大象传媒

The yellow german road signs, edged in black announced Belsen. It was just another name to us then.The sight of a concentration camp on our left as we drove by caused us no surprise!.These are the words of Noel Bell of 3rd R.T.R. but they could have been mine. Icould not believe what lay inside.
I had time when I passed by , to stop at the main gate, then guarded by the Cheshire Regt., but i did not venture further. By then the clearing up was underway . (May 1945). Capt.Spence of the Ayrshire Yeomanry recalls;"The whole place was surounded by pretty ,young conifers and beyond them a barbed wire fence about 12 feet high. By the insignificant entrance stood a group of Hungarian guards and beyond small knots of men in pyjamas.
It revealed itself as a huge place covering several sqare miles .All roads leading to it were narrow and full of wrecked horse drawn vehicles filled with tunips and potatoes.During the six weeks prior to its capture the Allied fighters shot at anything on the roads that moved
Ther was anouther wire fence surounding the camp about 1 third of a mile inside. Afew ragged and filthy and emaciated figures had managed to come into this space between the inner and outer fences . When our troops approuched the fence they pushed cigarettes and sweets through . The inmates fell on the gifts with ferocious energy and when everything had been seized some were left dead or dying on the ground torn to pieces by their comrades for the sake of chocolate and cigarettes.
The stench is still in my nostrils . There were about 13,000 un buried corpses
How we the british army foreward command heard about the camp
"Alarge german staff car with a white flag carrying a Lt.Col Schmidt and a major ,officers of the german medical corps arrived at Battalion H.Q. of the Cheshire Regt. On the 13th April 1945 .They stated that they had been sent by the Camp Commandant,which was 10 miles northeast of Engenhausen,to warn the Division not to approach within 3 miles of the camp as a serious typhus epidemic was killing the inhabitants. The camp,they said housed 500,000 people mostly poles and hungarians of whom 5,000 had typhus and or dysentry.13 april 1945
Next day a medical team of whom our friend Dr.Arthur Heap was one ,went foreward with the advancing infantry to investigate the camp whilst the main force pushed on with the advance
We are only human...
What was revealed eventually made me question my belief that there is a God. Up to then I had believed. Here we were chasing the german army...bad enough... necessary ...but to kill people for their beliefs , religion,ideologies,politics, whatever,like this ,was intolerable.

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