National Socialism
Holocaust survivors who fled Kyiv in Bergen-Belsen
Anastasia Gulej from Kyiv visits the memorial of the Berge-Belsen concentration camp. The survivor of the Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen camps had to flee Ukraine to Germany at an advanced age before the war. Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Anastasia Gulej survived the Nazi terror and has been committed to peace ever since. The Russian war of aggression frightens them again.
The British soldiers were presented with a horrifying picture: when they reached the Bergen-Belsen camp on April 15, 77 years ago, they found thousands of unburied dead and tens of thousands of emaciated, terminally ill people on the site in the Lüneburg Heath.
The horror images went around the world. Bergen-Belsen became synonymous with the crimes of the National Socialists.
Anastasia Gulej survived three concentration camps: Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. On Friday – the anniversary of the liberation – the 96-year-old Ukrainian visited the Bergen-Belsen Memorial. In old age she is again confronted with an aggressor, bombing raids and killed civilians.
Fled to Germany at the beginning of March
“Who would have thought that I would have to experience the war again,” said Gulej in Bergen-Belsen. “All of this would have remained in the past if it weren’t for the latest events, the war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.” The old woman allowed herself to be driven through the memorial in a wheelchair.
At the beginning of March, she fled to Germany with her daughter from Kyiv. She now lives in Saxony-Anhalt and last Sunday attended the memorial event marking the liberation of the Buchenwald camp.
With the “Lights on Rails” campaign, the Bergen-Belsen Working Group (AG) commemorates the liberation every year on April 15. Candles are lit on the carriage at the ramp where the deportees had to get off the trains.
Big commemoration planned
On May 8th there will be a larger commemoration event at the memorial. According to a spokeswoman, in the morning the victims of National Socialism will be commemorated in a small circle, and in the afternoon the current war situation in Ukraine will be the focus of a discussion with eyewitnesses.
In 2020 and 2021 only online memorial events were possible due to the corona pandemic. Originally, around 100 Holocaust survivors were supposed to come to the 75th anniversary of the liberation. Many children were imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen at the end of the Second World War. Of the approximately 3,500 girls and boys under the age of 15, around 600 died of exhaustion, illness or violence. Among those killed was Anne Frank, who became world famous for her diaries after her death.
According to the memorial site spokeswoman, the meeting of the survivors is planned for September 4, 2022. They wanted to make sure that there would be no corona-related travel restrictions again.