Belsen in the hour of liberation
C/- 168 Military Government Detachment
British Liberation Army
Belsen
16th July 1945
The SMO and I anticipated that we would be taking over the hospital from the British Army authorities very soon after our arrival. Now we find that no arrangements for the early arrival of our medical and nursing staff seem to have been made by the UNRRA HQ in the British Zone. Nor is there any accommodation available here for the number we shall require to replace the present army staff. We have not even a room in which to work when at the hospital. The British CO and Matron have put their offices at our disposal and are doing all they can for us, but it is disgusting to think that, first we had the unnecessary delay in departure from London and now we cannot even tell them when we will be able to take charge. Although our time is already fully occupied with preliminary arrangements, it is all rather embarrassing and a reflection on the Administration.
In the meantime I shall try to tell you what I have gathered of the liberation of Belsen concentration camp by the British, from Dr Davis and from personnel who were working here at the time, from patients, Army Authorities and official documents.
The Battle of Minden had been won. Allied soldiers were deployed in the surrounding districts. Decisive battles of the war were being fought all round the Belsen area, when on 12th April 1945 two members of the Wehrmacht approached the advancing British with a white flag. They stated that in the neighbouring country there was a camp where Allied prisoners had been without food for six days and that they, the guards, were unable to get any supplies or water—actually it was later revealed that the prisoners had been deliberately starved for a considerable time and kept without food and water during the last week.
The Chief of Staff of the First German Para Army approached the Brigadier General Staff of the British 8th Corps. He explained that typhus was raging in the camp and invited the British to take it over to prevent the epidemic spreading over Europe. He asked that a special three-day truce be arranged. This was agreed to.
On 13th April the terms of the special truce were drawn up. The British agreed to take over the camp (which was to be handed over intact), including all official records of the inmates. The German SS were to remain and the Hungarian regiment of about four thousand men, which had been brought in by the Germans before liberation to reinforce the SS, were to remain also and be used by the British as they wished.
As bitter fighting was going on all round, few British Army Medical and Nursing personnel could be released before the capitulation of Germany, but an SOS was sent to British HQ for assistance. Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes, Deputy Director of Medical Services, 2nd Army, is believed to have been the first to arrive in the camp.
The infamous Belsen Concentration Camp was liberated by a British Unit (about 240 men), an anti-tank battery of the 63rd anti-tank regiment, which arrived on 15th April. This unit brought some glimmer of hope and life to those who had despaired of ever being free again.
A loud speaker was taken into the camp and a British intelligence corps officer, Captain Derek A. Sington, announced that the British were taking over. I believe that in the women’s camp the sound of weeping and hysterical laughter was so loud that this announcement was almost inaudible.
The same afternoon the British brought in twenty-seven water carts, and food for all, for the evening meal was provided. It is said that the psychological effect of this was amazing, although there were thousands who unfortunately were too ill to benefit.
The Royal Army Medical Corps under the command of Lt Colonel]. A. D. Johnstone, Officer commanding the 32nd British Casualty Clearing Station (and later SMO of Belsen Camp), the 11th Light Field Ambulance and two Hygiene Sections began work on 17th April. With the Casualty Clearing Station were eight Sisters of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service—the first women to arrive at the camp.
Lt Col Mather with the 113th Light Anti-tank Regiment, HQ 10 Garrison and 224 Military Government Detachment entered the camp on 18th April. The first British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance teams, with four Sisters, arrived on 21st April and from that date a steady flood of reinforcements from British and international voluntary organisations into the camp began.
Fauna Campbell, who you will remember was previously on the staff of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, and who served with the QAIMNS(R) during World War II, arrived at Belsen with the advance party of the 9th British General Hospital on Sunday 29th April. The American Field Service, a voluntary body attached to the British Army, transported this group from Holland to Belsen and remained some weeks assisting with the evacuation of the Horror Camp. The remainder of the 9th BG Hospital, arrived on 3rd May. The unit at first assisted the 32nd CCS and on 7th May opened their own hospital in another portion of the barracks, where they had beds for 4000 patients.
