From Bergen-Belsen to Jerusalem

The lecture by Professor Fackenheim, here published, was delivered in Jerusalem in July 1970, at a memorable meeting of the late President Shazar's Study Circle on Diaspora Jewry. The lecture and the discussion which followed it, grew out of a pilgrimage to Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi death camps – a pilgrimage organized by the World Union of Bergen-Belsen Survivors to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the camps. Though some years have passed since that final evening of the Bergen-Belsen pilgrimage, Professor Fackenheim's lecture remains one the classic pronouncements on the relation of the Holocaust to contemporary Jewish history and life.