American Field Service (AFS),  News

Craig P. Gilbert (AFS)

Craig P. Gilbert was born on August 13, 1925 in Manhattan. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1943 and joined the American Field Service near the end of World War II.

Craig Phillip Gilbert AFS
He was one of the volunteers who helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. After the war, he enrolled in Harvard and graduated in 1949. After graduation he worked as a gopher on Broadway, as a journalist, as a freelance television script writer, and as a film editor and producer. By the mid-1960s he had found a full-time position writing and producing for WNET and became an executive producer in 1966. In 1973 his groundbreaking television series An American Family aired. The series examined the lives of the Loud family in California and is widely considered as the first reality television show.

Gilbert passed away on April 10, 2020 in Lower Manhattan.

Details courtesy of of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS Archives).

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This archive has been established after my own relative, Reg Price, took part in the liberation and subsequent humanitarian effort of Bergen Belsen in April 1945. Reg produced this famous sign at Belsen. As part of the 113th DLI, Reg and his comrades were at Belsen for 5 weeks and left when the last hut was empty and ceremonially burnt down. This archive compiles all available resources to build a lasting tribute to all the men and women who helped - any unit, any nationality. If you have a relative, or any info, on the relief effort at Belsen, we’d love you to please get in touch. Email us: liberator@belsen.co.ukThank you Nick Price CreativesFacebookTwitter