80 years ago today, April 15th 1945, my grandmother Masha Greenbaum was liberated from the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army. She never got over the sight of the first British soldier whose tank rolled into the camp. He got out, stared at the pile of dead and dying bodies, and began to weep. "He came from the fight, he came from the struggle, but he had never seen anything like Bergen Belsen." The footage and reports from Belsen shocked the world and revealed the full extent of Nazi brutality. Masha died earlier this year - its the first April 15th i'm commemorating without her. It's also the first Passover I had since her death. Our seders were always led by the men of the family - first my grandfather, then my dad. But when we got to the section "Avadim Hayinu" - we were slaves in Egypt, my grandmother would take over. She would tell us how 2 weeks before liberation, she and her mother, and her sister, sat in the filth of Belsen, no books, no wine, no matzah, but they would sing whatever they remembered from memory. And when they got to "we were slaves" they kept singing, even though they were slaves, and God had not yet freed them. Many survivors were quiet from the time of liberation until the Eichmann trial, which in many ways was the dam breaking - it normalized survivor testimony and thousands who had been silent began speaking. But Masha began documenting her story and educating people about the Shoah right away. Her earliest writings appeared in the Yiddish journal "Unzer Shteime" - which was put together by the survivors of Belsen in the British-run DP camp. Masha went on to get a masters degree in Jewish history-- a subject she knew and lived. She authored three books- "A Window into Hell," "Hope at the Edge of the Abyss," and "The Jews of Lithuania." Approximately 90–95% of Lithuanian Jewry was killed during the Holocaust. Before World War II, there were around 220,000 to 250,000 Jews living in Lithuania. By the end of the Holocaust, only about 10,000–15,000 remained. This makes Lithuania one of the countries with the highest percentage loss of its Jewish population during the Holocaust. Three of those survivors were my grandmother Masha, her sister Shoshana, and her mother Judith. One of the Lithuanian Jews killed during the holocaust was my great-grandfather, Masha's father, Sholem Ralsky. He was in his forties. Passover is the holiday of liberation. Fitting that this year, the first Passover without her, the anniversary of her freedom comes during the holiday.
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