About this website

This website presents the lives and persecution experienced by four Jewish men and women who were born and raised in the Netherlands and survived the Holocaust as teenagers. They come from three different families. After the liberation, they each wrote down their stories in various forms. Three of them – Chanan, No’omi and Annelie – survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; Ab survived in hiding in the Netherlands. Many of their family members were murdered in the Holocaust.

This website is based on the survivors’ personal accounts, supplemented by introductory and accompanying texts, as well as documents, photos and videos. It was created in cooperation with the Bergen-Belsen Memorial/Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation and the Tal and Rinat families.  

The four narrators address different aspects of their lives in ten chapters: They describe the Netherlands before the Second World War, the abrupt changes brought about by the German invasion, and the antisemitic policies of exclusion introduced by the Nazis. In the later chapters, they tell of the arrest of their friends and relatives and their families’ efforts to escape persecution, which led them down different paths: for some, this meant going underground and living in hiding; for others, it was about trying to obtain lifesaving papers for emigration to Palestine. A special focus is on their imprisonment in the Westerbork transit camp and deportation to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which – told through the young people’s perspective – provides insight into the Nazi camp system. Their story of persecution ends with a final deportation shortly before liberation, the death of close relatives, their personal survival and return to the Netherlands. Their stories, however, continue from there: the final two chapters address their emigration to Israel and the lives they rebuilt there, as well as the efforts they made to commemorate the many relatives murdered in the Holocaust. Questions at the end connect themes raised on the website to current issues affecting society today.

The Bergen-Belsen Memorial and the Tal and Rinat families have created this website as a way to preserve the memory of the Holocaust while promoting education about Nazi crimes. At the same time, the site can serve as a resource for learning about the history of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It can be used by pupils of all ages and students preparing for or following up on a visit to the memorial.