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A survivor sits on a bundle of possessions after liberation, Dachau, Germany
Yad Vashem Archives, 3CO5
From the testimony of Eva Braun:
"When I heard about freedom, I was also very frightened. What would we find? We had survived, and we had to return to civilization, but how did one behave in a normal world? We were two young girls who had nothing. Who would look after us? What would we do? There was excitement, but our feelings were mixed. We were afraid. It's hard to describe and explain these feelings of simultaneous fear and joy. That was our next stage. Now, after liberation, what were we going to do? We had nothing. We were frightened that we might not have anyone left in the world. We needed someone to look after us and take care of us. And to a great extent I was looking after my little sister and another girl [..] “
“…More than anything else I wanted someone to look after me and relieve me of the burden of caring for the girls, so that I wouldn't have to be responsible, so that I would be under an adult's protection. It's hard to explain it, but I wanted someone to look after me, I wanted someone to lean on. It turned out that freedom is relative to a very great extent. Worry about the future weighed heavily on me. We had to build our future, but how does one build a future?"
(Kleiman, Yehudit and Springer-Aharoni, Nina, The Anguish of Liberation, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1995, pp. 45-46).
In the photograph we see a prisoner in the camp, after liberation, sitting on top of a bundle. These are presumably all his possessions, and he is wrapped in many layers of clothing. His body language projects fear, loneliness and sadness. Eva Braun, who had been under the care of her sister as at the time of liberation, describes the fear of the things to come, and the heavy burden she had to bear. Eva and the prisoner in the photograph both, in their own way, indicate to the difficulty of “returning to normal life.” What, do you think, did survivors fear once they had been liberated from the camps? What were the difficulties they faced in returning to a free world after the war?