04-16-2015, 08:41 PM
mrlynn wrote:
Bergen-Belsen through the Eyes of Its Liberator
by BERNICE LERNER April 15, 2015 4:00 AM
Seventy years ago today, the British Army entered the infamous camp. In the spring of 1945, with Germany near defeat, Heinrich Himmler countermanded Hitler’s order to kill the remaining concentration-camp inmates. Bergen-Belsen, located in northern Germany, near the town of Celle, was turned over to the advancing British Army.
On April 15, Brigadier H. L. Glyn Hughes, deputy director of medical services for the British Second Army, entered the camp. He sent his reconnaissance party to check on food and water supplies, the availability of electricity, and the method of administration. What did they find? Not a blade of grass. Copious amounts of barbed wire. Bare cookhouses. Thousands of emaciated human beings stumbling along, hanging onto ten-foot-high barbed-wire fences for support, or lying where they had fallen.
Five compounds held 41,000 prisoners. With no working lavatories, the effects of dysentery fouled the overcrowded huts and the entire area around them. More than 10,000 corpses lay in piles on the ground.
Hughes learned that 18,000 inmates had died the previous month. An enormous grave pit was half filled. That evening, back at his billet, the 52-year-old officer sank into despair. He was expert at evacuating casualties. He could organize personnel and communications, medical and surgical teams, and hospitals. He had overseen burials, and controlled chaos during rescue missions. But in this hell, where to begin? . . .
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/41...ice-lerner
Never forget.
/Mr Lynn
damn... even months of fighting a war couldn't possibly prepare you for THAT kind of a scene. It must have been like living in a nightmare...