Ceremony marks 70th anniversary of liberation of concentration camp in northern Germany where more than 70,000 people died, including Anne Frank



Holocaust survivors and government officials have gathered at the memorial site of the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany, in a solemn ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the camp 70 years ago.

The concentration camp was liberated on 15 April 1945 by British soldiers who found more than 10,000 dead bodies when they entered it.

On Sunday, Joachim Gauck, the German president, thanked British soldiers for the liberation and honoured them as “ambassadors of a democratic culture who were not looking for revenge”.

Around 200,000 people were deported to Bergen-Belsen during the Nazi reign of terror. More than 70,000 people died there, including teenage diarist Anne Frank.

During his speech, Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, said: “Right now, we stand on one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world. But there are no gravestones, there are no markers. The victims buried here lost not just their lives; the Nazis took their identities as well.”

Ceremonies have been held across Germany and Poland throughout the spring, marking the advance of allied troops as Nazi Germany neared defeat. They are even more poignant this year because of the dwindling number of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust.

Lauder warned his listeners at the ceremony in Bergen-Belsen that antisemitism is on the rise again in Europe, 70 years after the end of the Holocaust. He said: “Today, 70 years after this camp was liberated, we hear the same antisemitic lies. Today, a Jewish boy wearing a yarmulke cannot walk down the street in Paris or London or Copenhagen without fearing for his life.”

Commemorations were also held at the former Flossenbürg camp in southern Germany, where some 30,000 people died between 1938 and 1945. Flossenbürg was liberated by American soldiers on 23 April 1945.