Sunday marked a grim anniversary: the discovery in 1945 by British troops of the horror of Bergen-Belsen.
British military veterans were greeted with gasps, tears and murmured thanks as they marched into Bergen-Belsen concentration camp yesterday to mark the 60th anniversary of its liberation.Survivors, their children and members of British forces who liberated the camp near Hanover, had gathered to commemorate those who died and to set a marker against such atrocities happening again.
Images from the camp - not a death camp like Auschwitz but one where Germans left prisoners to die of starvation and disease - were the first to show the horror of the Holocaust.
At least 50,000 people died in Bergen-Belsen before the British arrived. But such was their condition that another 13,000 inmates died soon after.
The memories don't recede with the mere passage of time.
To this day random gravestones are dotted across the camp area, memorials to loved ones where there is no hope of finding exactly how or where they died or were buried.There is nothing left of the original camp. The British troops burned it to the ground to prevent the spread of disease. Yet the grass and heather-covered area retains a dignity, with large mounds marking mass graves, at the head of which are concrete plaques showing roughly how many bodies were buried there - 1,500, 2,000 and even 5,000 at a time.
The Rev Leslie Hardman, a British army chaplain who ministered to the troops who liberated the camp, repeatedly broke down as he recalled officiating at some of the mass burials.
"I remember as if it was yesterday the irreverent manner in which I was compelled to conduct the several burial services for the thousands of naked and half naked bodies.
"There was not the usual preparations for burial, there was no washing or shrouds or coffins. They were pushed or shovelled into the ground. It is for such acts of irreverence and disrespect that I offer my profound apologies as I did then."
Then his voice hardened and he went on: "If there is a hell, I earnestly hope and pray with all my heart that their murderers, tormentors and persecutors are still undergoing their well deserved punishments."
Bergen-Belsen is where young Anne Frank died of typhus in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated.
Related:
• Bergen-Belsen Memorial - Germany
• BBC - Images and 1945 audio
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Holocaust Museum Houston