Recalling the family seders of her childhood, Daniella Greenbaum recounts the story her grandmother would tell, year after year, about a Passover not easily forgotten:
In March of 1945, in Bergen-Belsen, [my grandmother] Masha, her sister Shoshana, their mother Yehudit, and several others sat down to conduct a seder—of sorts. Without food, wine, prayer books, or even a table, they did their best to remember the liturgy and engage in some sort of ritual normalcy.
Somehow they spoke of the bread of affliction that their ancestors ate, despite the fact that they too were afflicted and had no bread to eat. Somehow they proclaimed, “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” despite their own hunger and lack of food. Somehow they spoke of how Pharaoh embittered the lives of his Jewish slaves, though they too were Jewish slaves whose lives had been impossibly embittered. . . .
One day, they prayed, they would be able to sing of slavery in the past tense, and retell, as Jews are commanded to do, the story of the exodus. For the millions that perished at the hands of the Nazis, including Masha’s father, this dream would never become reality.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/200645/once-we-were-slaves-now-we-are-free-the-passover-seder-in-bergen-belsen-that-shaped-my-family