Survivors mark camps' liberation

From BBC:
Survivors mark camps' liberation

In the fall of 1991, I was doing a field exercise in the northwestern part of Germany in what proved to be the last ever REFORGER (REturn of FORces to GeERmany) exercise. The Cold War, kind of a last vestige of WW II, was over.

The REFORGER exercises were actually all over; troops (mostly Reservists) were just waiting their turn to go home to the States. I was staffing the general care clinic working 24 on/24 off.

On one of my off days, I had the opportunity to go to Bergen-Belsen, about 30 km from the British base we were using. As everyone does, I walked through the indoor museum. There were pictures, hundreds of them, stark black and white 4' x 6' posters of the most appalling scenes. The first few horrified me, but then, the walls came up, and I walked around the rest of the museum numb to the enormity of it all.

Then I went outside to the park. At first, after the horrors depicted inside, it was restful. Green grass with walkways, park benches, and flat gravestones scattered here and there. As I came close to one of the stones, I read the inscription.

Hier ruhe 500 (Here rest 500)

Another read "Hier ruhe 1000". I looked around - there were dozens and dozens of these stones in the park, each starkly announcing that the remains of hundreds of lay beneath them. After walking past just a few of these, I could not walk any further and sat on one of the benches for about half an hour trying to understand it all, and finally concluding that it is beyond all comprehension.

Very soon, we will have no more survivors of the Holocaust among us. But, with memorials such as this, we will never forget. We must never forget.