OPINION: Finding hope in a new generation

In 1945, Richard Dimbleby entered the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen camp. He vividly described the horrors he witnessed.

“I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of a nightmare.…Dead bodies, some of them in decay lay strewn about the road. And along the rutted tracks on each side of the road were brown wooden huts. There were faces at the windows. The bony emaciated faces of starving women too weak to come outside – propping themselves against the glass to see the daylight before they died…I’ve seen many terrible sights in the last five years but nothing, nothing approaching the dreadful interior of this hut at Belsen.”

While he was recording his historic report, a group of female prisoners approached him, asking to be recorded. They wanted their voices to be heard. What ended up being broadcast is one of the most painful, beautiful and sorrowful recordings ever made.

What those women, who had endured years of Nazi brutality, wanted the world to hear, was the sound of them singing the Hatikvah. The Hope. The song that embodied their dreams of freedom. The song that sustained them during the long years of Nazi oppression, that embodied their dreams of living to see the day of their liberation and reaching a place that they could forever call home.

The song that went on to be the national anthem for the State of Israel.

Three years later, Lily Ebert stood on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv hearing the Declaration of Independence. Lily, her brother and two of her sisters had survived the camps, but among the victims of the gas chambers were her little brother, her sister, and her mother.

76 years on, Lily still remembers that day. She describes how people flooded the streets to celebrate, their dream had been made real. She recalled “Suddenly after all our trials, after everything our people had suffered for centuries, we … had returned home to a place that belonged to us. A place where we belonged … I couldn’t have felt happier that day, our country had been reborn.”

And yet earlier this year, Lily, who was so full of hope in 1948, explained how heartbroken she was by the huge rise in antisemitism. In Britain, in 2024, that hope that the survivors have always managed to maintain has been shaken. The Hatikvah has now become the anthem of a nation disgracefully accused of being Nazis.

On social media, antisemitism runs rampant, day after day. On the streets Jewish people have been attacked.

There have been those who outrageously claim that Hitler was right, or disgustingly claim that everything Lily experienced, everything that happened to 6 million Jews, never happened. Others have even turned the Holocaust into a weapon, using it against the Jewish people.

But despite all that has happened over the last 11 months, I know that Lily and the other survivors we work with have found optimism once again.

It comes from the thousands of young people who having stood at the place where Lily and her mother were separated, Auschwitz-Birkenau, have returned dedicated to protecting the legacy of the past. These students, who are mostly non-Jewish, have learnt where hatred can lead, they have seen for themselves where unchecked antisemitism can lead. They have returned determined to share the stories of the past, but also to be an advocate in the present, challenging antisemitism and combatting hate with truth.

It comes from the teachers who are ensuring that not a single student will leave school without understanding the Holocaust and that they will know that the Holocaust happened because of antisemitism. They are guiding their students through the complexities of the past and the sensitivities of today, creating a generation who are sensitised to the antisemitism they see in the world around them.

And it comes from those brave few young people who have heard the stories of Holocaust survivors and have chosen to put their head above the parapet. As social media becomes ever more toxic, as antisemitism spreads ever more virulently on online spaces, there are people who are choosing to take a stand.

As we get closer and closer to the first anniversary of October 7th, as we mourn the hostages murdered by Hamas and pray for the safe return of those still held hostage in Gaza, and as we find the strength to move forward in our grief, those women at Bergen-Belsen remind us that whatever happens, we have to find the hope.

• Karen Pollock, chief executive, The Holocaust Educational Trust