Remembering Belsen Eyewitnesses Record the Liberation

by Flanagan, Ben; Reilly, Jo; Bloxham, Donald

• ISBN13: 9780853036043
• ISBN10: 0853036047
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-01
• Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell

Summary

Bergen-Belsen was the only major Nazi concentration camp to be liberated on the British front, some three weeks before the end of the war in Europe in 1945. This book contains accounts which should ensure that the horrors of the camp are on the record for posterity and cannot be denied or excused. ... Although Soviet forces discovered Majdanek, Auschwitz and other camps on their front in 1944/45, the significance of these sites did not register in the West until much later. It was the atrocities perpetrated at Belsen and Buchenwald, therefore, that became headline news in the Western press in April 1945. The eyewitness reports and testimonies are as profoundly shocking today as they were then; they are gathered in this volume so that they will not be forgotten.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	vi
Foreword by Lord Campbell of Croy	ix
Richard Dimbleby's Despatch of 17 April 1945	xi
Acknowledgements	xiv
Editors' Note	xv
List of Abbreviations	xvi
Plan of Belsen	xvii
Introduction	1	(5)
British Soldiers Encounter Belsen	6	(15)
Emergency Relief Measures in the Belsen Camp	21	(20)
The Experience of the Volunteer Medical Teams	41	(20)
Adjusting to New Realities	61	(13)
Belsen as a Jewish Displaced Persons' Camp	74	(25)
The Belsen Trial	99	(15)
Facing Belsen: Remembrance and Memorialization	114	(12)
The Belsen Camp in Historical Context	126
Jo Reilly
Donald Bloxham