April 11 marks the 75th anniversary when the United States Armed Forces liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Although Nazis attempted to liquidate the camp before the Allied Forces could discover its atrocities, when the 6th Armored Division of the US Army arrived, they found 21,000 people living there. 4,000 of them were imprisoned Jews and 1,000 were children.
To commemorate this historic moment, the Jerusalem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, has curated a unique collection of artifacts related to liberation, which are now available online.
“Thousands of Jews liberated from Buchenwald as well as from the other camps during the first half of 1945, found these inmate survivors in the worst physical and emotional condition,” wrote Simmy Allen, the Head of Yad Vashem’s International Media Section in a news update. “Many, in fact, continued to die even after liberation. The survivors had nothing but the rags they were wearing. With liberation also came the realization of the loss of their family and friends.”
For years, Yad Vashem has been collecting personal items of survivors; this collection seeks to provide insight into the phase of rebuilding Holocaust survivors went through after the war ended.
“As some of the survivors began to recuperate physically, they began seeking personal effects such as shirts, shoes and toothbrushes,” wrote Allen, noting how basic items were denied to prisoners on concentration camps. “These items had tremendously sentimental importance to them, not related to their practical purpose. These items signified restored feelings of self-worth and dignity.”
The collection includes sentimental items. Among many artifacts, it features a doll one survivor bought for her daughter after the war to replace the one she had with her in the Budapest ghetto, a sweater a child survivor took from the storehouse in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a shaving brush American soldiers gifted to a man liberated from Bergen-Belsen.
According to Allen, “with the help of these items, these survivors began to rebuild their lives and leave behind a world in which the Nazis and their collaborators had nearly robbed them of – their humanity – and reduce them to mere numbers.”
