Clearing Belsen Concentration Camp
April/May 1945
Clearing bodies at Belsen concentration camp. Hanns' experiences at Belsen were to change him forever.
AKG
Lieutenant Hanns Alexander arrived at the Bruxelles-Nord station on 8 May 1945, and made his way to Belsen, where he was tasked with interrogating the SS officers arrested at the camp. It was early evening on 12 May 1945 when he arrived at the barbed-wire gates of Belsen. Inside the camp, corpses lay piled on top of each other. Bulldozers had begun the work of disposing of the bodies, pushing the dead into mass graves. The living prisoners were so thin that their ribs poked through their skin. Mothers clutched dead children; shaven-headed survivors in black-and-white-striped uniforms stared vacantly by decrepit wooden barracks; painted signs warning of typhus epidemics were everywhere. There was no water, no food, inadequate medical supplies and little shelter. Hanns' experiences at Belsen were to change him forever: 'There were dead bodies walking about, dead bodies lying about, people who thought they were alive and they weren't. It was a terrible sight.'
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