Abel J. Herzberg
March
5, 1945 [Bergen-Belsen]
Sleepless nights, filled filled with the central problem: life or death, and when will it end? Filled, filled with the central national
problems, the place of Judaism in the world.
Religion, the concept of God.
Constantly reaching back to the One eternal God – its meaning and how
mankind deludes itself with having vanquished God. Will we manage with materialism? We cannot ignore what has happened, but what
really matters is that we should stay alive!
I have so much to say still.
The
dying continues. One thing: the pessimists were right. Pessimists, optimists, they say nothing about
the war. They all talk about
themselves. For lack of facts, no one
has any insights. At most Ahnung (a notion) of the
relative strengths. And I knew that
Germany was powerful.
Everything
is getting less, forty grams of butter a week instead of sixty. Half a piece of sausage, et cetera.
Starving,
starving. Starving.
NOTE:
Abel Herzberg was a lawyer and a writer (in 1974 he received the
Dutch prize for literature); his excellent education and writing ability
account for the high quality of this diary, which is very insightful,
thought-provoking, and analytical. Herzberg's diary is valuable because it
provides a descriptive account of daily life in Bergen-Belsen from 11 August
1944 (when he began the diary) to 26 April 1945. He secretly maintained this
diary during his internment in the concentration camp. This fact distinguishes
his book from those of other diarists who wrote their histories after their
liberation. Herzberg's work possesses a sense of immediacy that the other
diaries (excellent as they are) do not contain. Herzberg writes about actions
as they happen! For instance, this Bergen-Belsen prisoner writes about a sudden
general roll call, and he, along with other inmates, ponders about the situation.
Some speculate about a transport; others hope for an extra ration of cheese;
optimists predict that the war has ended. But few answers are to be found.
Herzberg learns that the roll call has occurred because a prisoner has been
sentenced to four weeks in the bunker for stealing shoes from the warehouse.
The confusion of the prisoners is illuminating, for it manifests the lack of
information in the camps, how the Nazis skillfully empowered themselves and
simultaneously weakened the Jews by keeping them ignorant regarding what was
happening.
Abel J. Herzberg. Between Two Streams: A Diary from Bergen-Belsen. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1997. xi + 221 pp.
$24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-86064-121-3.
Reviewed by Eric Sterling (Auburn University at Montgomery)
Published on H-Judaic (July, 1999)
Aerial view of Bergen-Belsen
