Online Collection

The Online Collection showcases a selection of our objects for you to discover and explore. This resource will grow as the Museum's Collection is catalogued and computerised, and as new acquisitions are added.

« New search

« Prev - 1 of 1 results - Next »

A British soldier guards SS members as they collect the dead at Belsen Concentration Camp following its liberation, April 1945

Photograph, World War Two, Northwest Europe (1939-1945), 1945.

Bergen-Belsen, near Hanover in Germany, was the first concentration camp to be liberated by British troops, on 15 April 1945. When soldiers of the 2nd Army arrived they found the camp littered with dead and dying prisoners. Around 60,000 starving people, many suffering from typhus and dysentery, required immediate aid. Despite the best efforts of the medical services, hundreds died in the days after the liberation. In the weeks that followed, British troops buried 10,000 bodies in mass graves. An estimated 70,000 Jews, Slavs, political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's witnesses and criminals died at Belsen.

From a collection of 23 official photographs.

NAM Accession Number

NAM. 1997-01-52-10

Copyright/Ownership

National Army Museum, Out of Copyright

Location

National Army Museum, Study Collection

Object URL

https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1997-01-52-10

Browse related themes