| This photograph shows Belsen from the entrance to the administrative area towards the internment area. The huts in which the internees were held can be seen. The smoke is from the huts set on fire by the liberating British Army. |
This extract from The Story of Belsen details the appalling conditions in which the prisoners were kept. '... huts which would normally accommodate 60 were housing 600. There were no sanitary arrangements, and both inside and outside the huts was an almost continuous carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth.' The inmates were starving, their 'clothes were in rags and teeming with lice.'
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Women internees pictured at liberation, April 1945.
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One of the prisoners in Belsen who gave evidence of her time there was Jeanette Kaufmann. She describes the physical suffering and how 'mental suffering exceeded even that of the body.'
This extract from The Story of Belsen confirms Jeanette Kaufmann's evidence. The treatment of the prisoners by the SS guards, both men and women, is also highlighted. Even after Allied troops arrived in the camp, the SS guards continued to shoot prisoners. The camp commandant, Josef Kramer, made no attempt to stop them from doing so and it was only when the Allied soldiers threatened to shoot the SS guards in return that they stopped.
