For nearly 80 years, survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and their descendants have played a central role in preserving the memory of the site and shaping how its story is told. But members of She’erit HaPletah, the Israeli organization founded by the camp’s survivors, say that role is being eroded. Excluded from key ceremonies, stripped of advisory input, and denied the chance to speak, they accuse officials in Lower Saxony of deliberately pushing them aside—replacing the living memory of survivors with a more convenient, controlled version of history.
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is the site not just of tremendous horror, but also of a new beginning for thousands of Jews. In 1945, a new chapter began there for the Jews who managed to survive: next to the concentration camp, a displaced persons camp was established, which operated until 1950. It soon became an independent Jewish settlement—a place of rehabilitation, political organization of all streams, cultural and educational flourishing, and family rebuilding.
A few days after the British army liberated the camp, the survivors of Bergen-Belsen established an independent committee to run the displaced persons camp. After the establishment of the state of Israel and the immigration of most of the survivors, this committee turned into the largest organization of Holocaust survivors in the world: the She'erit HaPletah organization of Bergen-Belsen in Israel. The name of the organization means “surviving remnant” in Hebrew. Now headed by the children of survivors, its members once numbered in the thousands.
The Bergen-Belsen camp was the largest concentration camp in Germany during the Holocaust. In name it was not a death camp, but it became one in practice. In the final years of the war, death marches arrived from Eastern Europe, and in the final months, hunger, disease, and crowding led to the deaths of tens of thousands—including Anne Frank and her sister Margot. Many also died in the days after the liberation, as a result of the abuse they suffered.
“When the British army arrived, they found about 14,000 corpses and the rest in a state of complete physical collapse,” Hagit Lavsky, a historian at the Hebrew University, told Davar. “They tried to help immediately with food, but they didn’t understand that after prolonged starvation, food can also kill. Thousands more died after the liberation.” The British burned the camp and moved the survivors to a nearby military site, in order to prevent the spread of disease.
Lavsky explained that one of the first things the survivors did was to name the new camp Bergen-Belsen as well. “They didn’t want to give up their identity as survivors, but they also wanted to express the will to establish a new life,” she said. “The population of the displaced persons camp was young—people with leadership ability. Most of them had no home to return to.”
Within 10 days of the liberation, they had already established a central committee of survivors—even before missions from the United States, Britain, or prestate Israel arrived. The British military provided infrastructure, the Joint Distribution Committee brought aid packages, and eventually also missions from Britain arrived with doctors, social workers, and teachers. But it was the survivors’ committee that established the educational system of the displaced persons camp, and already by the end of 1945, it was functioning fully.
Many of the survivors were orphans, who survived the war without family or education. Their care was a top priority. When one of the aid organizations suggested transferring the children to England, the adults opposed it and declared: “These are our children, and we are responsible for them.” They also announced that the children would immigrate only with them to the land of Israel—and stood firm in the face of the aid organizations.
But in 1945, before the establishment of the state, Jewish immigration to Israel was no simple matter. The British government’s White Paper of 1939 mandated strict quotas on Jewish immigration.
In September 1945, a congress of She’erit HaPletah was held in the British zone in Germany, under the slogan “Open the Gates of the Land of Israel.” David Ben-Gurion, de facto leader of the Jewish community in prestate Israel, visited the camp, expecting to find human wreckage. Instead, he met a strong and independent leadership. The survivors were the ones who gave voice to the Zionist message in front of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.
“They were a model of Zionism after the Holocaust, where everyone was ready to work together,” Lavsky said. “The cooperation among them stood in contrast to the intense factionalism that had existed before the war in Eastern Europe—and also in the Yishuv.”
Those living in the camp were focused on the future, with many choosing to marry and have children. “In the first weeks after liberation, there were more than 50 weddings per week—over a thousand weddings in the first year,” Lavsky said. “The will to live overcame the grief. The survivors wanted to rebuild their lives, and saw it as personal redemption and also the continuation of the Jewish people.”
