Liberated at Bergen-Belsen, April 15, 1945

“For the greatest part of the liberated Jews, there was no ecstasy, no joy at liberation. We had lost our families, our homes. We had no place to go, nobody to hug. Nobody was waiting for us anymore. We had been liberated from death and fear of death, but not from the fear of life.”

Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft
Liberated at Bergen-Belsen, April 15, 1945
Departed Bergen-Belsen DP [Displaced Persons] Camp 1950.

From: Liberation 1945, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 1995

In times of great peril, there are figures that are born of great heroic statute. Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft was certainly one of those figures. Although her family had been murdered by Germans, she unselfishly made a decision to help many of her fellow sufferers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and then at Bergen-Belsen. Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft is credited for saving literally hundreds of lives in these camps.

She was a member of President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, and a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft died in October of 1997 in Tisch Hospital of New York University Medical Center. She was 85 and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (Source: New York Times Published: October 8, 1997).

In March of 1945, Anne Frank and her sister Margot were dying in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft was there to assist many of the victims. Luba Tryszynska managed the facility, while another unknown woman also assisted (Source: Memories of a Coal Child, Coby Lubliner). These thoughtful souls should always be honored and remembered for their wonderful contribution to humanity.