| Original caption: A British soldier guards [Schutzstaffel] SS members as they collect the dead at Belsen Concentration Camp following its liberation.” Outraged at the conditions they encountered when entering Bergen Belsen, the United Kingdom Royal Army arrested any Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) guards remaining, including SS Aufseherin (“Female Overseer”) and publicly humiliated them by forcing them at bayonet and rifle point to collect and bury the 13,000 corpses around the camp. The SS were not allowed personal protective equipment; some 20 of the 80 men and women contracted typhus or other diseases, and died with months. Former inmates threw rocks at their former jailers, and heckled them as they did their work. The Nazi German guards had to load the bodies into trucks, and then ride with the bodies to the burial pits. Then, the bodies were removed from the trucks and carried to the pits. All of this was don with manual labor. When exhausted, the Germans were forced to rest face down in a freshly dug burial pit. When they were collecting corpses, Clara Silbernik, née Spiegler, (September 24, 1916 – January 17, 1969), became furious after seeing SS guards throw the corpse of her best friend onto the truck. She charged after the guards to complain about the abuse of her friend’s corpse. There were so many corpses and so little time that most were handled roughly. Sergeant A. Norman Midgley (March 7, 1910 – January 1995) recorded his thoughts on his visit of April 18, 1945: “Today I visited a German concentration camp at Belsen near Celle. I saw some of the most horrible sights imaginable. No words can describe the horror of this place. It must be seen to be believed. I am now convinced that the NAzis are not human beings, but vermin that must be exterminated. This might have happened in England had Hitler’s plans succeeded.” “The camp is situated in wooded country near to Celle. It looks like an ordinary prison camp – high barbed wired fences with high lookout towers at regular intervals. Over 60,000 men, women, and children were herded into this camp. They were political prisoners, mainly Polish, and a large number of them Jews. There were some Hungarians, Dutch and French. The huts in the camps ere big enough for thirty people each but as many as five hundred had been forced in a single hut. Sanitation was non-existent. The food supplied was meagre to the least. The object of the Nazis was to slowly starve them to death. Disease was rampant – typhus, typhoid, and dysentery, are only a few of the deadly diseases found there. The approaches to the camp were guarded by Hungarian soldiers. Notices warned of the danger of typhus.” “We arrived at the camp to meet an officer of the British Army who took us on a tour of inspection. We walked down the main avenue between the huts. The people was varied considerably. Some looked reasonably healthy (they were newcomers) others were a shocking sight – mere skin and bone, many with running sores, scabs and ulcers. We left the main avenue to walk between the huts. People were stretched out all over the place. It was difficult to decide whether they were alive or dead. The officer warned us to look where we walked as there were piled of except all over the place. The stench was nauseating. Outside some of the huts there were bodies lying in a heap. Three women walked to the pile dragging a b body and dumped it on the heap. The bodies appeared to have been there for a considerable time. We passed one shed and looked inside. It was piled up six high with dead bodies. Women and men were sitting and lying on atop of the pile. Many were so far gone that they had lost all sense of humor and decency – women squatted down to excrete or urinate, some actually did this on the bodies on top of which they were lying.” “We eventually came to huge pits where our soldiers were organizing mass burials. One pit we saw, about three hundred yards [275 meters] by twenty yards [eighteen meters] and of unknown depth was full of human bodies. Thousands of them just dumped in. This pit was one of many. The bodies were a ghastly sight. Some were green. They looked like skeletons covered with skin – the flesh had all gone. There were bodies of small children among the grown ups. In other parts of the camp there were hundreds of bodies lying about, in many cases piled five or six high.” “Amongst them sat women peeling potatoes and cooking scraps of food. They were quite unconcerned and I lifted my camera to photograph them, even smiled. Some of the huts were marked with a Red Cross. Inside the scene was indescribable. I looked in through the window. It being impossible to walk inside without walking on the people, who were in a dreadful state, more dead than alive. Many too weak to lift their hands. There were dead lying between the living – the living were too weak to remove them. Many must have died from suffocation, due to the overcrowding. The smell was overpowering. Outside