Liberating Belsen Concentration Camp - Paperback

by John Wood (Editor), Major-General Nicholas Eeles Cbe (Foreword by), Nanette Blitz Konig (Foreword by)

Liberating Belsen Concentration Camp - A personal account by (former) Lt-Colonel Leonard Berney R.A. T.D. a senior British Army officer who participated in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Berney went on to oversee the evacuation of the ex-prisoners to the vast Rehabilitation Camp that the British Army set up, and was then appointed as the Commandant of that Camp until its management was handed over to the United Nations. He went on to give evidence against the SS guards at the Belsen War Crimes Trial. This is the only book to be published that recounts the events that led up to the British Army's uncovering of the Nazi Concentration Camp and its 60,000 prisoners. It describes how the Army dealt with the unprecedented horror that existed in the camp, how the surviving inmates were evacuated and how the Royal Army Medical Corps established the world's largest ever hospital to care for the many thousands of sick and emaciated ex-inmates. It continues with how the survivors were rehabilitated and cared for, how they were repatriated to their own countries, why many thousand refused to return 'home', and the eventual establishment of the Belsen Displaced Persons camp, the largest DP camp in Germany. Forewords by Nanette Blitz Konig, Belsen survivor and former classmate of Anne Frank, and by Major-General Nicholas Eeles CBE, with the introduction by the Oscar(R)-nominated film director, Joshua Oppenheimer.

Author Biography

Leonard Berney (1920-2016) was born in London. After leaving St Paul's School, Hammersmith, in 1938, he joined the Territorial Army as a Second Lieutenant. At the beginning of 1939, he and his Anti-Aircraft Regiment were mobilized for full-time military service in the defence of London. He took part countering The Blitz and the V1 flying bomb attacks. In August 1944, he was in Normandy as the Staff Officer, Anti-Aircraft Defence, of XIII Corps of the British 21st Army. This is his personal account of his experience of the Liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp and as the Commander of the Belsen Camp for Displaced Persons that housed the survivors. Following his time at Belsen, he was appointed Military Governor of Schleswig-Holstein and was released from the army at the end of 1946, rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He pursued a business career until he retired. In his latter years, Leonard Berney was regularly asked to deliver lectures on the Liberation of Belsen by groups such as Congregation Ner Tamid, Las Vegas and Greenwich University, London and he was often asked to take part in documentaries about the Holocaust such as "Night Will Fall" which was broadcast on television in over twenty countries around the world to mark the 70th Holocaust Memorial Day 2015, as well as "No Asylum" about Anne Frank and her family. For the last seven years of his life, Leonard lived on the residential ship MS The World. In his 95th year when he wrote this book, he was one of the very few surviving liberators of the infamous Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.