Heads up: this isn't an overly cheery post.

This last Friday (May 22), one of our free days, we trained to Celle, caught a couple of busses, and visited the concentration and POW camp at Bergen-Belsen (more info). Some 70,000 people, most of whom were Jews, died at this camp between 1941 and 1945, perhaps the most well-known of whom were Anne Frank and her sister Margot. There are no original structures standing at this camp. They had to be burned because they were disease ridden (e.g., many there died of typhus). What remains are the large mass graves with signs telling how many bodies are buried in them—where counts were recorded or researchers could get a count. The first one I saw was this one:

The marker reads, "Here rests 5000 dead."

This is just one of many of these mass graves. I saw one numbered 2500 and another 1000. Then, where the crematory once stood, the sign read, "Here rests an unknown number of dead." The scene was at once horrifying and sobering.

Anne and Margot Frank are buried in one of these mass graves (Anne was 15 when she died in this camp). No one really knows which one(s). But here is a memorial marker with their names on it (below). There are many of these kinds of memorial markers for others, placed here by their families.

At one end of the camp stands the main memorial monument.

While we were there, my son asked, "Why did we have to come here? This isn't a fun place." My answer, "You're right. It's not fun at all, but we need to visit places like this so that we'll be moved to never let anything like this ever happen again."

Rom. 12:21 — μὴ νικῶ ὑπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ ἀλλὰ νίκα ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ τὸ κακόν

1 Thess. 5:22 — ἀπὸ παντὸς εἴδους πονηροῦ ἀπέχεσθε