BELSEN CAMP

Grey River Argus, 20 September 1945, Page 5

BELSEN CAMP

. TRIAL OF GUARDS British Officer’s Account LONDON, Sept. 19 The trial of the. 45 camp guards accused in connection with the Bolsen concentration camp was resumed on Monday. The Court President allowed photographs to be taken for twenty minutes. During this procedure the defendants, all ashenfaced, maintained rigid expressions, except Kramer, who smiled uneasily. Because of a rumoured attempt at rescue, Kramer was handcuffed to Dr. Klien. Kramer closely followed the charges, which were translated into German and Polish. One woman accused, a hard-faced blonde Herta Ehlert collapsed for an instant in the glare of the' flash bulbs, but blonde and pretty Irma Grese helped her to her seat with a look of utter disgust. The original list of defendants. numbered 43, but three were later omitted because of their physical and mental deterioration. Brigadier H. L. Glen Hughes, ViceDeputy Director of Medical Services of the British Army of the Rhine was the first witness called in the trial. He said he had seen all the horrors of war, but never anything to touch Belsen camp. No description could bring home the horrors there. When it was taken over there were piles of corpses all around the camp and uncountable bodies in huts. The dead intermingled with the living. There, were signs of mass graves near the crematorium, and an open pit was full of bodies. Some huts were filled to overflowing with prisoners in every state of emaciation and disease. There were no bunks in the women’s huts. Typhus patients were lying on the floors, hardly able to raise themselves on their elbows. Some were unclothed and others in prison uniform. There was no sanitation. Conditions in one women’s compound were .the worst in the camp. They were absolutely frightful. There were dead women in the passage, which was so . tuli that no woman could lie straight. Women were dying frequently. Ol_ 23,000 in the compound at least 17.000 should have been in hospital. There were gastro-enteritis patients too weak to leave the huts? There were 8,000 men in another compound living under appalling conditions. A few of the . children in the compound were in fairly good health. Mothers had obviously sacrificed themselves to care for the children. There were corpses stacked in hundreds in sight of the children. The camp staff made no attempt to organise any medical care, though the inmates were supposed to organise a hospital in huts which were set aside. He, in a medical store, found a number of boxes sent by the Jewish Red Cross for Jewisn inmates. Kramer’s attitude was callous, indifferent and unashamed Klein did nothing to stamp out tne typhus, although he had more me than the British, who, with 68 men, put down the outbreak in a. fortnight. He was told on arrival at Belsen of rioting in the cookhous He and another officer and Kiamei went there. A member of the said soup was stolen but there was no evidence of that. Th ey hea L shots and later found dead ana wounded prisoners lying on t ground nearby. Members of the S.b. had' carried out the shootings. While Brigadier Hughes was tell ing his story Kramer dozed, occasionally stirring to take a note.