Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

The 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division of the British army liberate about 55,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945, pursuant to an April 12 agreement with the retreating Germans to surrender the camp peacefully. When they entered the camp, its soldiers were totally unprepared for what they found. Inside were about 55,000 prisoners, many of whom were emaciated and ill prisoners in desperate need of medical attention. Thousands of corpses in various stages of decomposition lay littered around the camp.

The discovery of the Bergen-Belsen camp and the horrendous conditions there made on powerful impact on public opinion in Great Britain and elsewhere. One member of a British Army Film and Photographic unit recalled the masses of unburied corpses:

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 around, in many cases piled five or six high.