Bergen-Belsen

“By some miracle, I found myself selected for a transport to a labour camp situated on the outskirts of Hanover. Conditions were appalling; we were subjected to hard labour, but at least we each had a bunk to sleep on at night and a daily food ration. But in mid-January 1945, our labour camp was disbanded and we were forced to march to Bergen-Belsen. On the way we saw nice, neat little houses, people peering out of their windows and even some civilians. So why is it that most Germans say they did not know what was going on?

We marched to Belsen quite unaware of the place and what might greet us there. My memory of my arrival there is hazy. There were 400 of us and we were herded into different barracks, which were already overcrowded with living and decaying corpses. Total chaos and the stench of dead bodies everywhere: that is how I remember Belsen, a living ‘inferno’. I see myself – a skinny, bewildered 16-year-old – running from hut to hut, looking, searching, hoping to find a friend, a cousin or maybe an aunt still among the living. Everything seemed so unreal.

One day a friend told me to go very early next day to a certain point where a few women would be chosen to work in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and vegetables. I got very excited at the mere thought of perhaps having a little extra food. Luck was with me. I was chosen. I worked in that kitchen barrack for a few days and it was there, one day, sitting with my cold feet deep in mud that I felt a fever taking possession of my body. I was quite aware that it was probably the end of the road for me.

When moments of consciousness returned, I vividly remember feeling hollow and devoid of emotion. To experience emotion requires some physical effort, of which I was no longer capable. I was resigned to my fate, but felt deep regret that after so much suffering and the struggle I had to put up, I would not make it after all. I recalled the images of all those who were dear to me.

When I awoke from a dreadful nightmare, there were friendly, smiling faces around me telling me it was all over. I was too numb and too confused to make sense of what they were saying. I was liberated on 15 April, but have no memory of it as I lay unconscious. When I regained consciousness, I found four portions of black bread and four tins of Nestlé’s condensed milk beside my bunk. I looked at the bread and burst out crying. I had so longed for, and dreamed of the day when I could just eat and eat, but I was too ill even to taste the food.

The first few days after liberation were joyous and yet sad, confusing and bewildering. I did not know how to cope with freedom after years of painful imprisonment. Looking out of the window, I could see German soldiers being made to clear the mountain of corpses. The inmates had to be restrained from attacking them.”

Esther Brunstein testament to the Aegis Institute 2003. Brunstein was 16 years old when she was held in the camp.

Embedded with the British army was the BBC reporter Richard Dimbleby who described what he saw in a broadcast on 15 April 1945 (source: BBC archive)

“…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.”