Mark Celinscak - Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp

This book retraces the relief efforts at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwest Germany following its surrender in the weeks before the end of the Second World War. Of utmost importance are the responses of not only British but also Canadian military personnel. While it is well documented that Bergen-Belsen was surrendered to VIII Corps of the British Army, hundreds of Canadians also assisted and hundreds more encountered the camp through informal visits and authorized tours. Like their British counterparts, though arriving at the camp in smaller and yet no less significant numbers, were Canadian airmen, paratroopers, soldiers, doctors and nurses, padres, nutritional and agricultural experts, war artists, and photographers. The central focus of this study is on the language, metaphors, and narratives offered by both men and women in the British and Canadian forces. This work scrutinizes the stories communicated with special attention afforded to the roles performed by military personnel and to the point in time that they entered the camp.

Scholars must make defined choices in their work. The decision to focus this study on Allied military personnel comes at a cost. The voices of Bergen-Belsens wounded, its survivors, are largely and regrettably silent in this book. The gulf between inmates and Allied military personnel at liberation was often, although not always, pronounced. This work maintains that divide. When Allied forces first entered the camp, Fania Fnelon, a French pianist, composer, cabaret singer, and survivor of Bergen-Belsen observed:

A new life breathed in the camp. Jeeps, command cars, and half tracks drove around among the barracks. Khaki uniforms abounded, the marvelously substantial

As this work demonstrates, in the days and weeks immediately following the surrender of Bergen-Belsen, that separation, that distance at least from the perspective of Allied military personnel was indeed profound. Perhaps a future study will examine the relationships and exchanges between inmate and liberator, but for now, this book attempts to expand our knowledge of the words and actions of Britons and Canadians at the camp. While any serious communication between inmate and liberator is left unexamined, other links are traversed.

The connections between Britain, Canada, and Bergen-Belsen are complex and extensive, stretching back to even before the camp was formally entered during the late afternoon of 15 April 1945 by the 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment under the authority of VIII Corps. Indeed, men from a section of the (British) Special Air Service, which also included a Canadian, entered the camp ahead of the 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel R.I.G. Taylor. Remarkably, even before Allied forces arrived, there were inmates in the camp with British and Canadian connections. For instance, Petty Officer Alfred John Roe and Able Seaman Keith Mayor both died while being held prisoner in Bergen-Belsen. Captured in May 1943 during a commando raid in Norway called Operation Checkmate, the men were first taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and later, to Bergen-Belsen. According to International Tracing Service (ITS) records, Roe died of typhus on 13 April 1945. After the war and to the present day, associations with the camp, on both sides of the Atlantic, persist in myriad ways.

In the aftermath of its surrender, Bergen-Belsen was, and continues to be, a name, a site, and a symbol frequently evoked in the Western world. While not a killing centre or extermination camp thus making it a less than accurate representation of the worst of the horrors of the Holocaust Bergen-Belsen was still a terribly frightful place and became one of the most filmed, photographed, and discussed camps of the entire war. For many people the name Belsen became synonymous with the crimes of the Third Reich. Accordingly, the camp and the images associated with it, are widely known, recognized, and employed.