The British army uses the former concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen as a place to care for refugees, Jews, and non- Jews. Many of the people there have suffered terribly during these last years, but you are still relatively healthy. You volunteer to help the British medical staff, which works around the clock, desperately trying to save lives. Some of the people are simply too weak; you watch hundreds of people die from Nazi brutality — after the liberation, after they are finally free.
Bergen-Belsen has become something of a Jewish city.
Thousands of Jews have been moved into the camp; they need
an organization to help manage their affairs. A young Jew from
Eastern Europe, Yosef Rosensaft, becomes mayor of Bergen-
Belsen. Soon he begins to plan for people to leave the camp and
undertake new productive lives.
You are assigned to work alone in a warehouse where
possessions were stolen from Jews by the Nazis are sorted and
then given to people who have survived. As you dig through
the piles, you find a large wooden box. When you open its lid,
you are astounded to see three Torah scrolls, neatly and
carefully laid side-by-side. You close the lid and walk quickly
out of the warehouse to the office where a representative of the
Vaad Hatzalah is talking on the telephone. You grab the
telephone out of his hand and pull him over to the warehouse.
When he sees what you have found, you both sit down on a
heap of clothing and begin to weep. In a voice choked with
painful sobs, you say to him: These Torahs teach a lesson.
Long after the Nazis are dead, God and Torah and Israel will be
alive!
END