Survivor Micha and his wife Louise recently returned from a trip to Bergen Belsen, Farsleben and Hilersleben. In 2006 Micha contacted me and has since met me and his fellow survivors and liberators many times, being one of our featured speakers for the first reunion here at the school. I’m including some photos above, and some of Louise’s notes below.
“…turns out the concrete underpass visible in some of George’s photos (above) helps with a positive [identification] of exactly where the front of the train was…
Christian W also indicated that the presence of the individuals with papers on the three trains wasn’t a random thing — it might have been a strategic move to separate prisoners who still had some potential value from the unfortunate souls being sent from the other camps at the end of the war. As I understand it, there is some evidence that Himmler decided to move all his “valuable” human pawns who could be exchanged for German POWs to a single more “secure” (?) location as it became clear that the Germans were going to lose the war soon, and he wanted these individuals handy to support negotiations for trades and deals. The [Bergen Belsen] Memorial even presents the routes the various trains took — the Farsleben train was the first and ran into difficulties moving south because of damage to major bridges. As a result, the other two trains took different paths.”
Teaching History Matters 