#bergen-belsen

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[eretzyisrael]

Today is the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Today, we remember the tens of thousands of Jews who were murdered there and all who survived against all odds, as well as the brave members of the British Armed Forces who liberated the camp.

Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors

[carbone14]

Une jeune femme photographiée deux jours après la libération du camp de Bergen-Belsen par les troupes britanniques et canadiennes. Son visage porte encore les traces d'un tabassage sévère par les gardes SS – 17-18 avril 1945

Photographe : Capitaine E.G. Malindine – N° 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit

© Imperial War Museums - BU 3746

© Colorisation par Peter From

[taifunu]

silent by Frank Henkemeyer

[girlactionfigure]

The lyrics for "Hatikvah" (Israel's national anthem) were originally written as a poem in 1877 by Jewish poet Naphtali Herz Imber while he was living in Romania. It was later published as a nine-stanza poem titled “Tikvatenu” (Our Hope) in 1886 in Jerusalem.

 The text reflects the enduring Jewish desire to live as a free people in Zion and Jerusalem. 

Jewish immigrant Samuel Cohen, living in Ottoman-ruled palestine, set Imber's words to a melody derived from a Moldavian folk song. This tune traces its roots back to a 16th-century Italian song, La Mantovana. 

The song became the rallying anthem at the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, famously sung by delegates opposing the Uganda Proposal to highlight their commitment to returning directly to Israel. 

During the Holocaust, Hatikvah provided solace and defiance. It was sung by Czech Jews entering the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.

When the State of Israel was established, the song was embraced as the country's anthem, though it was not formally codified at that time. 

On November 10, 2004, the Knesset formally passed an amendment to the Flag and Coat-of-Arms Law, officially declaring Hatikvah as the national anthem of Israel.

𝐴𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛,

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑙 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑠,

𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛 𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑠, 𝑜𝑛𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑,

𝐴𝑛 𝑒𝑦𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑧𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑍𝑖𝑜𝑛.

𝑂𝑢𝑟 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑡,

𝑇ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑤𝑜-𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑙𝑑,

𝑇𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑,𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑍𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝐽𝑒𝑟𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑚.

On April 15, 1945, British troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. The surviving 60,000 prisoners had seen and suffered unbelievable horrors. But they still had hope. Five days after liberation, the Jewish prisoners held a Shabbat service in the camp. It was the first time many of them had taken part in a Jewish service in six years. With what little energy they had left, they sang Hatikvah.

@LiquidFaerie

[eretzyisrael]

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Before her childhood was measured in grams of dry bread, Francine Christophe lived in the quiet, intellectual warmth of pre-war Paris. 

Born in 1933 into a highly educated French Jewish family, she was the daughter of a prominent lawyer who served as an officer in the French army. Her early years were filled with park outings, picture books, and the deep certainty that she was a cherished child of the French Republic.

That certainty shattered in 1940 with the German occupation of Paris. Her father was taken as a prisoner of war, and antisemitic laws stripped Francine and her mother of their rights and security.

In 1942, while trying to cross into the unoccupied zone, eight-year-old Francine and her mother were arrested. They endured a series of French internment camps — including Poitiers and Drancy — before their deportation in May 1944 to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

Bergen-Belsen was a place of utter neglect, swollen with prisoners evacuated from camps in the East. Francine and her mother were held in the Sternlager (“Star Camp”), intended for potential exchange hostages. They kept their own clothes rather than striped uniforms, but starvation, freezing barracks, and a deadly typhus epidemic defined their existence. 

Amid this horror, Francine’s mother performed a quiet act of psychological defiance. She carried two tiny pieces of chocolate, carefully wrapped. She showed one to her daughter and said: “Keep this in your mind, but do not ask for it. We will save it for the day when you completely collapse and have no strength left.” That hidden scrap became Francine’s anchor — a promise of a future beyond the wire.

In early 1945, a pregnant woman named Hélène arrived in their barracks. The women shielded her during roll calls. When labor began on the filthy wooden planks, Francine’s mother turned to her young daughter and asked if it was time to give up the chocolate so the mother could find the strength to deliver her child. Francine immediately agreed. The precious piece was given to Hélène, who gave birth to a fragile baby girl. 

As the British approached in April 1945, the SS loaded Francine, her mother, and others onto a train that wandered Germany for nearly two weeks — the infamous “Lost Transport.” Soviet forces liberated them near Tröbitz. Francine and her mother survived; her father endured his POW camp. The family reunited in Paris.

Rebuilding life was profoundly difficult. The world did not want to hear their stories. Francine studied, married, raised a family, and kept her memories largely private for decades while mourning lost friends.

In the late 1960s, seeing growing historical denial and indifference, she understood the unique power of a child survivor’s voice. She broke her silence and became one of France’s most respected witnesses and educators. She authored Une petite fille privilégiée (“A Privileged Little Girl”), a poignant account of the camps through a child’s eyes, and spoke tirelessly in schools and at memorial sites. 

Decades later, during one of her lectures, a woman approached from the audience. It was the baby born on those wooden planks in Bergen-Belsen — now grown. She pulled a small piece of chocolate from her pocket and handed it to Francine, completing a circle of extraordinary grace.

Francine Christophe’s life reminds us that even in a system engineered to annihilate the human spirit, small acts of generosity and moral courage can echo across generations. She transformed unimaginable suffering into a lifelong mission of remembrance and education — proving that kindness, preserved in the heart, outlives evil.

We remember Francine today because her story affirms: humanity endures when we choose to share our last crumb of hope.

@HenshiG

[girlactionfigure]

In one of the last groups to arrive in Bergen-Belsen towards the tail end of World War II was a Jew of charismatic appearance who became known to all the other inmates as Reb Shmelke. His full name was Shmuel-Shmelke Shnitzler, a chassid and Torah scholar from somewhere in Hungary. He was very tall and distinguished looking, with strikingly warm and penetrating eyes. Most amazingly, he maintained a mood of genuine cheerfulness, a rare disposition to find in the hellish environment of the camp.

