“There is a sky, and there is a heaven. The sky is a matter of height. Heaven is a matter of depth.”
-Shimon Peres
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Bergen-Belsen
March 1944
Joachim Joseph was nine years old when the Germans invaded the Netherlands. He remembered his father looking out the window at the columns of Nazi armor outside their home. His father was crying.
They were sent to the death camp at Bergen-Belsen. Joseph was separated from his brother and his parents, each assigned to a different barrack. The poorly-constructed wooden buildings were dank and filthy. Alone and hungry, Joseph lay on the straw mattress, curled in a fetal position as if trying to squeeze warmth out of his thin prison garb.
“Hello, young man.”
Joseph looked up and saw the gaunt, bearded and bespectacled face of Rabbi Simon Dasberg.
