80 Years Since the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen
First article: The train, Farsleben, and the village of Hillersleben
By: Yaakov Rosenfeld, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem
The British soldiers who liberated Bergen-Belsen, exactly eighty years ago, did not easily let go of what they saw with their own eyes. More than being surprised by the Nazi extermination itself, they were likely horrified by the sight of the survivors and the unimaginable number of bodies scattered across the field.
In the days following the liberation, throughout the entire month of Iyar 5705 (1945), until the establishment of the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, not far from the concentration camp, Allied forces were busy saving lives, forcing the Germans from the area to evacuate the bodies of the murdered and assist in obtaining food for the thousands of survivors.
Hundreds of doctors and medical students were brought from England to Bergen-Belsen and tried to treat as many patients as possible. Sadly, however, not many survived the first weeks of liberation. Many Jews, including the few survivors of their families, died as a result of outbreaks of disease and an uncontrolled diet.
Hillersleben – A shooting range that became a cemetery
According to sources, a large portion of the sick and dead suffered from an uncontrolled diet. British doctors urged them not to overeat sugars and fats until their broken bodies had somewhat adapted to regular, industrialized food, but many could not resist the temptation and were harmed.
On April 15th, 1945 – 2 Iyar 5705, a Sunday afternoon, a small group of British officers entered Bergen-Belsen. The officers were completely unprepared for the sights of the camp; the images of horror they saw greatly shocked. Regarding this, British medical officer Glyn Hughes wrote about:
“The conditions in the camp were indescribable, no description or picture could describe the horror that reigned outside, but what we saw inside was even worse. Huge piles of bodies were scattered across the entire width of the camp in numbers too vast to count… Some were piled outside and some inside the barracks, in the gutters and on the bunks… Near the crematorium was a huge grave, half full of bodies… The women’s barracks were full of typhus patients, there were no bunks, the sick lay on the floor and were so weak that they could barely move. The lucky ones among them sat on thin mattresses, others lay on the floor. Some had blankets and some didn’t even have that. Some of them had clothes, but some were covered with thin blankets…”
— The Belsen Trial (n.54), pg. 31
“On the day of liberation and in the days that followed, harsh scenes were revealed to the liberators. Most of the prisoners could not move, they lay on their bunks sick, tired, hungry and thirsty. The prisoners in the camp continued to die in large numbers: in the days after liberation, about 14,000 prisoners died. The British, horrified by the horrors of the camp, threw huge amounts of food at the starving prisoners; those who ate a lot of food after long years of hunger – their stomachs could not digest the food, and many of them died from excessive eating.” (Wikipedia)
Hillersleben and the Miracle Train
Hillersleben, between Brunswick and Magdeburg, Germany, is a small village that was once a weapons testing site. In the days after the liberation, Allied forces turned the village into a hospital for Jews liberated from the concentration camp.
At the end of the month of Nisan 5705, a train departed Bergen-Belsen carrying 2,500 Jews. The transport departed Bergen-Belsen on April 7th, 1945 and was scheduled to arrive at Theresienstadt, but due to the Allied advance, it was stopped near the village of Farsleben on April 13th.
According to the testimony of Aharon Unsdorfer, the Nazi command’s order was to destroy the train and its passengers near the Elbe River, but the locomotive driver, who wanted to save his life, consulted with the Rebbe of Blaszow, who was also on the train, and he advised him to slow down the pace of travel (this is the only way to understand the length of that journey: almost a week!). The locomotive driver asked the Rebbe to pray for him, according to the testimony.
“…we were transported on the wagons, we found ourselves on a very long chain of wagons one after the other, we dragged ourselves through the snow to get on the wagons, after so many times recently we saw ourselves again in the cursed wagons, again we saw ourselves standing close to each other without a drop of air to breathe, so we set off.”
“We traveled all week, the train traveled very slowly, and they also stopped a lot in between. We didn’t know where they were taking us, because the train didn’t travel in any proper direction, rather back and forth.”
“After traveling for almost a week, the older Jews among us, who knew the names of the cities, said that we were close to a city called ‘Magdeburg’. We did not know why they were taking us there, what the purpose of this long journey was, and why the train was traveling so slowly…”
It later became clear that the secret behind the murderers’ slow journey was that the transport leaders were constantly receiving new orders from their commanders as to where to take the transport, as their commanders were under great pressure from their heavy defeats in the war by the Allied armies, and they did not know where to take the transport.
