ABSTRACT
This contribution seeks to redress an imbalance which exists in our common perception of the liberation of Belsen. When we think of the liberation we do not usually associate it with women. Indeed, popular images suggest that women did not play a significant role in the relief effort at all. Amongst the many reels of photographs and film shot by the British Army and newsreel camera crews, only a handful of images inform our collective memory of the months which followed 15 April 1945. Most dwell on the victims of Belsen, and the conditions they were enforced to endure, but many also document the ways in which the British Army attempted to relieve the situation. The cameras followed the men of the Royal Artillery as they forced the SS guards at gun point to bury the thousands of corpses which lay around the camp. They documented the men of the Field Ambulance unit who worked untiringly stretchering people out of the filthy huts of Camp I to the waiting ambulances.
