When Jews needed help, when they begged for help, all they got was silence. Hitler saw this early on, and he knew he could do whatever he wanted. Even though he told the world exactly what he intended to do. And he said it over and over again.
The world was silent. Silence always emboldens tyrants, and the final outcome is all around us today. Since the day that the first British soldiers cut the locks and opened the gates, we have known this story.
But there is another story that is not told. I believe it is one of the most important lessons of the Holocaust and no one ever talks about it.
After the British troops and international relief organizations began nursing the survivors back to life, Bergen- Belsen became a DP camp – a Displaced Persons camp.
Jews, who had lived for generations in Europe as educated and productive citizens, who were then victims of Nazi genocide, had now become displaced persons.
Displaced – what does that even mean? How does a human being become displaced? Jews became displaced persons because no one wanted them.
After surviving Hitler’s Final Solution, these Displaced Persons had two options: They could wait for the world to change their situation, or they could change it themselves. They chose the latter.
There was no great plan; it was completely spontaneous. It came from within the Jews themselves.
First and foremost, Jews never sought revenge. Jews demanded no “Right of Return” to Germany or Austria or Poland or any other European country.
They did not teach their children to hate Europeans, or anyone else. They taught their children how to read and to do arithmetic and draw pictures.
They wanted, they demanded one thing: that their children lead normal lives.
And in spite of everything, they would try to do the same. The first newspaper in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp appeared on July 12, 1945, just 2 months after liberation. The first book came out in September. If Jews are truly the “People of the Book,” they certainly proved that 70 years ago.
Jews immediately moved toward the greatest directive that comes from the Jewish religion: life. They got on with their lives. Mourning gave way to thousands of marriages and new families emerged from the ashes.
Can you imagine the courage this took?
Think of a young father who lost his wife and small children choosing to move on. Or a young woman who saw her husband and children murdered in front of her choosing to continue.
After everything that had happened to them, these people had the courage and the will to start new families.
Between 1945 and 1950, when the DP camp closed, 2,000 children were born here. Those children became doctors, lawyers, professors, business leaders.
In 1965, Elie Wiesel wrote this: “Upon the ruins of Europe, on the scorched earth of Germany, yesterday’s candidates for death began to build a Jewish future. The people of Belsen chose life.”
This camp was suddenly transformed from a factory of death to a factory of life, with schools, libraries, small orchestras and not one but two theater companies. There were classes in literature and art and history.
These people who had suffered so much, these people that no one wanted. This discarded refuse had a secret — they never saw themselves as discarded refuse. In their minds, they were never displaced.
These people had a plan and they had dreams. One of those dreams was a land of their own where they would never again be subject to the whims of others.
