ABSTRACT
The Sternlager was a section of the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen where some 4,000 Dutch Jews were gathered, not in order to be murdered, but to be exchanged for Germans being held in neutral or Allied countries. There were no gas chambers, but from the winter of 1944–45, with overcrowding and relentless epidemics, it was nonetheless a camp of death. This chapter focuses on the oral history narratives of two Jewish survivors of the camp: textile worker Abraham van Linda (1915–2012) and historian Jaap Meijer (1912–93). It examines how each of them later tried to make sense of their experiences during the occupation, and how both tried to create some sort of order out of the unspeakable. In his many publications as a historian, Meijer hardly wrote about the Shoah; he sometimes told anecdotes in the classroom, as a history teacher. Later he would find an outlet in poetry. Van Linda did not publish at all. While their oral history narratives of Bergen-Belsen show some similarities, both survivors developed their own versions of what to remember out loud, and what to leave unspoken.
