diary extracts Commander in Chief Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945:
"I can not give an adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and I were going to spend the next month of our lives. It's all pure bush barren, naked as a chicken leg. There are bodies everywhere, some in huge piles, some solo or in pairs, where they had fallen. We took some time to get used to seeing men, women and children collapse as he passed them and hold us not to go to his aid. had to get used to the idea that individuals simply do not count. We knew who died half a day and they were going to keep dying half a day for weeks before anything we could do to have the slightest effect. However, it was not easy seeing a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and care could have saved him, or a woman drowning in their own vomit because he was too weak to turn over, and men eating worms neglecting the bread simply because they had to eat worms to live and now just see the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman, too weak to stand, leaning on them and cooking the food she had just hit a fire-men and women crouching in any place to relieve themselves of the dysentery that I was devouring the intestines, a totally naked woman with her share of washing soap and water in a tank floating the remains of a child. Shortly after the arrival of the British Red Cross, although this may not be related to it, we got a lot of lipsticks. This was not at all what they wanted men, had been pleading with hundreds and thousands of other things and not know who asked for lipstick. I wish with all my heart to know who did it, was a work of genius, absolutely brilliant pure. Did not think anything more for internal lipstick. The women went to bed without sheets or gowns, but with red lips, you saw them swarming with nothing but a blanket over his shoulders but with red lips. I saw a woman dead in the mortuary who clung to a tube of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, beyond the sheer number tattooed on his arm. Finally might be interested in their appearance. These lipsticks aa started bringing them back to humanity. "
From: Eve Road to Paradise
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