• bergen belsen concentration camp

    Julia Pirie

    Elizabeth Mary Julia Pirie, known to her family as Elizabeth but later as Julia was born at Harbury, Warwickshire July 8th, 1918.  15,146 total views

  • Walter Stott

    Huddersfield soldier Walter Stott was one of the first soldiers to enter Belsen Concentration Camp. His testimony was part of an act of commemoration in Dewsbury on April 15th, 2005 – 60 years after the camp was surrendered to the British.  16,029 total views

  • William Dillon Hughes

    William Dillon Hughes (son of Richard Hughes and Hannah Barton) was born 23 December 1900 in Ardglass, County Down, Ireland, and died 13 December 1999.  15,922 total views

  • Alexander Michie (Lt Col)

    Dr Alexander Michie, from Durris on Deeside, was the first British medical officer to enter the infamous camp in April 1945 and the scenes of squalor, death and degradation he witnessed rendered him mute on what he saw there for many years.  17,830 total views

  • Thomas Gibson – Medical Student

    During early April a notice appeared in the Medical Schools of the London hospitals asking for twelve volunteers from each to make up a party of a hundred students, whose object would be to treat starvation cases in Holland under the auspices of the Red Cross.  18,476 total views

  • Michael Lyne

    Michael Lyne joined the fire service in Bodmin when he was just 15 years old in 1942. He says: “Cornwall was a massively busy place. They did a lot of the bombing of the U-Boats pens in France from St Eval. “There were heaps of Canadians Air Force Crews. The Americans were coming and going all the time. “We had eight operational air forces in Cornwall during the war. People seemed to think that nothing happened down here. “We had a training anti-aircraft establishment at Bude, then we came down the operations airfield at Davidstow, then St Merryn, the St Eval, St Mawgan, Perranporth, Nancekuke, and then Predannick on the…

  • Eric Trott – RAMC

    Social worker Andy Strowman would like the council to honour this ‘humble, kind and gentle man’ with a memorial plaque in Edward Street where he lived.  13,144 total views

  • James Norman Matthews

    James Norman Matthews – some photographs sent back to home while he was stationed abroad i.e. France, Antwerp Oct 1944, Brunswick West Germany Aug 1945. Assisted the liberation of Belsen POW camp. He was entitled to wear two cap badges – Royal Honourable Artillery.  14,855 total views

  • Charles Hall 113th DLI

    When Charles Hall was told his unit would be travelling behind enemy lines to take charge of a Nazi concentration camp, he could hardly have imagined the horrors he was about to encounter. Paul Willis, Northen Echo, meets a man who helped liberate Belsen.  20,121 total views

  • E W Blackbell (113th LAA)

    Blackbell, E W (Capt.) (113 LAA) Birth 17 Aug 1912 Sunderland, Durham, England Death 1981 Sunderland, Durham, England  14,796 total views