During World War II, millions of Jews were exterminated in death camps and died in inhumane conditions. Arieh Koretz was a boy back then. He wrote a diary during those days, documenting the horrors at the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. It wasn’t until 1992 that he decided to publish his diary.

He writes…

[Arieh Koretz, Holocaust Survivor]:

“The hunger in the camp is worsening... It is hard to describe what happens when one of the prisoners dies or is still dying, those standing around him or sitting beside him jump on him like hungry wolfs. They strip his clothes and search his belongings for food or valuables.”

Surviving the camps was extremely difficult—only the strongest made it through.

[Arieh Koretz, Holocaust Survivor]:

"At night, heart-wrenching yelling and screaming is heard all around the camp. Those who are weak, dying or ill are being destroyed for their property… And then I saw the bodies, signs of cannibalism, it is an image I will never forget.”

On April 9th, 1945, five days before Bergen Belsen was liberated, Arieh Koretz was loaded on one of three trains—the last one to leave the camp. But the train got lost. For two weeks, the train traveled, met with difficult conditions… until it stopped at a bridge that was destroyed, just outside the town of Trobitz, Germany.

[Arieh Koretz, Holocaust Survivor]:

“There was a group of people taking the dead and burying them in a mass grave.”

The train passengers took notes, writing down the details of those who died. One of them was the late Dr. Schweizer.

[Arieh Koretz, Holocaust Survivor]:

“In his little booklet, he wrote the names of those people, where they were born, and the date of death. He also wrote by which milestone they were buried. This list and other lists are now held in the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem.”

In the village of Trobitz, the group of people from the train were later found by Russia’s Red Army. In 1995, the survivors of the last train to leave Bergen Belsen, which received the name "the Lost Train," returned to build a memorial in Trobitz.  They commemorated the names of the 545 prisoners who had perished on the way and in the village.

More than 52 million people worldwide died in the war.

 Photographer: Michael Ash

NTD, Israel.