Discussion on Belsen Camp and Typhus

We have to turn to Alfred Hitchcock, the director, and his narrator, Trevor Howard, for an explanation of how this came about. The answer is simply the dread word typhus. A mobile bacteriological unit and all medical aid possible,

together with 90 medical students from London hospitals, were rushed to the spot to deal with it. Lack of soap and water brought lice to the inmates, and lice carry typhus.

But of course, besides there being many sick inmates in some of the camps, there were also many, many healthy inmates, as these scenes, which are also from Belsen, would indicate. These people, mostly women and children in these

particular scenes, look perfectly healthy and quite cheerful. So therefore, it would be apparent that the Germans did not have an ongoing universal extermination policy, because if they did have a genocidal policy, then these people in these scenes

would not be as healthy and would not even be as alive as they are. In fact, a British medic who went into Belsen camp shortly after the liberation, Dr. Russell Barton, who now teaches at a mental

hospital in Rochester, New York, he went into Belsen camp and had the expectation that the Germans had been operating an extermination policy. But much to his surprise, he found that the horrible scenes and the dead bodies were due not to a deliberate policy of extermination, but to an

outbreak of typhus. This particular scene is from Dachau camp. And again, these inmates, who are mostly male in this particular case, they all seem perfectly healthy and in a few cases seem even quite chubby. So again, it's obvious that the Germans did not have an

extermination policy. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many healthy inmates walking around, nor would there be these acres upon acres of living accommodation in what was supposed to be a death factory.

In the 1960s, the focus was moved from the camps in Germany to the camps in central Poland, in particular Auschwitz. This camp was liberated by the Soviet army in early 1945. But again, you see there's a similar problem to Dachau.

Here we see acres upon acres of living accommodations, which tends to contradict the allegation of this being a mill of death. In fact, Auschwitz was a vast industrial complex. And here you can see the Buna rubber works at Auschwitz-Monowitz. And it was in these factories that the internees from the camp went to

work each day. Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time. He wanted to expel the Jews. You were

on the scene in Belsen as a young man. Yes, I went to the group of medical students and we arrived in Belsen on May 2nd, 1945. I first went to the camp on May 3rd. Himmler ordered the camp to be seeded on April 11th in order to stop typhus, which

was an epidemic spreading throughout Europe. The British came in, the tank division came in on April 15th at 3 o'clock. And they did their best to segregate the typhus and the dying from the others.

How many people were in the camp at the time when the British took over the camp? I think there were about 57,000 or 60,000. The British bombed everything that the Americans moved on the roads. So getting food there was extremely difficult. The warfare supplies became contaminated with sewage

and the administration in the camp more or less broke down. Say if the German camp administration had made maximum effort, had been given everything they had, could they have prevented this? There was no cure for typhus at that time.

The British put DDT, which is an insecticide, over everything and everybody. And in that way, I think the typhus was contained. Did you see when you got there two weeks after the British Army took over any evidence of gas chambers the way propaganda has said

that the Germans had in these camps? Or was it claimed that to that effect? No, I don't think it was ever thought that there was a gas chamber in Belsen. People were dying at 500 a day, by the way, ready to fight with you today.

Even under British administration? Under British administration, yes. And what was happening was the English soldiers were giving people their food to people

half-starved and they were eating stomachs and stomachs would burst and they'd die. The inmates said that the conditions there, this is what the inmates said, that the conditions weren't too bad to the end of World War IV.

And then this mass immigration. But by the time they put in another 50,000, 40, 50,000, it was sick. I read in German language books, and I'm not sure if it's accurate or not, but that

Britain broke a promise to those soldiers to let them go to their own lines and that there was rather brutal treatment on the part of some of the British soldiers against those Germans. I don't know about it because I know nothing behind it, but that's what we understood, that most of them had been finished off.

That really upset me because I thought that we were fighting a war for ideals and honour and this was the most dishonourable thing to agree to give them safe conduct back to the lines. And then those that stayed because they lost their way, beat them

up. Were you there during the time of the bulldozers who were actually putting these bodies in the graves? In these long trenches that you've seen before? The bodies were being thrown in. They were put,

the truck went round every day and picked up the bodies outside the hut. And then they were taken to where the bulldozers were dug the grave and they were thrown into the grave.

You are a man born in England. You published this article, I believe, for an English publication. Yes. The London Times. I think that one, what you had published here?

That's right. This was published in November 1968. I was asked to write it. I was solicited. I had no intention of so doing.