German SS guards, exhausted from their forced labor clearing the bodies of the dead, are allowed a brief rest by British soldiers but are forced to take it by lying face down in one of the empty mass graves; ca. 1945

Taken during the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

(Source)

There’s a famous quote from BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby, who was present at the liberation of this very camp.

Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which… The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them … Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live … A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.

This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life

June 9, 2015 | Categories: History, Human History, Images of History, Life under siege, Lost the Battle, Military History, Modern Warfare, Photography, Weird, World War Two | Tags: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, black and white photography, Europe, German, Germany, historic, Historical, History, human history, Military, Military history, Richard Dimbleby, War, Warfare, World History, World War two, WW2, wwii | Leave a comment