‘I felt a pair of hands lifting me up. It was a member of the British Army’

DEATH camp survivor Susan Pollack has paid a tearful tribute to the British soldiers who “helped retain my humanity” when they liberated the living hell that was Bergen-Belsen, 80 years ago today.

- Giles Sheldrick

Susan was just 13 when she was taken to Auschwitz then made to work in a Nazi armaments factory before a forced march to the camp.

Emaciated and disease-ridden, she was then one of 60,000 captives freed by troops from the 11th Armoured Division on April 15 1945 near the end of the Second World War in Europe. Today she stands proud as the living embodiment of good conquering evil.

Susan, now 94, told the Daily Express: “We marched in the winter of 1944-45 across frozen fields, fatigued, into this place where there was no care...no food.

“There were mountains of corpses. People were dead from the various infectious conditions. We were totally without comprehension. Where were we? Was this the world that we had known, trusted and contributed to?

“Upon liberation I was unable to walk and I could only crawl. I felt a pair of hands lifting me up. It was a member of the British occupying army. After a long battle, they helped us retain our humanity...the few of us that survived.”

Belsen in north-west Germany was set up in 1940 for French, Belgian and, later, Soviet prisoners – 14,000 died there in 1941-42 due to deliberate starvation.

Atrocities

In 1944 tens of thousands were sent from Poland as Germany retreated, resulting in horrific overcrowding and rampant diseases.