Yesterday

Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft embodied the Jewish essence of the Holocaust in both its tragic and heroic dimensions. She experienced the full brunt of its horrors when her entire family was murdered by the Germans. Despite being subjected to tremendous physical suffering, she dedicated herself to helping her fellow concentration camp inmates, first at Auschwitz-Birkenau and then at Bergen-Belsen, and she is credited with having saved hundreds of lives in both camps. Immediately upon her liberation at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, she worked alongside the British Army medical personnel in a desperate effort to save the lives of thousands of critically ill survivors. In September 1945, she was one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution at the first trial of Nazi war criminals. From 1945 until 1950, she was one of the leaders of the Jewish Displaced Persons in Germany and subsequently remained at the forefront of the survivors’ efforts to perpetuate the memory of the annihilation of European Jewry. Between 1978 and 1994, she played a key role in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.