He underwent the harsh terrors and the suffering, the hunger and the abuse, that was the daily portion for the Jew’s in the camp, just as all the other prisoners. But, somehow, his demeanour and behavior seemed to indicate that he wasn’t affected the same way as everyone else, almost as if he weren’t really there.

How was he able to live in such a manner under such conditions? Nobody knew. But it was clear, nevertheless, that he was he drawing immeasurable fortitude and inspiration from some unlimited source.

He even was able to be a fountain of encouragement for his fellow prisoners. He would say to his companions at every opportunity, “A Jew and despair are contradictory in essence; they cannot co-exist.” Whenever possible he would organize a minyan for prayer, especially on Shabbat. At nights he would enliven all those around him with stories of the great Chassidic rebbes, momentarily transporting them to other worlds and places, enabling them to temporarily forget their sufferings of body and soul.

To the amazement of all, Reb Shmelke even found favour in the eyes of a few of the cruelest S.S. guards in the camp. Through these connections he was able to aid a number of the inmates.

He was assigned the job of removing from the barracks the dead bodies of the many who died from starvation. He would try to treat them with as much respect as possible, considering this to be the ultimate of holy work that he could do under the circumstances.

In addition to the prevailing conditions of horror in the camp under which the Jews barely managed to survive, Reb Shmelke was nagged by another compelling problem, one that was increasing in urgency with each day that went past: how could he possibly obtain oil with which to kindle the lights of Chanukah. The holiday was only a few short days away.

He consulted everyone with whom he came into contact that he thought might be able to help, but no one had any oil or even anything that could be substituted for it. All said that to obtain anything flammable in the concentration camp was unimaginable as well as impossible

He consulted everyone with whom he came into contact that he thought might be able to help, but no one had any oil or even anything that could be substituted for it. All said that to obtain anything flammable in the concentration camp was unimaginable as well as impossible.

Still, Reb Shmelke did not give in to despair. The mitzvah of kindling the Chanukah lights was much too important to him. He also realized how much encouragement and hope it would offer the Jews in the camp-to shine light into the deepest of darknesses, to celebrate the victory of few over the many, the pure over the impure….

On the day before Chanukah, Reb Shmelke had to hurry to one of the barracks near the end of the camp, where someone had died just that day. Not far from the fence at the edge of the camp, he stumbled when his foot sunk into a patch of red earth that turned out to be covering a small hole. It was clear that someone had dug this hole on purpose.

He gazed at the shallow depression, and after a moment perceived the sun reflecting off something in it. He looked closer and saw there was a solid object buried there, now slightly revealed. He knelt down and scooped out some dirt with his hands. It was a small jar, half-filled with congealed liquid! Could it be? Could it possibly be!

He removed its cover as quickly as he could and dipped his finger in gingerly. It was oil! He thoughts immediately flashed to the original Chanukah miracle of the finding of the single flask of oil. How could this be happening? Was he dreaming?

Then he noticed that the jar had been concealing other objects beneath it. He dug some more with his hands and uncovered a small package wrapped in a swatch of cloth. In it were eight small cups and eight thin strands of cotton!

Now convinced that someone had intentionally buried this Chanukah stash, Reb Shmelke quickly replaced everything back into the hole and filled it in with the dirt he had removed, carefully smoothing the surface. It would be too dangerous to keep the materials in his possession until Chanukah began the next day in the evening. Besides, perhaps it belonged to someone.

After he completed he job he had been sent upon, Reb Shmelke circulated among as many of the inmates he could during the rest of the day and the, casually asking with an air of innocence if anyone had concealed a quantity of oil in a hiding place. Everyone stared at him as if he were out of his senses.

The next night, all the Jews of Reb Shmelke’s barrack crowded around him as he stood poised to light the first candle of Chanukah. He struck the match, and then recited the blessings with great emotion before touching the tiny flame to the thin strands of wick projecting out of the little cups. It was a scene from a storybook in stark contrast to the dour, harsh environment of the concentration camp, a ray of hope that repeated itself for a total of eight nights.

The elderly Reb Shmelke managed to survive the next few months until finally the conquering Allied forces liberated the camp. His faith and hope had proven victorious. After the official conclusion of the war, he returned to his town in Hungary, to try to reassemble the pieces of his broken life.

Several years later, he was able to make the journey to the United States of America. One important stop for him there was to visit the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, who lived in Brooklyn. The Rebbe, it turned out, already knew of Reb Shmelke and his deeds, and welcomed him with great warmth.

After they conversed for a while the Rebbe suddenly switched subjects and said to him, “I hear that you had the great honour of lighting Chanukah candles in Bergen-Belsen.”

“How does the Rebbe know that?” sputtered Reb Shmelke in wonderment.

“I heard, I heard,” replied the Rebbe, smiling mysteriously.

A few moments later the Rebbe bent over to his astonished visitor and whispered in his ear, “I am the one who hid the oil, the cups and the wicks in that hole next to the fence. I did it when I was imprisoned in the camp the year before you, before my miraculous escape.

“At the moment I did it,” the Rebbe added, “I believed with all my heart that at the right time it would be found by the right person who would know exactly what to do with it.”

—

Source: Rabbi Yerachmiel Tilles, Ascent Tzfat, with fact checking from Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem, Oral History of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe. Oral account of Bergen-Belsen Survivor Jack Eisenstein.

(Pictured here: A Chanukah candle lighting ceremony in the Westerbork transit camp, Netherlands, December 1943. Photo: Yad Vashem)

Rabbi Yisroel Bernath