Photo showing the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
The Sound Portraits website has a transcript from a report filed five days after Bergen-Belsen was liberated. In it, the reporter describes a service held in the open air: amid the dead and the dying, the survivors, who knew they were being recorded and -- as the report notes -- wanted the world to hear their voices, sang "haTikvah" (which later became the Israeli national anthem). It is an astonishing and very moving thing to hear.
Listen to a 56K RealAudio recording of the report and song (3:40")
"Bergen-Belsen" is copyright © 2002 Sound Portraits Productions.
The Schusterman Center provides a multi-disciplinary Jewish Studies curriculum for students at the University of Texas and an innovative crossroads for research on the study of Jewish life in the Americas, its place in Jewish history, and its contemporary and future relationship to the State of Israel. Close to half of the world’s Jews live in the Western Hemisphere and have developed important and distinctive communities over a period of 500 years. Such a research and programmatic emphasis, in combination with multi-dimensional consideration of Israeli culture and politics and the complex two-way relationship that has developed between Israel and the communities of the New World, reflects the exciting future of Jewish life in the new century. Scholars and students draw upon the University’s matchless resources for Latin America, the extraordinary manuscript collections in Jewish-American literature at the Harry Ransom Center, as well as photographic, media, and journalism archives at the Ransom Center and the Center for American History. The Center also enjoys a mutually enriching relationship to vital Jewish communities on campus and in Austin, and to the broader public of the region.
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June SCJS Newsletter Now Available
The Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies June 2008 newsletter is now available online as a PDF file (455K).
