Bergen-Belsen Liberation

Two days after entering the Belsen Horror Camp, this photograph was taken of a man, reduced by starvation to a living skeleton, delousing his camp clothing.

The first Allies to reach the typhus and dysentery infested concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen was a two-man reconnaissance patrol of a Special Air Service officer, Lt Randall, and his Jeep driver, Cpl Brown. Later, troops of the British 11th Armoured Division/VIII Corps found thousands of unburied bodies and tens of thousands of severely ill prisoners among the 53,000 prisoners. A total of 52,000 prisoners from all over Europe were killed in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp or died immediately after its liberation as a result of their imprisonment.

In April and May, more than 20,000 victims of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were buried in mass graves. Survivors were transferred from the camp to an emergency hospital set up by the British in the nearby Wehrmacht barracks. The survivors were given the status of displaced persons (DPs). To prevent the spread of disease, the British burned down most the wooden huts in the grounds of the former concentration camp.

In September, the commandant, SS Hauptsturmführer Joseph Kramer, the female commandant SS Helferin Irma Grese and camp guards were put on trial for murder before a British military tribunal in Lüneburg. Kramer, Grese, two female and seven male guards were sentenced to death and executed by the British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, on 13 December 1945.

To view scenes from the trial, please click on the Belsen War Trial and then click on your back browser to return to the VMG.