(Author: Isaac Richards, Vol. 70, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2015)
With the entry of the Allied forces into Germany, the work of the Jewish Chaplain took on quite a different character. No longer was he merely a spiritual guide and adviser. His primary task was no longer the arranging of services and facilities for the observance of the Festivals. He was suddenly called upon to be the spokesman of the Jews liberated from the death camps; he was called upon to become a welfare worker for tens of thousands of people stricken in body and in mind. With inadequate facilities and practically no staff, he endeavoured to be a clearing house for information and was called upon to compile lists of the survivors.
It must be remembered that it was many months before any Jewish relief workers were able to enter Germany, and that the British and American Jewish chaplains were the only official Jews in the whole of the country.
I was closely associated with the Belsen Camp and its later offshoots. In his pamphlet ‘Nowhere to lay their heads’, Victor Gollancz mentions the Stateless Camp which the British authorities endeavoured to set up at Lingen near the German-Dutch border. I was very closely associated with this experiment, the history of which shows clearly the lack of foresight in planning to face the problems of the pitiful remnants of European Jewry who might have been expected to survive Hitler’s death camps.
I arrived at Belsen very shortly after its liberation; the only chaplain there was a friend and fellow student of mine, Chaplain Leslie Hardman. The only other [Jewish] chaplain in Germany at that time was senior Chaplain Harry Levy, whom many South Africans will remember from North African days. Both had sacrificed themselves unstintingly and thrown aside all military duties to devote themselves exclusively to bringing help and succour to the stricken survivors.
Three weeks later, when I left Belsen, we were still burying two hundred daily. It wounded me deeply later on to be asked by fellow officer non–Jews, “Were the Belsen atrocity stories really true?” We who were there can never shut out the picture of horror which met our eyes when we entered Belsen, and the knowledge of what inhuman cruelty had been inflicted on innocent people.
Dr Fritz Klein, camp doctor at Belsen, being interviewed by his captors alongside a mass grave. Klein was executed for his part in the mass murders in the camp and elsewhere on 13 December 1945.
The liberation of Belsen, while it meant the cessation of the survivors’ physical torture, did not mean the end of their mental torture, nor the end of the period of hardships and deprivation which still goes on. The first step taken by the military authorities was to transfer the survivors from Belsen to the nearby Panzer barracks at Bergen. This transfer was carried out smoothly, the very sick being transferred to hastily improvised hospitals. There was, unfortunately, no room in the hospital for those not severely ill.
The efforts made by the Red Cross, Quakers and other voluntary organisations are beyond praise, but unfortunately, there was a shortage of personnel and equipment. It is also a sad reflection on the preparations made by voluntary Jewish organisations that there was only one Jewish relief team in Europe at the time. They were working in Rotterdam and it was some months before they were able to obtain permission to move up into Germany.
No sooner had the Belsen horror camp been liquidated and burnt to the ground than the ancient Jewish question rears its head: ‘Wohih’– what was to happen to the Jewish survivors? Bergen-Belsen contained a most cosmopolitan population. There were people of every European race, and even a few Asiatics.
Repatriation for the people of Western Europe began almost immediately. The great problem was the Eastern Europeans. It was planned to set up transit camps for the various nationalities, where they would stay pending their repatriation. It was at this stage that the Jewish problem really came to the forefront. The Jewish survivors, the great majority of whom were from Poland, were determined on two things: They would never return to Poland, nor would they go to a Polish transit camp where they would fall under the jurisdiction of the Polish authorities. They demanded a Jewish camp, which would be but a stage further on their journey to freedom in our ancient Homeland.
The military authorities set their face resolutely against the idea of a Jewish camp. The British authorities have all along opposed the idea of such a camp, and Bergen-Belsen only became a Jewish camp some five or six months ago, when many of the Poles were repatriated and the remainder transferred to other camps. In those early days an impasse was reached. The authorities claimed that the Jews were Polish nationals and that no distinction could be made on grounds of religion. The Jews remained adamant. They wished to be treated as an independent group, as Jews, and refused to have their fate decided by the Polish authorities, who had played no small part in the terrible sufferings they had undergone during the war years.
