Editing Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (section)

==Liberation==
[[File:The Liberation of Bergen-belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945 BU4068.jpg|thumb|British and German officers finalize the arrangements for the ending of their temporary truce, April 1945]]
[[File:The Liberation of Bergen-belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945 BU4274.jpg|thumb|Women survivors in Bergen-Belsen, April 1945]]
[[File:Bergen Belsen Liberation 01.jpg|thumb|Former guards are made to load the bodies of dead prisoners onto a truck for burial, April 17–18, 1945]]
[[File:Bergen Belsen Liberation 05.jpg|thumb|Some of the 60 tables, each staffed by two German doctors and two German nurses, at which the sick were washed and deloused, May 1–4, 1945]]
[[File:Mass Grave 3 at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.jpg|thumb|[[Fritz Klein]] stands amongst corpses in Mass Grave 3]]
[[File:The Liberation of Bergen-belsen Concentration Camp, May 1945 BU6674.jpg|thumb|A crowd watches the destruction of the last camp hut]]
When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus.<ref>{{cite book|last=Celinscak|first=Mark|title=Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp|year=2015|publisher=University of Toronto Press|location=Toronto|isbn=978-1442615700}}</ref> On April 11, 1945 [[Heinrich Himmler]] (the ''Reichsführer SS'') agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, ''Wehrmacht'' representatives approached the British, D Squadron of the [[Inns of Court Regiment]], at the bridge at [[Winsen (Aller)|Winsen]] and were brought to [[VIII Corps (United Kingdom)|VIII Corps]]. At around 1&nbsp;a.m. on April 13, an agreement was signed, designating an area of {{convert|48|km2|abbr=off|sp=us}} around the camp as a neutral zone.<ref>A F Taggart (1949), ''Needs Must; The History of the Inns Of Court Regiment 1940–45'', pp 83–85</ref> Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to "uphold order inside the camp". The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops who were returned to the German front lines by the British shortly afterwards. Due to heavy fighting near [[Winsen an der Aller|Winsen]] and [[Walle (Winsen)|Walle]], the British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide">{{cite book|editor-last=Knoch|editor-first=Habbo |editor-link=:de:Habbo Knoch |title=Bergen-Belsen: Wehrmacht POW Camp 1940–1945, Concentration Camp 1943–1945, Displaced Persons Camp 1945–1950. Catalogue of the permanent exhibition|publisher=Wallstein|year=2010|isbn=978-3-8353-0794-0}}</ref>{{rp|253}} The first two to reach the camp were a British [[Special Air Service]] officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/1487534/The-gate-of-Hell.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/1487534/The-gate-of-Hell.html |archive-date=January 12, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live | title=The gate of Hell | work=The Daily Telegraph | date=10 April 2005 | access-date=10 April 2014 | author=van Straubenzee, Alexander}}{{cbignore}}</ref> American soldiers attached to the British forces also helped liberate the camp.<ref>{{cite news | url=http://buelr.net/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=Valls.xml | title=Texas Liberators |author=John Valls | date=2 March 2012 | access-date=7 February 2020 | website=Baylor University Institute for Oral History
}}</ref>

When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and (including the satellite camps) around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival, partially due to Allied bombing. Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006188 | title=The 11th Armoured Division (Great Britain) | publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | encyclopedia=Holocaust Encyclopedia | access-date=16 April 2014}}</ref> The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the [[BBC]]'s [[Richard Dimbleby]], who accompanied them:

{{blockquote|...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.

This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.<ref>{{cite news|url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/richard-dimbleby-describes-belsen/zvw7cqt |title="Richard Dimbleby Describes Belsen", BBC News, April 15, 1945 |work=[[BBC News]] |date=April 15, 2005 |access-date=May 3, 2013}}</ref>}}

Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently, SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of the starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from the store houses.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/> The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from [[Mittelbau-Dora]] had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of the others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these "[[Kapo (concentration camp)|Kapos]]" were killed on April 15, 1945.<ref name="Memorial Guide">{{cite book|editor-last=Knoch|editor-first=Habbo|editor-link=:de:Habbo Knoch |title=Bergen-Belsen: Historical Site and Memorial|publisher=Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten|year=2010|isbn=978-3-9811617-9-3}}</ref>{{rp|62}} On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|261}}

Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German [[Panzer]] army camp, which became the [[Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp]]. Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved to the [[Displaced persons camps in post-World War II Europe|displaced persons (DP) camp]]. Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp's administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence.<ref name="Memorial website5">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/liberation.html|title=Liberation|access-date=April 3, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120426051948/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/liberation.html|archive-date=April 26, 2012|df=mdy-all|website=bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de}}</ref>

The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves.<ref name="Memorial website5"/> The personnel were given starvation rations, not allowed to use gloves or other protective clothing, and were continuously shouted at and threatened to make sure that they did not stop working. Some of the bodies were so rotten that arms and legs tore away from the torso.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wynn |first=Stephen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AwI2EAAAQBAJ&dq=belsen+bodies+typhus++british+gloves&pg=PT169 |title=Holocaust: The Nazis' Wartime Jewish Atrocities |date=2020|publisher=Pen and Sword |isbn=978-1-5267-2822-7 |language=en}}</ref> Within two months, 17 staff members had died of typhus due to being forced to handle the bodies with no protection. Another committed suicide, and three others were shot and killed by British soldiers after trying to escape.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shephard |first=Ben |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I74zlvTlvS4C&dq=belsen+bodies+typhus++british+gloves&pg=PT71 |title=After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945 |date=2007|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-42463-1 |language=en}}</ref>

Some civil servants from Celle and ''[[Landkreis Celle]]'' were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide" />{{rp|262}} Military photographers and cameramen of No. 5 [[Army Film and Photographic Unit]] documented the conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945, were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the [[Imperial War Museum]]. These documents have a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide" />{{rp|243}}<ref name="Memorial website5" /> According to {{interlanguage link|Habbo Knoch|de}}, head of the institution that runs the memorial today: "Bergen-Belsen [...] became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule."<ref name="New Exhibition Guide" />{{rp|9}}

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by [[flamethrower|flamethrowing]] [[Universal Carrier|"Bren gun" carriers]] and [[Churchill Crocodile]] tanks because of the [[epidemic typhus|typhus epidemic]] and [[louse]] infestation.<ref>{{citation |title=Churchill Crocodile Flamethrower |work=Volume 136 of New Vanguard |last=Fletcher |first=David |publisher=Osprey Publishing |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-84603-083-3 |pages=33 & 47}}</ref> As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point, the name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide" />{{rp|265}}

There were massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier [[Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes|Glyn Hughes]], deputy director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, and [[James Johnston (British Army medical officer)|James Johnston]], the Senior Medical Officer. Despite their efforts, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had died. (After liberation 13,994 people died.)<ref name="New Exhibition Guide" />{{rp|305}}

Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with the feeding problem. The first, led by [[Arnold Peter Meiklejohn|A. P. Meiklejohn]], included [[London medical students at Belsen|96 medical student volunteers]] from London teaching hospitals<ref>{{cite book |last=Riley |first=Joanne |date=1997 |title=Belsen in History and Memory|publisher=Taylor & Francis |pages=141 |isbn=978-0714643236}}</ref> who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners.<ref>{{cite book |last=Riley |first=Joanne |date=1998 |title=Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp|publisher=Psychology Press |pages=38 |isbn=978-0714643236}}</ref> A research team led by [[Janet Vaughan]] was dispatched by the [[Medical Research Council (United Kingdom)|Medical Research Council]] to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes.

The British troops and medical staff tried these diets to feed the prisoners, in this order:<ref>Television program ''The Relief Of Belsen'', [[Channel&nbsp;4]] (UK commercial television), 9:00&nbsp;p.m. to 11:05&nbsp;p.m. on Monday October 15, 2007.</ref>
* [[Bully beef]] from Army rations. Most of the prisoners' digestive systems were in too weak a state from long-term starvation to handle such food.
* [[Skimmed milk]]. The result was a bit better, but still far from acceptable.
* Bengal Famine Mixture. This is a rice-and-sugar-based mixture which had achieved good results after the [[Bengal famine of 1943]], but it proved less suitable to Europeans than to Bengalis because of the differences in the food to which they were accustomed.<ref name="Riley143" /> Adding the common ingredient [[paprika]] to the mixture made it more palatable to these people and recovery started.

Some were too weak to even consume the Bengal Famine Mixture. [[Intravenous feeding]] was attempted but abandoned. SS doctors had previously used injections to murder prisoners, so some panicked at the sight of the intravenous feeding equipment.<ref name="Riley143">{{cite book |last=Riley |first=Joanne |date=1997 |title=Belsen in History and Memory|publisher=Taylor & Francis |pages=143 |isbn=978-0714643236}}</ref>