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 0 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 A36 May 22 • 2008 iN 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.