ABSTRACT
Historians have described the history and changing nature of Belsen in great detail and have written a huge amount about its liberation by British and Canadian (and some American) forces and the assistance rendered them by doctors, nurses and charitable organizations. Yet they, like everyone else, remain shocked by what the Nazis did at Belsen. This chapter focuses on the immediate post-liberation period in order to analyse what the British found at Belsen in April 1945 and how the camp was understood by those who saw it in those first days and weeks after ‘liberation’. I examine the British approach to dealing with the survivors, noting that criticism of the feeding regime and medical care needs to be contextualized so that the enormity of the task is better appreciated. But I also show that dealing with the aftermath of the liberation was never just a British affair; rather, everything associated with the administration of Belsen, though it was headed by the British occupation forces and civilian authorities, required international assistance. Drawing on the holdings of the International Tracing Service, I illustrate the international dimension of the relief process, understood in the widest terms.