Thousands of children were born in the camp. “Medically this is difficult to explain,” Lavsky said, “because many women’s bodies and reproductive systems had been destroyed by the hunger and disease.”
The survivors also established a Jewish police force and an internal justice system to fight the rampant black market. Cultural life also flourished—with theater, music, a people’s university, and vocational training. Although organizations like ORT helped, the main initiatives came from the survivors themselves.
“This is a story about the ability to unite and act together toward a shared goal. I think we are seeing the same spirit today, after the horrors of October 7,” Lavsky said. “Despite the sorrow and the pain, people are rebuilding. The leadership needs to look back and learn lessons, but the individuals naturally look forward. That’s the will to live that was seen in Bergen-Belsen.”
Arie Olewski, the current chair of the She’erit HaPletah organization of Bergen-Belsen in Israel, is the son of Rafael Olewski—a survivor of Bergen-Belsen and one of the members of the original committee that ran the displaced persons camp. Later, Rafael was elected as the first chairman of the survivors’ organization in Israel, which at its peak had more than 3,000 member families, making it the largest Holocaust survivors organization in the world.
around the world. The special character of the displaced persons camp and its cohesion led to the organization becoming the largest Holocaust survivors' organization in Israel, and even in the world, with more than 3,000 families
“The organization was a warm home and a place to gather, including for survivors who were alone. Truly a family,” Olewski told Davar. “The organization would hold conventions that today one can only envy.”
Over the years, many members of the organization passed away, and the organization dwindled to a list of a few dozen activists on paper only. But Olewski, along with many from the second generation, understood that the preservation of memory and the family story falls to them. “Today we have about 500 active members, almost all of them second generation,” Olewski said, noting that the organization has revived its publication, which was first published in the displaced persons camp.
Alongside the communal aspect, the organization has historically held a role in monitoring the camp’s memorial site in Germany. But in recent years, relations between She’erit HaPletah and local authorities in Germany have soured, and the organization has not been invited to participate and speak at the memorial ceremonies at the Bergen-Belsen site in Germany.
Olewski said that members of She’erit HaPletah used to serve on the advisory committee of the Bergen-Belsen site and that the group had a “very good connection” with German authorities for 78 years.
“In the past two years, after October 7, it seems that something has changed in the site’s leadership,” Olewski said. “In 2024 we did not receive an invitation to the ceremony, and we also did not really receive explanations for this. It was surprising, precisely because this was a year in which members of the organization were murdered, wounded, were in life-threatening situations, and evacuated from their homes.”
No members of She’erit HaPletah were invited to speak at the ceremony marking 80 years since the camp’s liberation. “At the decade-marking ceremonies it is customary to invite a delegation of members of the organization from Israel and around the world, funded by the memorial site. We did not receive an invitation to fly and also not an invitation to speak at the ceremony, even though according to a long-standing rotation, it was the organization’s representative’s turn to speak,” Olewski said. “We asked to come and speak about the line connecting Bergen-Belsen to the events of October 7, and about the rise in new antisemitism, including in Europe.”
Olewski said that the decision was not in the hands of the site's management, or even the foundation for heritage sites in Lower Saxony, but in the hands of the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, who he said is trying to exclude the Israeli organization from the ceremony platforms. Olewski estimated that it is a out of a desire to curry favor with local voters who oppose Israel.
When Olewski met with the state minister of education about the issue, she did not express willingness to solve the problem, but rather asked him not to go public with the story. “It’s much more convenient for them to deal with dead Jews,” he said. “Apparently, living Jews, who are even Israelis, who express their opinions—that’s a headache for them.”
In Olewski’s view, beyond including the organization in the ceremony, it is important to transfer the site's management from the local government of Lower Saxony to the responsibility of the German federal government, and for it to be managed internationally. “Bergen-Belsen doesn’t belong to any politician, but to the Bergen-Belsen family wherever it may be—in Israel and around the world. Long after the current key figures in Germany will finish their roles and be forgotten, we will still be here, because this is the story of our family,” he said. “And the damage will already be hard to fix.”