dying lay beside dead. Others burnt the shoes and clothing of the dead to keep warm. There was a huge pile of boots and shoes from dead people. At some points huge trenches have been dug with a pole across – primitive unscreened latrines, sitting on the pole were men and women in all states of undress. They were quite unconcerned. They had gone beyond caring about normal decencies. Dotted about the camp were tremendous cesspools where women washed in the nude and washed clothes. Until our forces supplied water, this was also their drinking water.” “At another part of the camp our soldiers had started to organize the removal of piles of dead for burial. They had rounded up several SS men who were caught at the camp and had been there as guards. They were made to load lorries with bodies. They were kept on the move by our soldiers, picking up bodies from a heap and throwing them unceremoniously onto the trucks. The other inmates watched the loading, booing and shouting and throwing stones at the SS thugs. When the trucks were loaded the SS men were made to jump on top of the pile of bodies and the truck drove off to the burial place. On one of these trips one SS man jumped off and ran away. He only got a short distance before he was shot dead by a rain of bullets, to the cheers of the crowd. The SS men were really being broken down. Some cried and sobbed as there were rushed about in their horrible forte of picking up the corpses.” “We came across a woman who claimed to be a British subject – her father was English, mother Belgian. She spoke perfect English. She arrived at the camp a few weeks ago, having been marched from Hannover – forty miles away. There were without water for five days. She was quite cheery and so pleased to know she would soon be in good hands. She was laying on the ground with a dirty blanket stuffed around her. Thirty yards [twenty-seven meters] away in front was a pile of rotting corpses. Another girl we saw had a badly smashed face. We questioned her and she told us she had been beaten by one of the guards.” “We spoke to Brigadier M. O. [United Kingdom Royal Army Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes (July 25, 1892 – November 24, 1973) Royal Army Medical Corps] He told us that on inspection they found slits in the sides of many bodies. They inquired about this and were told that the livers and kidneys were removed by the other inmates for food. He asked why not also eat the flesh. The replay was – ‘what flesh’ – there was no flesh left.” “The majority of people in the camp were professional, well-educated people. When the Brigadier asked for doctors, a large number of men and women stepped out. We were told that it will be possible to save many of the but thousands are beyond hope and will surely die. Scores are dying every day. Food is now being supplied by the Army but is not much good at the moment, as the people have been so long with good solid food, that their stomachs can’t cope with it. Milk is now being supplied and the they can take.” “One wide-eyed woman clutching a baby, appealed to the soldier in charge of the milk for a supply for her baby. Her gave her a tin. She asked him to hold the baby and she bent down and kissed his boots. He looked at the child and soon saw that it had been dead for some time. He gave it back to her and she walked off clutching it to her breast. Other women walked to the pile of corpses and deposited a dead child.” “We later saw and photographed the SS Camp Commandant Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer [(November 10, 1906 – December 13, 1945)]. When our troops arrived at the camp he met them resplendent in his uniform full of arrogance. There area had been declared neutral by mutual agreement, due to the risk of spreading the typhus. But when our people saw what the SS had been responsible for, they were disarmed and arrested. The Commandant looked a real thug. His feet were shackled to prevent his escape. He will surely be tried as a war criminal. The people had been headed here to be systematically starved to death. No attempt was made to bury the dead immediately. Some must have been lying in the huts amongst the living for weeks and weeks. The living were too weak and demented to do anything about it. I have read about such camps as this, but never realized what it was really like. It must be seen to be believed.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0569.jpg |
| Image Size | 521.36 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2118 x 1867 |
| Photographer | A. Norman Midgley |
| Photographer Title | Number Five United Kingdom Royal Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 27, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen |
| City | Bergen |
| State or Province | Lower Saxony |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Imperial War Museum |
| Record Number | BU 3780 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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