What is freedom?

Let’s focus for a change on what the BBC does best. Take, for instance, a short half-hour programme on Radio Four, buried in the schedules, mid-evening on a Monday, in which the German historian Rainer Schulz took us behind a bit of actualité to expose an otherwise unheard, unseen aspect. In Belsen after Belsen (produced by Mark Burman) we heard the story of the thousands of Jews who lived in the camp after its liberation from the Germans on 15 April 1945. All the former captives wanted was to start getting on with their lives again. But where could they go? So many died on liberation, as if they had thought so long of freedom that when it came they no longer believed they could attain it. Others recovered remarkably quickly from the physical ordeal of being in the concentration camp, regaining not just their weight but also their sense of who they were as individuals, not numbers tattooed on a withered wrist.