The Relief of Belsen

[Edward]

Some of the UK members might have seen this on Channel 4 last night. It's a two-hour drama-doc, featuring dramatic reconstructions of several eye-witness accounts, alongside original footage of the Bergen-Belsen camps and readings from eye-witness accounts. Not eactly light entertainment, but a well put together programme which doesn't trivialise the horrors of the camp. It shows clearly the difficulties faced, and drives home the reality that the liberation of the camp wasn't the end of things - many died before the typhus could be controlled, and of starvation. The only thing that seemed odd to me was that the remaining Nazis who had formerly run the camp (under the terms of the local ceasefire, some SS troops formerly in charge of the camp remained in place for the first few days, alongside the British units in charge. The SS troops were used to remove the corpses piled high in camp 2) were.... well, they seemed a bit two-dimensional in their portrayal, a bit panto villain. Bearing in mind, however, that this was based on eye-witness accounts, they may well have been exactly like that. I guess you'd have to be dehumanised to a fair degree to be able to run a place like that.

Worth seeing if it's repeated, as I'm sure it will be eventually.