Hephzibah Rudofsky shares her personal experience of the commemorations at Bergen-Belsen, where her mother was interned during the Holocaust
In spring earlier this year, I found myself walking, for the second time, through Bergen-Belsen, a place that had haunted my mother’s childhood and, by extension, shaped my own. She was just eight and a half when she arrived there in January 1944, along with her parents. Their survival was a miracle. This return was not simply a visit, but my first time attending an official commemoration – an encounter with memory, loss and the quiet resilience of life.
When my mother was alive, she was invited several times to remembrance events at Bergen-Belsen, including one during Queen Elizabeth's visit in June 2015. It clashed with a long-planned trip to the Bach Festival in Leipzig and my parents chose music over memory. I’ve often wondered if my mother truly wanted to return. When I asked, she’d simply say, "There’s nothing left. Bergen-Belsen was razed to the ground". But that isn’t entirely true. Today, Bergen-Belsen is a memorial site, with a museum, cemetery and monuments. Perhaps this was her way of saying there was nothing left she wanted to face. When I finally visited in 2024, I understood.
A snapshot of one of the commemoration ceremonies, Bergen-Belsen
Last summer I visited alone, quietly carrying the weight of my mother’s memories. This year, it was different. I was invited to attend the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, part of a structured programme. I stayed in the same hotel in nearby Celle as before, seeking something familiar. But nothing about this visit felt familiar.
This time, I was not alone. I was among survivors, children of survivors and, unexpectedly, people born in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons (DP) camp in the late 1940s. Until now, I had only known Bergen-Belsen as a place of death and suffering. I hadn’t realised it also became a place of rebirth.
Die Largegrenze – The Camp’s Perimeter, Bergen-Belsen
After liberation in April 1945, Bergen-Belsen became the largest Jewish DP camp in Germany, remaining active until 1950. It lasted more than twice as long as the concentration camp itself and over 2,000 babies were born there. For many survivors, it was the only place to begin again – there was nowhere else to go. My own family was among the ‘fortunate’ ones, admitted to Switzerland where my mother's grandparents lived. But thousands remained.
On the first day, during a visit to the site of the former DP camp, I was asked if I had been born there too. Did I really look in my late-70s? I smiled, but inside I was caught off guard. The innocent question aged me by nearly two decades. Yet, it didn’t feel like a mistake – more like an invitation into a shared story, a reaching out to create common ground.
Hephzibah (top left) with attendees who were born in Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp after the war
I spent time with a small group born in the camp. There was warmth, laughter and something else too – a quiet understanding that we were all part of something that could have ended so differently. A bond formed between us, rooted in history and survival.
One of the most powerful moments came as I walked through the former camp grounds with survivors. As we moved through a deceptively serene landscape, they spoke softly but clearly, pointing out where they had once stood for roll call, where abuse occurred, where children walked to their barracks. The barracks no longer stand but remain etched in their minds with painful precision. Their memories animated the silence, layering meaning into the empty spaces. It was humbling.
The commemorative gatherings took place under a large white tent. There were speeches, conversations and buffet lunches – even a dedicated room offering kosher meals. Tea, coffee and cake were served. Everything was generously provided, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the tin bowls my mother and grandparents once clutched holding little more than scraps of turnip, dirty water and maybe a crust of bread. The contrast was stark and eating there felt strange, but it also felt like a quiet act of reclamation. The very act of nourishment in this place where so many had died of starvation became its own tribute. I thought of my grandmother and the women in the barracks, speaking endlessly about food, exchanging recipes, trying to hold on to something.
On Friday night, we gathered at the historic synagogue in Celle, one of the oldest timber-framed synagogues in Lower Saxony. I can’t imagine it has ever been so full. Survivors, descendants and those born in the DP camp prayed and sang together. The chazzan’s voice was ancient and alive all at once. What struck me most was the setting: we were not remembering from afar, in a synagogue halfway around the world. We were here, in the very heart of where the suffering had happened, breathing the same air, walking the same ground.
Celle synagogue
Saturday afternoon, I attended a memorial service known as The Candles on the Rails organised by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bergen-Belsen, a voluntary group that supports the work of the memorial. It was held at the railway ramp where prisoners, including my family, had arrived in cattle cars. Many were barely alive. The elderly, children – my mother among them – were forced to walk the final kilometres to the hell that awaited them.
A single cattle car now stands as a memorial in the verdant countryside. Nearby, locals cycled and walked in the sunshine. That juxtaposition, the horror of history against the beauty of the present was deeply affecting. The service was simple and profoundly powerful: music, readings, presence. We listened to the Avinu Malkeinu prayer, Pachelbel’s Canon by German composer Johann Pachelbel, and ended with Hatikva, the State of Israel's national anthem. It was haunting, reverent and unforgettable.
The Candles on the Rails ceremony, Bergen-Belsen
Sunday’s commemoration brought together survivors and their descendants, including those born in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, alongside international dignitaries. Their testimonies, rich with memory, pain and quiet strength, served as a powerful reminder not only of what was endured, but of what was rebuilt. A tribute to resilience and to the lives that carry its legacy forward.
The weather remained beautiful the entire time we were in Bergen Belsen – sunny skies, birdsong, wildflowers dotting the grass. At times it felt too beautiful. I thought of my mother enduring the cold, heat, rain and wind; barefoot, starving, afraid. Now, here we were, bottles of water passed down our rows, the sun warming our backs. The Appellplatz (roll call area), once a place of terror, is now a quiet, grassy expanse. And the marked mounds of the mass graves could be mistaken for hills, until you read the inscriptions: "Here lie 1,000 dead … Here lie 2,500 dead." And on, and on.
Here Lie 2,500 Dead – one of the sites of Bergen-Belsen’s mass graves
Last year, I walked alone in my mother’s footsteps. This year, I stood among others who carried their own pieces of the story. We came to mourn, to witness, to remember and, in some way, to connect.
As I left, I thought again of the tin bowls, the crusts of bread and those who never had the choice to return. I thought of my mother. What would she have made of all this? The voices, the survivors, the prayers, the coffee stations, the abundance of life in a place where so much had ended. And I reflected on her saying she had been one of the lucky ones. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be glad I was there. That we remembered not just the death and suffering, but the lives that followed.
By Hephzibah Rudofsky
Photos courtesy of Hephzibah Rudofsky
To read more about the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, see our Spring 2025 issue.