On the 15th April 1945, British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. On Tuesday, eighty years to the day, we remember the tens of thousands of Jewish lives and others who were murdered there at the hands of Nazi brutality and pay tribute to the British soldiers who brought liberation and sacrificially gave of themselves to help those who survived.
When British forces entered Bergen-Belsen, around 13,000 corpses lay unburied around the camp and 60,000 were found starving and seriously ill without food and water, suffering from diseases such as typhus, dysentery and starvation. After evacuation, British soldiers burned the camp to the ground to stop the spread of disease.
Initially a prisoner of war camp, Belsen became a camp for Jews with foreign passports held as possible ‘leverage’ in exchange for German prisoners in Allied countries, but it then became a concentration camp for survivors of the death marches, including Anne Frank and her sister Margot. When it became too overcrowded, the Germans deprived their victims and conditions deteriorated even further. British soldiers were faced with the unimaginable – having to first bury the dead and bring relief to the suffering and dying survivors. But efforts to help the sick were incredibly challenging. Nearly 14,000 prisoners died after liberation. For the duration of Bergen-Belsen’s existence, over 50,000, mostly Jews, died.
Witnessing this harrowing sight was the BBC’s distinguished war correspondent Richard Dimbleby who was the first journalist to enter the camp on a day he would describe as “the most horrible of my life”.
BBC bosses back in London refused to believe Dimbleby’s devastating report and would not broadcast it. Only after he threatened to resign did the BBC relent. Today we remain indebted to the veteran reporter for his integrity and principled stand in ensuring his report was released, exposing to the public the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jewish people.
Ian Forsyth, 96, from Scotland, was just 21-years-old when he arrived at the gates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as part of the 11th Armoured Division in 1945.
With tears in his eyes, the war veteran told a 2020 documentary, Return to Belsen, “We gazed at them and they looked at us. And we couldn’t resist throwing something over. And that of course was the worst thing that we could have done. We didn’t know it at the time, but I regret it now. Because I know that anything that we threw over the person who eat it would die.”
“It haunts me, I can’t get rid of it… how an earth can mankind sink to this low?’ the veteran continued, “[Belsen] haunts me because I don’t want my sons and grandsons and great-grandsons to go through that terrible time that we had to go through. I would do anything to prevent that. I can wake up in the middle of the night and think about it, I can’t get rid of it.”
The eye-witness accounts like that of Ian and many others must never be forgotten. Their fight against the evil of Nazi Germany and their fight to save the lives of thousands must also be remembered with gratitude. Despite their regret that more were not saved, the experiences of those British soldiers and medical teams must not be erased from history.
The majority of those who survived Bergen-Belsen made Israel and the UK their home. Today we stand with our Jewish friends and declare, “Never again”.
At CUFI we truly do mean, “Never-again”. We are committed to do our part, however small, in remembering the millions of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust, including the tens of thousands at Bergen-Belsen. This is why we have recently launched Voices of the Holocaust, a dedicated resource to enable small groups to hold an experience to remember the Holocaust. The material, produced by CUFI UK, uses powerful first-hand accounts to help remember the victims and learn from the atrocities.
