“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” Rav Kook z"l

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Shavuot at Bergen-Belsen, 19 May 1945. Just 34 days after liberation

 

@jewishreels Shavuot at Bergen-Belsen, 19 May 1945. Just 34 days after liberation, survivors gathered in the open air to mark the giving of the Torah. Most of them were women, and there were children standing right at the front. Three Army chaplains led the service in tallitot worn over their uniforms. Rabbi Leslie Hardman was a British Army chaplain, Rabbi B. Goldfinger was a Polish rabbi serving with the French Army, and Rabbi Hermann Helfgott, later known as Zvi Asaria, was a Yugoslav Army chaplain who had spent four years as a prisoner of war. They held up a Torah curtain the Nazis had stolen from a Sicilian Jewish community, with green branches set in front of it for the holiday. Then Rabbi Helfgott lifted the Torah high for everyone to see. Rabbi Hardman later remembered survivors pleading with him: “Tell the world, tell the world. They must know what happened.” Film: Imperial War Museums, A70 337-3
More Jewish history at jewishreels.com (link in bio) #Shavuot #BergenBelsen #Holocaust #HolocaustRemembrance #jewishhistory ♬ origineel geluid - The Maestro & T.E.P.O

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

a lot of your readers don't have tiktok. is it possible to post it on a different platform? (download it before etc)

Anonymous said...

Just 1 refresh gives me “rate limit triggered”. That’s stingy

Jean Louis David said...

How do the women have hair when the Nazis balded them?

Garnel Ironheart said...

Well that's a disgusting comment.
Note that the women all have short hair, barefly to their shoulders.
In the final months of the war the Nazis, y"sh, weren't as meticulous as you might have wanted them to be. At this point it's been a few months since they were in total control so short hair is totally to be expected.
I'm actually waiting for one of the comments to criticize how there's no mechitzah.

Dusiznies said...

4:20
Toward the end of the war, with the Allies closing in, they didn't shave the heads of the women. In many women-only concentration camps, like Ravensbrück, they never shaved the heads of the women except as punishment!