Journey to Bergen-Belsen Camp

The day started warm and sunny as I traveled  ten miles from the Lower Saxon town of Celle, Germany, to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.  I found it interesting, my elderly hosts  seemed only vaguely aware of its existence.

52,000 people died there....how would one not know?

The camp, now considered a "Memorial Park", is located in  fairly remote farm land; it's not easy to get to, requiring personal transportation on the Sunday I went.

Arriving at the Camp, the weather changed to overcast, breezy and cool. Colors  faded into sepia tones as I settled into the morning. The tall, leafy trees picked up the wind, whispering in the air.

I was greeted by an impressive gate and recently-constructed museum. 

Grey, black, pale yellow, dominated my vista; few colors anywhere either in the museum or landscape. Everything here is somber, quiet, profound.

I could not rush into the Camp and spent over an hour inside the excellent museum, learning. Reading. Finding the courage to go outside to the Camp. Having found the installation for the Camp's most famous "resident" Anne Frank, I felt like I found my little sister.

The path to the outdoors is a tall, cement wall-lined funnel. Everything here is a metaphor.

The topography of the camp is spare, punctuated by a tall obelisk, an impressive memorial site and ceremonial head stones, including one for Margo and Anne Frank. 

Tall grass grows everywhere.  Eleven tall, grassy mounds are the mass burial sites for thousands of bodies. When the Camp was liberated by British troops in 1945, typhus was rampant; everything was burned to the ground.

It's a quiet place. People speak in hushed tones; children do not run about. 

It's the Jewish tradition to bring a small rock to a grave site. Here, I bring a small stone from home to place in the memorial.

I found the memorial headstone for Anne Frank. She died from typhus but a few weeks before the October, 1945 British liberation. Her remains are in one of the 11 mass graves. 

Having lost all but my maternal grandmother's family in the Holocaust, I can't help but think: "Are any of my people here as well?" And, like so many others: "How could this have happened?"

I spent over three hours prowling the Camp, trying to understand mass genocide in this place;   The loss of thousands here was physically stunning--an ineffably painful awareness.  Race, religion, creed, political affiliation is the basis for wholesale destruction. 

I left the Camp with more questions than I entered with, struggling to even find the vocabulary to frame my thinking.... Not only how could this have happened; but how does genocide, war and utter human stupidity continue all over the world?