In the booklet “The Rabbe of Blaszow” – which describes the train journey, in which the Rebbe was a passenger on – we read:
“…They left the Bergen-Belsen camp, they passed through the cities of Hanover and Berlin, they also stopped halfway several times, and very senior German officers on ‘motorcycles’ gave new orders to the commander and the train driver.”
“The rumour was that the Americans were already very close, the train was traveling very slowly, on the way they passed through many forests and waters, then they arrived near the German city of ‘Magdeburg’, and there the train stopped…”
Madgeburg
It also describes what the Rebbe of Blaszow told him, the train driver, when he approached the Rebbe while they were stopped in Magdeburg:
“And he entrusted to him the reason for the slow travel in recent days, which was because his commanders, the Germans, did not know what to do with the Jews on the train, because their enemy was approaching from both sides, and he told the Rebbe of Blaszow that he had now received an order to lead the train over the Elbe River, and there he had to set fire to the train with all the Jews on board, or he had to lead the train to the waters of the Elbe River and there lead the train over the destroyed bridge into the waters…”
“The train driver, who knew that they were on the verge of loss, found himself in a problem, because if he carried out the order and led the train to the Elbe River and put an end to the lives of the Jews, the Allied armies would very soon take revenge on him, and he would face severe punishment. He decided to tell the rabbi about the order he had received from his commanders, and also entrusted him with his bold plan to run the train very slowly, and he asked the rabbi that since he was a ‘rabbi’, he should pray that the Allied armies would meet the train as quickly as possible, before he had to carry out the official order of his commanders from Germany, and he would do all this on the condition that they would testify for him after the liberation, that he had saved the entire train…”
The moment of the train’s liberation, April 13th, 1945
As mentioned, the lives of the train passengers were miraculously saved and they were taken in trucks to Hillersleben, ten kilometres from Farsleben, near where the train stopped.
Testimony of an American Soldier
The Allied forces did their best to equip the hospital and provide food and basic necessities for the hospitalized. The products were confiscated from German food warehouses in the area, but within the first few days, 138 of those referred for medical treatment in Hillersleben died and were buried in the cemetery dedicated there.
The following is testimony from the diary of an American soldier (translated from Yiddish into Hebrew and then from Hebrew to English from a story written in New York by a family member of one of the survivors):
“Until then, I had heard about the bad treatment that the Nazis gave to the Jews and other prisoners of war, but I thought it was just exaggeration and propaganda, but then I began to see their real evil, the inhumanity of the Nazis happening before my eyes, the condition of the people was much worse than you can imagine.”
“The most important thing then was to get food, water, and medical help to the liberated people. We called a medical team that quickly arrived on the train to treat the Jews.”
“One commander in our army contacted the mayor of Farsleben, and without thinking twice, ordered the mayor to tell all the people of the city to collect all the food, clothes, soap, and cleaning supplies so that they could be given to the Jews. They then called for the evacuation of additional houses for the elderly, homeless Jews, and for families with children. They rationalized that just as the Germans had brought the Jews to this situation, it was now their duty to take care of them.”
“At first, the people did not want to obey, they threatened them that they were going to kill the mayor by holding a gun to his head, so they obeyed…”
“The mayor said that everyone should take a few Jews into their homes and make them feel comfortable. It was the first time that the Jews felt a sense of ‘home’ after so many months or years of inhumane treatment.”
“My job was to obtain means of transportation for over 2,500 Jews, so that we could transport them to Hillersleben, which is about ten kilometers from Farsleben. We had to take into account that it would not be possible to get there directly because all the bridges had been bombed or set on fire by the fleeing Nazi army. It was necessary to travel via side roads, which greatly lengthened the journey, and as I was already known on these roads, I was chosen for the task of transporting the Jews…”
“B’Maalot Kedoshim U’Tehorim” (In the Exalted Spheres of the Holy and Pure)
Among the Jews, the holy and the pure, who found their death precisely on the verge of salvation, after their souls were tormented in Bergen-Belsen, was one of the train passengers, the holy Rabbi Eliyahu Spitzer, z”l, a rabbinical decisor in the holy community of Odoreu and Fehérgyarmat (son of Rabbi Spitzer z”l, the rabbi of the Or Chaim community), and the holy Rabbi Chaim Kalonymous Schwartz z”l, author of the book Ed BeSchak on the Torah and Bigdei Yesha on questions in the Mishna.
