Bergen-Belsen, 80 years on: Remembering is not enough
15 April 2025, 12:27
Eighty years ago today, British soldiers entered the gates of the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in northern Germany.
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What they witnessed would forever be seared into their conscience – and that of humanity. Thousands of emaciated prisoners, sick and barely alive, stumbled out of barracks riddled with disease.
Over 10,000 corpses lay unburied on the camp’s grounds. Of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, more than 70,000 perished there.
Bergen-Belsen lacked the industrialised killing machinery of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
But it was still hell on earth.
For those British troops, the liberation on 15 April 1945 was not just a military operation; it made them witnesses, not just to atrocity, but to what happens when hate and intolerance go unchecked.
And in that moment, Britain inherited a solemn responsibility to remember, to act on that memory and to actively safeguard the lessons learned from that unimaginable suffering.
What we cannot do - what we must never do - is shrug our shoulders and dismiss Belsen as just one of those dark chapters in history. It’s our duty to keep Holocaust memory alive and truthful.
That means long after the last survivors of Bergen-Belsen and the Holocaust have passed, their precious testimonies must be amplified and their experiences carried forward, undiluted, to future generations.
We must stand firm against Holocaust denial and distortion, knowing that there are many who seek to diminish the enormity of these crimes. Furthermore, our responsibility demands that we call out antisemitism loudly.
We cannot afford to be silent when this ancient form of hate rears its ugly head. Whether it comes from the far right, far left, or anywhere in between, is irrelevant.
Hate must be resisted in all its forms.
Bergen-Belsen is not just a place in the past. It is a warning for us today. Its horrors stand as a permanent, irrefutable indictment of the catastrophic consequences of forgetting our shared humanity, of dehumanising our fellow beings, and of tolerating prejudice instead of actively confronting it.
Eighty years have passed since the liberation.
As we pause to honour the bravery of those who liberated the camp and remember the unimaginable suffering of those who perished within it, let our commemoration be more than a fleeting moment of silence.
In 1945, we uncovered the consequences of forgetting our shared humanity. In 2025, we must ensure we never do.
Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE is the Chief Executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
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