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April 1945, Two Survivors After Liberation, Bergen-Belsen, Germany.
Yad Vashem Archives 181/69
From the testimony of Helen Borko:
“Then came a loneliness that took over me sevenfold. I had already lived amongst Jews, but it seemed that each of us here [..] is lonely within –a loneliness within a collective. At nights I would lay on the hard mattress – provided by UNRRA – bundle up in blankets, but I couldn’t sleep a wink. The thoughts came one after another: my past, father’s house, my small town in which all Jewish life had ceased. I couldn’t find any relief. What should I do now? After all, life must go on [..] I was searching for someone with whom I could share my feelings. Those few women whom I had befriended, and who would bare their souls – I didn’t find much interest in them. I needed more than that.”
(Helen Borko and Joseph Perlstein, Bederech Lo Derech [Hebrew], pp. 23-24.)
From the Memoirs of Aviva Opaz:
“I started coming to terms with my being and orphan and my loneliness. The little girl awoke in me, the one who missed family warmth and a mother’s coddling. In the moments of idleness, the pain and [sense of] crisis grew stronger. At nights I would cry, and by day I was very sensitive, and was easily offended. It was just as reaching the goal was so near that I was attacked by weakness.”
(Aviva Opaz, Children’s Kibbutz [Hebrew], Yad Vashem – The International Research Center, Jerusalem 1996, pp. 89.)
In this photograph we see two survivors from from Bergen-Belsen wearing clothes that look slightly oversized on their malnourished bodies, their faces are gaunt. One survivor is leaning on her friend, and both are looking towards the side, outside the frame. Hellen Barko mentions a “loneliness within a collective.” What do you think she meant? What do you think the survivors could do to try and lessen, if only slightly, the terrible loneliness they felt after liberation?