The passing of the righteous Rabbi Eliyahu Spitzer was told by an eyewitness, Aharon Unsdorfer of Losonc-Jerusalem, who recorded this in his book Beit Hillel (Jerusalem 5768/2007-8 pg. 256–257):
“Rabbi Eliyahu Spitzer was so emaciated and exhausted that his digestive system could not digest what he had eaten due to excessive fasting and dehydration. He did not even want to eat the distasteful soup cooked from turnips that was distributed in the camp, for fear that something forbidden was being cooked in it. All the pleas of his family members about the magnitude of the danger were of no use. We tried to give him boiled water with glucose or soup, but he was unable to absorb it. In his last moments, he muttered a prayer that we could not understand, but from his shining eyes and penetrating gaze, one could sense that he indeed felt that his time had come, and that this righteous man had come to terms with what was destined for him and was ready and willing to do the will of the Creator with joy. He breathed out his pure soul on my knees.”
“We, the trio, performed a purification, we, the trio, dug a grave for him, despite their objections and despite the protests of the rural Gentiles not to bring him to be buried in the camp garden because it spoils their external appearance and harms the green area at the entrance to the camp. We stood firm and resolutely against them, we, the trio, brought Rabbi Eliyahu, a righteous and holy man, to be buried there, and we did not forget to place a gravestone on his grave.”
“On a wooden board, I burned with a whitened nail in Hebrew the acronym of his name, A.S., so that a sign would remain.”
“Many more after us brought their loved ones who died of weakness, lack of care, and lack of medicine, to be buried in this accursed place.”
The hospital building, 2007
The cemetery today
The cemetery, during the communist era
Gravestone of Rabbi Chaim Kalonymous son of Yeshayahu Schwartz z”l
The gravestone of Rabbi Eliyahu son of Avraham Chaim Spitzer z”l
A Jewish Holocaust survivor cries at his mother’s grave in the cemetery in Hillersleben. Below is an excerpt from Teaching History Matters (a website that provides educational resources for studying U.S. history) about the photo and its story. A particularly moving excerpt.
A Message from Israel
November 30, 2007 by Matthew Rozell
I went to school today and had a special email waiting for me in my inbox, accompanied by this photograph, taken a few weeks ago.
Dear Mr. Rozell,
I found your website after visiting with my father on Bergen Belsen, Hillersleben and Farsleben.
It was by searching the name of the photographer [George C. Gross] of the photos that I saw on the museum in Bergen Belsen.
My father was on that train! He was 12 years old with his mother who died and was buried in Hillersleben.
Since he was young and very ill, he doesn’t remember the whole event. He does remember that American soldiers released the train.
I’m looking for more details on that transport or any other information about this story.
Please, if you have any information, let me know.
Attached, you can find a photo of the gravestone of my grandmother on the field near the old hospital in Hillersleben and few more photos from our tour. I have more, if you interested.
Best Regards
Micha
Israel
I think Micha and his dad represent the 17th survivor to find the day of his/her liberation on our website.
Observation:
When you find stuff like this waiting for you when you arrive at work, it sets the tone for the entire day and beyond. All of the petty stuff fades away pretty quickly. You soon realize that there is no need to react negatively when kids don’t act as you would like them to- THAT’s the stuff that DOESN’T matter.
I spent more quality time with my more difficult kids today than I usually do-and that was enriching for all of us. Don’t get me wrong, they sometimes (frequently, actually) need a “kick in the butt”, and they know it. But today was a day just to be with them and to listen to them.
It was this picture. The photograph is heart wrenching, the grief of a 12 year old boy who still mourns deeply for his mother, who passed away either shortly before or just after her liberation.
Soon, I’ll be putting Micha and his dad in touch with the liberators, George and Carrol, as well as the rest of the survivors. And I pose the silent question to myself once more-how did I, a high school teacher from a little town, get to witness the unfolding of the power of love that has so transcended time and space?
I don’t really get it, but I am so grateful for it. In the words of one survivor, there are no coincidences.