Imagine a desolate clearing in the forest, entirely cut off from the outside world, about three miles from the little insignificant village of Bergen-Belsen and eighteen miles from the nearest town. There are about one hundred ramshackle wooden huts on either side of the main pathway, and administrative buildings one end and the crematorium and graves at the other. There are also five cook-houses and masses of barbed wire everywhere. This will give you some idea of the site of Belsen Concentration Camp No. 1.
The camp, under the Germans, actually consisted of two sections—Camp No. 1, the Horror Camp, situated in a small clearing in the forest, which on liberation contained approximately 40 000 desperately ill and starving men, women and children. A section of the huge modern German Panzer Training Barracks, or lager, less than one mile away had been recently taken over by the Germans for an overflow of some 16 000 men and was known as Camp No. 2. These men had been driven from other concentration camps in Europe by forced marches and had only been there a few weeks. They were free from typhus, although suffering from starvation.
Between the two camps, hundreds of men, women and children destined for Camp No. 1, but for whom there was no room, had been forced to live in the open, under the trees, with insufficient food and water and no shelter or warmth. All were closely guarded by the ruthless SS men and women, who shot them if they attempted to escape.
The actual area in which the 40 000 prisoners were confined in Camp No. 1 was approximately eight miles long by four miles wide, enclosed by heavy barbed wire fences (possibly electrified). This area included a large section for the German administration blocks and another for the crematorium and accessories.
I am enclosing a plan which I copied hurriedly from one drawn by the British officials and which was lent to me for this purpose. You will see there are fourteen observation towers, whose powerful searchlights pierced the intense darkness of the camp at night. [See page 41.]
The huts, each about 30 X 10 yards with no furnishings whatsoever and built to hold from thirty to fifty persons, are stated at one time to have held up to 1000 and contained anything up to 600 when the British came. The inmates were virtually imprisoned within them, for those who dared to emerge in search of food or water were all most certainly shot by the SS guards or the Hungarians.
On the day on which Joseph Kramer, the SS Commandant of Belsen, was being interviewed by the British Military officials, I believe the SS guards were actually shooting starving prisoners who were trying to take some raw potatoes from the cook-house. Kramer made no attempt to stop his men until he was told that one SS man would be shot for every internee shot. Even then the Germans made no attempt to help the wounded and dying.
By the way, we hear that Kramer and those of his henchmen who survived are now in a nearby prison awaiting their trial, and we are told that the Wehrmacht stoned him when he was being transported to the aerodrome to his trial. One SS man hanged himself and several others committed suicide by trying to escape. Those who attempted to escape were shot by our men, as they knew they would be, but evidently preferred this to burying the dead, which was the task allotted to them by the British.
Within a stone’s throw of the unutterable squalor and filth of the concentration camp where the unfortunate victims of the Nazi regime were imprisoned were the magnificent quarters provided for units of the German Army. These Panzer barracks, situated in lovely surroundings, cover an area in the forest of about three to four miles. A heavy barbed wire topped fence encloses this area with four entrances, to the North, South, East and West, complete with guard rooms and sentry boxes. The roads inside are in fair order and lined on either side with lawns, trees and shrubs. There are over one hundred large two-storeyed stucco concrete blocks of buildings with cellars and attics, each built to accommodate 150—200 German Army men. All are fitted with sewerage systems and heating stoves. In addition to the buildings used for living accommodation are the HQ and other administrative buildings, quartermasters and ordnance stores, workshops, canteens, cook-houses, lecture halls and libraries. Near the centre of this camp is a modern concrete cinema and concert hall, complete with upholstered seats and private boxes which no doubt were reserved for the upper crust of the Nazi regime. Further away is a very large tented air-conditioned theatre, built with metal supports rather like a giant meccano. It would probably accommodate three or four thousand or more. Stables and parks for cars, bicycles, heavy military vehicles and tanks are plentiful. There was also a large shimmering blue swimming pool and modern tiles, steam-heated bath and shower rooms, providing the essence of comfort for the German Wehrmacht.
