ABSTRACT
In a century that has witnessed ever-increasing opportunities for voyeurism, the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British forces in April 1945 has special significance. 1 Although Nazi camps of a far more murderous nature were liberated before Belsen, the scenes recorded at Belsen by the soldiers, journalists, photographers, broadcasters and film crews were perhaps the most gruesome of all images relating to Nazi atrocities. The impact on those carrying out the liberation of Belsen, as will be stressed throughout this volume, was traumatic. Yet even those in the comfort of the cinemas, front rooms and libraries of the Home Front exposed to the newsreels, press and radio reports were left in a state of emotional shock by the attempts to communicate the horror of Belsen. Susan Sontag relates how in a Santa Monica bookstore she came across photographs from Bergen-Belsen and Dachau in July 1945:
Nothing I have seen – in photographs or in real life – ever cut me as sharply, deeply, instantaneously. Indeed, it seems plausible to me to divide my life into two parts, before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after, though it was several years before I understood fully what they were about [editors’ emphasis].
