Starving at Bergen-Belsen alongside my mother, perhaps in the same barracks, was Hanna Levy-Hass, mother of Haaretz journalist Amira Hass. Hanna was one of the few people to keep a diary throughout her time at Bergen-Belsen, which survived and was later published.

In February 1945, she wrote: “Hunger crushes the spirit. I feel my physical and intellectual strength diminishing. Things escape me, I can’t think properly, can’t grasp events, can’t realize the full horror of the situation.

“Our hunger has only become fiercer,” the diary entry went on. “Our bodies have been demolished by it, we all drag ourselves around like rags; men literally drop to the ground from exhaustion and end up dying of hunger, simple as that.”

Eighty years later, in a dispatch this week from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, +972 Magazine journalist Ruwaida Amer wrote, “For about a month now, though, I’ve lost the ability to follow the news. My focus is slipping. My body is breaking down.”