German SS guards, exhausted from their forced labour clearing the bodies of the dead at Bergen-Belsen, are allowed a brief rest by British soldiers but are forced to take it by lying face down in one of the empty mass graves, 1945 [800x790]
This is a famous quote from BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby, who was present at the liberation of this very camp.
"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"
And to add to this it was pointed by /u/TheTeamCubed in the previous thread that and I quote -
These are actually Hungarian SS, not German. The German SS left with the rest of the camp staff when it was peacefully turned over to the British (they were concerned that the ongoing typhus epidemic among the prisoners would spread to the surrounding population if the camp wasn't handed over in an orderly manner).
The British were horrified by what they found at Bergen-Belsen and forced the Hungarian SS to bury the dead without using protective gloves. Most of them contracted typhus (which is spread by lice) and died.
Sources: After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen by Ben Shephard and Remembering Belsen: Eyewitnesses Record the Liberation by Ben Flanagan and Donald Bloxham.
My Grandfather was at the liberation of the camp at Ohrdruf. He died 10 years before I was born, but my Aunt told me that he could never stand the sight of rice the rest of his life after the war. I guess it was because it reminded him of the maggots on the bodies. He came home with photographs of the camp, and my Father still has them. One of the few things he ever said about the war was that after the camp was liberated, his superiors told him and the soldiers to take these photographs back to the United States and tell people what you saw because they might not believe the news stories coming out of Europe.
![image showing German SS guards, exhausted from their forced labour clearing the bodies of the dead at Bergen-Belsen, are allowed a brief rest by British soldiers but are forced to take it by lying face down in one of the empty mass graves, 1945 [800x790]](3984e549-32e4-586e-8fc8-733e15262ffa.jpg)
Sumit316 on January 18th, 2018 at 14:06 UTC »
This is a famous quote from BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby, who was present at the liberation of this very camp.
"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"
And to add to this it was pointed by /u/TheTeamCubed in the previous thread that and I quote -
whatifitriedthisname on January 18th, 2018 at 14:56 UTC »
We had a Bergen Belsen survivor come into school to talk to us a couple of years ago.
Its one thing reading about it, and it's another seeing pictures. But hearing it first hand from someone who was there was gut wrenching.
AnalogStripes on January 18th, 2018 at 16:21 UTC »
My Grandfather was at the liberation of the camp at Ohrdruf. He died 10 years before I was born, but my Aunt told me that he could never stand the sight of rice the rest of his life after the war. I guess it was because it reminded him of the maggots on the bodies. He came home with photographs of the camp, and my Father still has them. One of the few things he ever said about the war was that after the camp was liberated, his superiors told him and the soldiers to take these photographs back to the United States and tell people what you saw because they might not believe the news stories coming out of Europe.