Paris by Calmann-Lévy in 1950, and the first American edition, translated by Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday and published as The Diary of a Young Girl in Garden City, New York, by Doubleday & Company in 1952, with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. In a prelude to her diary, which she dates 12 June 1942, Anne Frank writes:

I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.

View other Milestone Monday posts.