Groups of four and five buildings are arranged round a concrete square or parade ground where many goose-stepping, heel clicking, Heil Hitler demonstrations probably took place. The whole barracks area is now divided for convenience into Camps 2, 3 and 4. The palatial circular German Officers Club—called by the British the Round House—with its magnificent ball-room, banqueting hall, solarium and ante-rooms, crystal chandeliers, parquet floors, and swimming pool stands in a lovely secluded wooded area of these vast barracks. On the lower ground floor are vast kitchens fitted with the latest stainless-steel labour saving equipment, capable of catering for very large numbers.
On liberation the barrack store-rooms contained enormous supplies of food, including 600 tons of potatoes, 120 tons of tinned meat, and large quantities of flour and medical supplies, etc. The camp bakery had a daily capacity of 60 000 loaves. There is also a large steam laundry in the vicinity.
A rustic bridge crosses a lake on which one white swan reigns supreme. Nearby among the trees is an attractive half-timbered house, now used by the British as a Military Officers’ mess. It is well furnished and fitted with every convenience, including a large refrigerator in the basement. It was in this refrigerator that Kramer, the Beast of Belsen, is said to have been locked when captured and awaiting removal to prison! In a lovely spot nearby, among oaks, elms, maples and beeches, is the large square white residence of the Commandant of the Panzer training school, who is now in prison also, although his wife is still said to be living there.
Outside the main gates of Camp 3, and in the surrounding area, are numbers of solidly built two-storeyed blocks of flats, probably used by the German Army as married quarters for their personnel. Overgrown vegetable gardens and orchards surround many. Double windows, with outside thermometers attached, cumbersome bath heaters, modern electric stoves and a variety of heavy furniture, cooking utensils and delicate china and glassware are indicative of very comfortable quarters.
Prosperous German farms with fat cattle, horses, pigs, geese, ducks, hens and rich crops abound in this area. I should say the standard of nutrition among the Germans around here, especially the children, was quite high.
About half a mile outside the barracks area in a spruce forest is a large, 250-bed modern brick Lazaret—the German Military Hospital serving the Panzer Training School and now known as the Glyn Hughes Hospital. In this area there are five main blocks with wings branching off, surrounding a central lawn and gardens. The wards are built to accommodate from one to fourteen persons. The fittings are modern, with wide corridors, very wide, and utility rooms which are plentiful and convenient. All the wards are equipped with modern hospital bedsteads and good mattresses.
A number of the ground-floor wards open onto verandahs and a terrace facing the sports ground, as well as onto the front lawn. Attractive shrubs grow closely round the outside walls. Beneath the clock tower, carved in stone, is a huge swastika surmounted by a German eagle, the symbol of the Nazi Party.
A modern operating theatre, with spacious sterilising, anaesthetic and utility rooms, is situated at one end of the administrative block. There are well-equipped kitchens, store-rooms, mattress disinfectors, post-mortem rooms, and garages. A continuous underground cellar—probably used as an air-raid shelter for the Panzer staff-extends practically the whole length of the buildings and the attics are spacious, though unlined. The hospital is fitted with steam-heating apparatus and provided with double-glazed windows.
Rough plan of Glyn Hughes Hospital, Belsen, 1945
The Officers’ wing is particularly well furnished, with attractive figured-linen window curtains, heavy plush arm chairs, and an extraordinary number of scarlet—and-green painted wooden flowerpot stands of various designs. The German army certainly surrounded itself with every comfort in this barracks!
Sketch map of the Bergen-Belsen area, 1945
Sketch map of the Belsen Concentration Camp, 1945
Belsen
July 1945
My letters are terribly patchy for they are written at odd intervals in the early morn or well into the night and often by candlelight. I have been told that neither words nor photographs could ever describe the scene which the British found when they entered Camp 1. I have talked with some of the Army, British Red Cross, St John’s Ambulance and other personnel who were here in the early days of liberation. They have told me that although it was known that a terrible calamity had occurred and that a typhus epidemic was raging, not one of them imagined that it would be possible to find a scene so horrible in these civilised times. Filth, stench, decomposition and frightfulness abounded—the very air was polluted. The terrible smell was wafted to the approaching troops four miles away down the road, and to the RAF flying overhead. It permeated everything. Forty thousand starving humans, in the most awful state of emaciation and neglect and suffering from practically every known disease, were huddled together, dying in thousands daily. Many were naked, all were verminous. Ten thousand naked unburied dead, some of whom had been decomposing for three weeks, lay in gruesome piles throughout the camp. Thousands were too ill to move and lay where they fell. Numbness and despair enveloped all.
