Between horror and hope: Renata Laqueur's newly published diary

The lecture theatre at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library was filled to capacity early on Tuesday evening when Saskia Goldschmidt presented the German translation of her new edition of the diary of Bergen-Belsen survivor and literary scholar Renata Laqueur. Anne May, Director of the Library, and Dr Akim Jah, Head of the Research and Documentation Department at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, started the event. They both emphasised that even 81 years after the end of the war, the fight against anti-Semitism remains necessary.

As the daughter of Renata's first husband Paul Goldschmidt, who was also imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen, Saskia - like so many children of Holocaust survivors - was confronted with the speechlessness of her parents. At the same time, the horror she experienced was present in her everyday life. Her father Paul always referred to his ex-wife's diaries when Saskia wanted to know more about the circumstances in the concentration camp.

Renata and Paul were persecuted by the Nazis as Jews and deported from the Netherlands to Bergen-Belsen in March 1944. As they had South American passports, they were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp's "exchange camp". Jewish people were imprisoned there, whom the Schutzstaffel SS ("Protection Squadron") and the Foreign Office of the "Third Reich" hoped to be able to use as bargaining chips. They were therefore initially exempt from extermination. As a result, the prison conditions were initially somewhat better than usual in concentration camps. The "Exchange Prisoners" were also allowed to bring personal belongings into the camp, which favoured the creation of diaries and other personal documentation of the prison conditions - despite the ban. As a result, a relatively large number of diaries by former prisoners have survived from Bergen-Belsen.

However, with the approaching defeat of the National Socialist Germans in the war, the conditions in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp also deteriorated rapidly, particularly due to the dissolution of camps in the frontline areas and the associated evacuation transports of the prisoners there to the centre of the German Empire. The concentration camp was completely overcrowded and epidemic diseases spread. Mass deaths were the result. Shortly before the end of the war, the Schutzstaffel SS ("Protection Squadron") decided to evacuate the exchange camp and deport the Jewish hostage prisoners in three trains to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Renata and Paul were also on one of the trains. This train did not reach its intended destination, but was liberated by the Red Army near Tröbitz in what is now Brandenburg.

Renata's diary records all these events. However, some things, such as the deportation shortly before the end of the war, could only be written down from memory afterwards. The result is an impressive testimony that documents the will to survive of a remarkable woman. Framed by an introduction by Bernd Horstmann from the memorial's research and documentation department, Saskia talked to her Dutch literary agent Willem Bisseling about the significance of Renata's diary for her in the face of her father's speechlessness. Selected passages, which were read out by the editor herself, illustrate the circumstances under which Renata and Paul were imprisoned. Paul himself owed his life to Renata's will to survive and her organisational skills.

It is remarkable that Renata was still able to perceive beauty in detail through all this time - this probably also helped her to survive the horror. The event concluded with a passage from the diary: Renata and Paul were on the train to Theresienstadt, which came to a standstill several times on the odyssey through the bombed-out German Empire. This enabled Renata to ask for food in a village.

She described what she found:

"I stood there quite still in the strange garden in front of the house of the strange Germans. It was the first house I had seen in its spring finery for three years. I savoured the silence, the peace and the sensuality in deep breaths, no longer feeling hungry or tired. There were so many flowers.

A door opened downstairs. An old woman in a blue cotton dress with a black apron tied in front came outside with a bucket and a mop. She wanted to fetch water. She saw me standing by the pump under the white blossom of the pear tree. She looked at me, but wasn't frightened and came closer. I said "Good morning", apologised for intruding into someone else's garden and tried to explain to her why I had come. I realised straight away that this woman didn't understand or didn't want to understand my story about the train carrying more than 2,000 people from a concentration camp suffering from typhus, hunger and misery. However, something lit up in her eyes when I said: "My husband is dying." She only half listened and suddenly said: "Yes, what do you want? Tell me quickly. I want to give you something, but I don't want anyone to see it. These are from the Party. This gentleman here is in the Schutzstaffel SS. He's a Hauptsturmführer!" Could it have been worse? I was visiting the Schutzstaffel SS in person! I smiled to myself and said: "Potatoes. Bread. Anything you have."

She came with potatoes, which she quickly poured into my red and white towel. I knotted it together. "Here's another onion, but go now!" She was scared, scared to death, of her Hauptsturmführer. Afraid, a few days before the end. I wasn't afraid. I was happy. I thanked her and walked slowly back to the fence. There was the house with the bright flower curtain, the daffodils, red tulips and white flowering branches. In a moment, the Hauptsturmführer would be having breakfast downstairs in the large room with the glass doors. Bread and butter, coffee, jam. What did I care. He would be even worse off, and I had a meal, maybe even two. Potatoes with onions. Paul wouldn't die."