Opinion
OTHER VIEWS
Moniek Milberger with daughters Sharon Milberger and Stacey Crane, his wife, Barbara, and son Avery at Auschwitz for the
March of the Living in April 2001.
In Our Father's Footsteps
Sharon Milberger and Stacy Crane
Community View
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ur journey began seven years ago
when we went on the March of the
Living, with our father, Moniek
Milberger. The march took local Jewish
teens on a two-week trip through Poland
and Israel. Our father was one of two
Holocaust survivors who went on the trip
to Poland to personalize the experience for
the participants. At that time, we saw the
places we had heard about in our father's
stories regarding his life before and during
the war. We went to Lodz, Poland, to visit
the apartment where our father lived before
the war. We also saw where he was forced to
live in the Lodz ghetto after the war started.
Finally, we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau,
seeing through our father's eyes, where he
lived during the darkest time of humanity.
Although the March was an extraordi-
narily painful trip back in time for our
father, he felt he did the right thing by
sharing his story with young people. We
feel extremely fortunate that we were able
to partake in this once-in-a-lifetime expe-
rience and had assumed that this chapter
in our lives was closed, especially after our
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father passed away in January 2006.
That is until this past fall when, our
mother, Barbara Milberger, received an
invitation to attend the dedication of a
memorial at Bergen-Belsen. We were skep-
tical of this invitation because we were not
aware that our father had any connection
to this particular camp. We knew he was
transferred from Auschwitz to Ahlem,
a small forced labor camp for men in
Hannover, Germany, where he was liberated
by American soldiers on April 10, 1945.
What we didn't know until now is that our
father had spent time at the Bergen-Belsen
displaced persons (DP) camp after he was
liberated.
So, it was with some hesitation, we con-
tinued our journey into our father's history
We began our trip with a visit to Ahlem. To
our surprise, it was not in the outskirts of
town but in the midst of a vibrant residen-
tial area. All the barracks and other physical
signs of the camp have long been destroyed.
The land is now privately owned and
includes a commercial orchard and tennis
courts. The only "evidence" of the camp is
a monument that was erected by a group.
of non-Jewish German citizens who have
dedicated themselves to memorializing
the Jewish prisoners who perished there.
Similarly, the buildings at Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp were also razed. Today,
the grounds at Bergen-Belsen house an
extensive museum and mass grave sites for
the 50,000 people that are estimated to have
died there.
More Struggles In DP Camp
Perhaps the most eye-opening part of our
trip was our visit to the Bergen-Belsen
DP camp. As children of a survivor, we
have focused much of our attention on
the struggles our father experienced dur-
ing the war with little thought to what
it meant to be a displaced person. We
learned that the surviving prisoners from
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were
moved to a nearby German army base,
which became the largest DP camp in
Germany. The DP camp had more than
12,000 residents and was the place where
many survivors, including our father, went
to find each other after liberation.
The difficulties of the displaced person
were enormous. We were shocked to learn
that despite efforts to restore them back
to health, one in four survivors died after
liberation. We also learned that initially
the displaced persons were not allowed to
leave the DP camp. For us, this raised ques-
tions about what freedom means. Free to do
what? To go where?
The timing of our trip was ideal because
it coincided with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust
Remembrance Day (May 2), which honors
the memory of the 6 million Jews who were
slaughtered. We are gratified that we contin-
ued to retrace our father's footsteps to gain
a better understanding of his journey. We
were reassured to meet several Germans
who are dedicating their lives to remem-
bering the Holocaust and teaching future
generations about this horrific chapter in
history.
We were thanked profusely by our
German hosts for sharing our father's per-
sonal story with them which they, in turn,
will share with others. We are also mindful
of our responsibility to carry our father's
story with us as global citizens and to take
a stand against present day injustices in
the world. In the words of Elie Wiesel, "a
memorial unresponsive to the future would
violate the memory of the past:'
Sharon Milberger is a Farmington Hills resident.
Stacey Crane lives in Birmingham.