There were five main compounds in this camp—three for men and two for women—divided by barbed wire and containing 28 000 women and 12 000 men. In the larger enclosure for women there were 500 children and only 50 yards away piles 6f naked dead. The huts were so crowded that the inmates were often unable to lie down and were obliged to sit up round the walls. Countless numbers were without even this shelter. Masses of dead remained where they fell or were pushed under the floorboards to make room for the living—who were beyond caring. Each of the two—and three—tiered wooden bunks held five or six living sick mingled with corpses, which owing to weakness and despair, the living were unable to remove; other sick lay naked on the polluted floor or were wrapped in rags foul with excreta and lice. The Nazis had done practically nothing for the sick for months, and several of the huts which were so-called hospitals were even without bunks. Conditions were worse in the men’s than the women’s hospitals, although they had more bunks.
Typhus cases were not separated from others. Women opened abscesses with their sharpened fingernails. There were no organised treatment rooms in the camp, just neglect, callousness and cruelty. Latrines were practically non-existent. There were only a few unscreened pits with a pole across. There were no facilities in the huts for washing. Diarrhoea was rampant. Those lying in the lower bunks had no protection from the excreta dripping from above. On the floors the excrement was six inches deep, mixed with rubbish and rags. The walls were heavily contaminated also. You may shudder at these descriptions—perhaps you will say it is sordid and unnecessary. Read on, my friends! The world should know what suffering and degradation this New Order in Europe brought to millions, lest it be quickly forgotten and rise again in yet another guise. It concerns us all—we must not forget—whether you can forgive, you only must decide.
These wretched people had received no supplies of food or drinking water for about six or seven days prior to liberation, after a long period of deliberate and slow starvation. Their ration depended on the whim of the guards. When issued, it consisted of about half a litre of watery swede soup per day and a small portion of a loaf of dark, sour, very hard bread. No food at all was issued during the last week. Is it any wonder that there was evidence of human flesh being eaten by humans?
The lack of water at the time of liberation resulted from an act of sabotage carried out by the Germans during the truce which they requested before handing over the camp. Four German planes bombed and machine-gunned the British Ambulances, the water supply and electricity system of the camp. A pump in the camp was found surrounded by 300–400 bodies, piled up where the thirsty had fallen in a vain attempt to obtain water.
Their end was hastened by the rifle butts and lashings of the SS guards and the sniping of the Hungarian troops. The only drinking water these wretched people had at this time was scooped out of filthy pools, foul and thick with decomposing human flesh and excrement. Conditions had deteriorated in the camp during the last three months. At this time the Germans brought to Belsen a train load of Hungarian prisoners whom they knew were suffering from typhus. I believe, since then, six epidemics had spread through the camp. The numbers who died will never be known. In spite of the agreement with the British liberators, all camp records were destroyed by the SS during the truce. Thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands died there and their relatives will never know their fate. Many of those who were dying when the British came were too ill to even remember their names and so forever remain unnamed and unknown, but not forgotten.
In spite of the fact that it is said the Panzer troops were forbidden to visit the SS guards at Camp No. 1 and vice versa, one finds it difficult to believe that the horrors which existed in that camp were unknown to those living in the neighbourhood.
I was puzzled, when I saw the patients for the first time, that there was not more evidence of vitamin deficiency. It was therefore interesting to read that Dr Meiklejohn, a member of the Rockefeller Foundation Health Commission who was called in to advise on the nutrition problems of the camp, considered that although three-quarters of the inmates were in a state of marked emaciation (as photographs show) and suffering from protein deficiency, the vitamin deficiency diseases were extremely rare. (I do not know what scientific reason has been given for this.) Among the survivors there was apparently little or no evidence of Vitamin A deficiency or scurvy, but Vitamin B deficiency was seen.