An ultimatum was presented to us. Either the Jews go with the Poles or they be declared ‘Stateless’. In the event of their choosing the latter, they would be transferred to the Stateless Camp at Lingen. As there were very few people classified as Stateless, it was felt by the Jewish Committee that the result of this transfer would be that at Lingen, we would have a camp almost 100% Jewish. This would have many advantages – political, spiritual and moral.
The matter was put before the people, and hastily called mass meetings were held in various parts of the camp. The unanimous decision was that the risk of being declared Stateless was preferable to the prospect of being put under Polish domination and perhaps forced to return to Poland, the graveyard of so many of their nearest and dearest. As one of the people put it, “Poland is a country where every stone cries out with the blood of the martyred Jew”. It was the unenviable task of Chaplain Hardman and myself to communicate the feelings of the people to the military government. The news we imparted was received with considerable annoyance and we personally were accused of inciting and encouraging the Jewish people in their attitude. There was no delay, no opportunity for us to investigate conditions at Lingen. That same evening it was announced that some 1500 people would be transferred next morning. As the first contingent, certain barrack blocks were chosen to be the first to go. The following morning the convoy arrived and people were packed into army trucks – 25 per truck – in addition to which they had to squeeze in their pitiful bundles of personal belongings. Those of us who have travelled long distances in the back of army trucks know how uncomfortable and nerve-wracking such a journey can be. Added to this was the fact that the roads were full of bomb craters. Detours had to be made where bridges had been blown, and the road often was nothing but a field path. These people were all physically sick and this journey, which lasted for some ten hours, was a tremendous strain on their already exhausted physiques.
The severest blow, however, came when we arrived at Lingen to find not an empty camp, prepared for our arrival, but an already overcrowded camp containing thousands of Russians and Poles. Allotted to the new arrivals was a group of wooden barracks in dilapidated condition with gaps in the walls and ceilings, no beds, blankets, or lights. It was by now quite dark and UNNRA endeavoured to share out food, which merely added to the pandemonium and confusion of darkness. The first night at Lingen was a form of Tisha b’Av; the people sat on their bundles all night in the darkness and wept.
Senior Chaplain Levy had asked me – quite unofficially – to accompany the convoy, and with me went a Polish Jewish chaplain who had been a POW and young Jewish woman who was a member of a Quaker relief team. We were shocked at the condition at Lingen and an immediate protest was sent to HQ. No further transports were sent from Belsen, nor could they possibly have been accommodated. The whole plan seemed to be a reprisal for the recalcitrant attitude of the Jews in claiming their right to be treated as a separate national group. We lost no time in obtaining beds, blankets, adequate food arrangements and medical and sanitary services. Repeated protests to HQ about the conditions in the camp resulted, after a five week stay, in another exodus. This time we were transferred to a slightly better camp, at Diepholz.
The people were, however, gravely concerned at the fact that they had been cut off from the main group at Belsen, who they had been told would be joining them. As there was now no prospect of such a reunion, representations were made and after a five or six weeks stay at Diepholz, they were transferred back to Bergen-Belsen. The majority of these unfortunate people, together with the thousands of Jewish displaced persons, are to this day living in displaced persons camps, awaiting the realisation of their hopes to be able to go freely to Eretz Israel.
With the arrival of the first Jewish relief team at Bergen-Belsen, I was ordered back to military duties. There were, however, numerous occasions when my interventions with the military authorities were able to obtain some alleviation of the hardships which both German Jews and Jewish displaced persons were undergoing.
I left Germany in November last. It is not difficult to understand the feelings of disillusion and even desperation in the hearts of our brothers and sisters still living in camps. Our hopes were so high; we were so confident that Britain and the world would keep their promises and open wide the gates of Palestine. Two years later, the majority of those people whom I found in Belsen are still there. Throughout all their trials and tribulations they have not lost hope. Their spirit burns brightly. Such a spirit, such a resolution cannot be doomed to failure. When I took my farewell of them, their last words were ‘L’hitraot B’eretz Yisrael’.
Rev. Isaac Richards of the United Jewish Reform Congregation of Johannesburg served as a Chaplain in the Union Defence Force and after the war spent three weeks assisting survivors in the newly liberated Belsen death camp. The following account of his work on behalf of survivors first appeared in the September 1947 issue of The Judean, organ of the SA Jewish Ex-Service League.
