British Troops Liberate Bergen-Belsen

On this day, British forces of the 11th Armoured Division entered Bergen-Belsen. They found tens of thousands of prisoners still alive and thousands of unburied dead. Typhus, dysentery, and starvation were widespread. The camp had begun as a prisoner-of-war site and later held Jews the SS treated as possible exchange prisoners, then overflow from evacuated camps.

British medical units began relief at once. Thousands more prisoners died in the following weeks. The photographs and reports from Belsen became a principal public record of the camps in Britain. This article dates the 15 April entry, not the later burning of the typhus-ridden barracks.