Overview

Liberating Belsen Concentration Camp - A personal account by (former) Lt-Colonel Leonard Berney R.A. T.D. a senior British Army officer who participated in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Berney went on to oversee the evacuation of the ex-prisoners to the vast Rehabilitation Camp that the British Army set up, and was then appointed as the Commandant of that Camp until its management was handed over to the United Nations. He went on to give evidence against the SS guards at the Belsen War Crimes Trial. This is the only book to be published that recounts the events that led up to the British Army's uncovering of the Nazi Concentration Camp and its 60,000 prisoners. It describes how the Army dealt with the unprecedented horror that existed in the camp, how the surviving inmates were evacuated and how the Royal Army Medical Corps established the world's largest ever hospital to care for the many thousands of sick and emaciated ex-inmates. It continues with how the survivors were rehabilitated and cared for, how they were repatriated to their own countries, why many thousand refused to return 'home', and the eventual establishment of the Belsen Displaced Persons camp, the largest DP camp in Germany. Forewords by Nanette Blitz Konig, Belsen survivor and former classmate of Anne Frank, and by Major-General Nicholas Eeles CBE, with the introduction by the Oscar(R)-nominated film director, Joshua Oppenheimer.