This Canadian soldier helped liberate Bergen-Belsen—80 years ago today

Eighty years ago, on April 15, 1945, the notorious Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen, in Germany, was liberated by Allied troops. To their horror, British artillery crews discovered about 60,000 starving and deathly ill survivors, as well as 10,000 corpses lying, unburied, on the ground.

It was a sight and smell that the late Jack Marcovitch never forgot. The Ottawa veteran had only turned 22 when he arrived there as an army private in the closing weeks of the Second World War. His family believes he played a role in one the war's most iconic scenes: the arrest of Bergen-Belsen's commandant, Josef Kramer, notoriously dubbed "The Beast of Belsen".

Marcovitch rarely spoke about his experiences at Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank had died of typhus just a few months earlier. Now, on the milestone anniversary of the camp's liberation, Marcovitch's daughters—Linda Eisenberg and Gloria Borts—join The CJN Daily to share what their father brought home with him and how the trauma marked him for life.

Related links

• Watch Jack Marcovitch at Bergen Belsen on an old CBC interview.
• Learn about some of the Canadians who survived Bergen-Belsen including the late Cantor Moshe Kraus of Ottawa,
• Learn about some of the Canadian soldiers who helped the survivors of Bergen-Belsen, on the Veterans Affairs Canada website, as well as about Bernie Delson, and Sol Goldberg.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Andrea Varsany (producer),Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Marc Weisblott (editorial director)
• Music: Dov Beck-Levine

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