With Belsen's liberation, our troops restored dignity after history's darkest chapter

"Some argue that the Holocaust happened elsewhere, far from our shores. But Britain’s connection to the Holocaust and the role the country played in bringing it to an end – must never be forgotten.

- KAREN POLLOCK

Eighty years ago today, on 15 April 1945, the British Army’s 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen. They found unimaginable horrors – thousands of unburied bodies and tens of thousands of emaciated, gravely ill prisoners. Faced with hell on earth, these brave British soldiers did more than just rescue those who had survived – they restored dignity.

The conditions in the camp were so horrific that even battlehardened soldiers struggled to comprehend what they had witnessed. Yet they acted with extraordinary compassion: tending to the sick, burying the dead with respect, providing food and medicine, and installing water pipes for showers.

The Nazis sought to strip Jewish people of their humanity. They shaved their heads, replaced their names with numbers, starved them, forced them into slave labour, and dressed them in the same thin, flimsy striped uniforms.