The Memory of Belsen

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is saturated with memory. The nature of that memory is complex, diverse, contradictory and dynamic. It is a place of contested memory between those that experienced it as victim, perpetrator, bystander and liberator as well as within those groups. The power of these memories is such that they have acted as a barrier rather than a stimulus to the writing of Belsen's history. Indeed, the first and only major history of the camp was written in 1962. ¹ Its unique role within the Nazi concentration camp system has been lost with its more emotive use as crude metaphor. Belsen has become a multi-layered and frequently contradictory symbol representing, firstly, the universal horrors of war or man's capacity for mass evil, secondly, the more particular atrocities carried out by the Nazis or the German people, thirdly, the damage inflicted on the Jewish people during the Holocaust and lastly, the reflected glory and decency of those who liberated its survivors in April 1945 and exposed to the outside world its undisguised and indescribable horror. It is only now, 50 years after its liberation, that it is conceivable that the various strands of memory of the camp (if the blatant anti-Semitism of neo-Nazis is ignored) can be reconciled and, furthermore, that the history and memory of Belsen can be brought together, if not in harmony, then in constructive debate. They say that nothing interests me That nothing moves me any more That with cold indifference Blows my deadened soul. And that now we've soup forevermore With all its pros and cons That never again will my thoughts fly To roads burning with stars.