Duncan Kennedy
BBC News in Bergen Belsen
AFP
Tens of thousands, most of the Jews, died in Belsen, North Germany.
There were rumors. There was an aerial photograph. There were several written testimonies of escape. But it was released by the shocking real revelation of the Nazi concentration camps.
[ThiswasnotastrueasinApril1945whenBritishandCanadiantroopsadvancedintheBergen-BelsencampnearHanover[1945年4月にハノーバー近くのベルゲン・ベルセンのキャンプでイギリス軍とカナダ軍が進んだときほど、これは真実ではありませんでした。
A ceasefire with the local German commander allowed them to enter without a fight. They met a thrilling view of death, a fierce panorama of human suffering.
The military calculated that there were 13,000 burial bodies. Another 60,000 weak, sick, spectral-like survivors stood and lay among them.
On Sunday, more than 1,000 survivors and families will be attending a commemorative event at the camp to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Belsen’s liberation.
“For me, Belsen was the ultimate asp,” wrote British soldier Michael Benthine.
Other chroniclers, filmmakers, and Dearist had a hard time conveying scenes that made an unwanted invasion into their minds, with words and photos.
BBC’s Richard Dimblebee was the first station to enter camp shortly after its release. His groundbreaking broadcast included the words, “This day at Belsen was the most frightening thing of my life.”
Belsen’s infamy quickly stood out. This is because not only the cold, vivid descriptions of journalists, soldiers and photographers, but their testimony has been sent all over the world, but all of its grotesque was discovered intact.
Other camps to the east, like the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz, were destroyed by the Germans or empty prisoners in order to hide crime in the face of Soviet advancements.
In Belsen, there were sheds, barracks and evidence.
Belsen had witnesses, assailants and victims.
It was where many of those Eastern concentration camp prisoners had finished. Overcrowding led to dysentery, malnutrition and typhoid.
Belsen did not have a gas chamber. It was Nazi abuse and incompetent that explained the 500 deaths a day that the camp endured.
And most of them came in the final week of the war until April 1945.
Focke Strangmann/AFP
Among those who died in the final week of the war were Dutch teenager Anne Frank and her sister Margot
Dying continued in Belsen as the Third Reich collapsed and freedom came to the people of other occupied areas.
Approximately 14,000 prisoners died after their release. Their digestive system was unable to cope with good, rich, rich nutrition.
The majority were Jews, with Soviet prisoners, sinti and gay people among other groups engulfed in the horrors of camp.
Check out iPlayer: Belsen: What They Find – Directed by Sam Mendes
Among the survivors and relatives attending the event on Sunday are 180 British Jews. Their journey is organized by the Jewish Army Association AJEX.
The wreath is born by senior officials including Ajex veterans and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
The Psalms are read by the British Chihulabier Fraim Milbis.
They will do so in the lush Saxony environment below the surveillance towers, fences and buildings are gone.
This is because, ultimately, British soldiers decided that they had to burn the sheds in Belsen to control the illness.
And there is little left today. The visitor centre is a focal point near where a handful of memorial stones and crosses were built.
One inscription reads Ruhen 5,000 Toten Hier.
It is one of the graves and one of the memories that plagues the grass scenery.
