TEARS OF JOY MONSTER AMONG HORROR
walking around with white bits around their arms. They hoped to surrender and survive. There was no food or water.
“I found a hut and was so exhausted I fell asleep among the dead and the living. My mum was on a stretcher. She was barely alive.
“I had given up hope of us surviving. Then one day someone pointed in the distance and told me there was a British tank. It didn’t register. “Soon after I fell unconscious.” When British and Canadian forces entered the camp, they could scarcely believe their eyes.
At least 13,000 corpses were waiting to be buried and there were outbreaks of typhus and dysentery.
The first broadcaster to witness the horror was Richard Dimbleby – father of ex-question Time presenter David – who said: “I find it hard to describe adequately the horrible things I have seen and heard.”
At first Renee felt angry at the British Army rations they were given.
HOPE
“All we got was a quarter piece of bread and some stewed apples. We didn’t understand they were trying to keep us alive,” she said.
“Our stomachs had shrunk and we couldn’t digest food. If we had eaten a lot we would have died. They had to increase the food gradually.”
Then just as Renee began to hope for a future, her 42-year-old mum died just 12 days after the liberation.
Alone in the post-war world, she went to live with an aunt in Germany before they moved to Paris. It was here her story took its remarkable turn. In 1949, at 19, she was introduced to a handsome British fellow Jew by mutual friends. It was Charles. Demobbed in 1946, he had been shot in the leg in Holland before being sent to Belsen. Renee recalls their instant rapport as a bond beyond words.
Just 48 hours after they met, smitten Charles, then 31, asked her if she would accompany him back to London.
“He was a gentleman – a lovely man. I had had very little family life, so when he asked me I said yes.” They stayed with his relatives and she got a job sewing in a factory – a skill she learned mending clothes during her time in the ghetto. They were married in September 1949 and had a son and a daughter.
And the couple tried to bury their shared trauma. Renee said: “If the Holocaust was mentioned, Charles would have tears in his eyes. We didn’t talk about it.” After they settled in Hendon, Renee began working with the Holocaust Educational Trust. It helped her cope with a past that still haunted her.
“I had regular nightmares and even daydreamed about it,” said Renee, who now has five grandchildren.
“Then the Trust asked me to talk in schools – and when I did, the nightmares stopped.” At 90, she still gives talks and in 2011 she recorded her memories so they will be heard long after her death.
“As each year passes, I have less and less friends from the Holocaust,” said Renee who reckons only a few hundred survivors are left in the UK.
And on the 75th anniversary of Bergen-belsen’s liberation, she urges people to visit the camp, now a memorial.
“Perhaps it would make them less greedy and learn to live in peace with one another,” she said.
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Bodies were everywhere, and walking skeletons with their eyes bulging RENEE SALT ON HER ARRIVAL AT DEATH CAMP