Survivors of the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and their families gathered at the site in northern Germany yesterday (April 27) to officially commemorate the 80th anniversary of its liberation by British troops.
Representatives of victims’ associations and the military took part in the ceremony along with the British deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner who gave a speech.
Also in attendance was John Wood, from East Grinstead, who attended with AJEX (Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen) to honour his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Berney who was one of the first British officers at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. He also testified in the Belsen trial.
John Wood with his father, Leonard Berney In her speech, Angela Rayner quoted Leonard’s memory of arriving at the camp: “None of us who entered the camp that day had any warning of what we were about to see or had ever experienced anything remotely like it before. I remember being completely shattered.”
John said: “Suddenly I heard my dad being quoted by Angela Rayner – it was incredible. He would have been so proud to have been quoted by her and she gave my dad international exposure.”
Read more: Major Leonard Berney’s son on Belsen concentration camp
Leonard, who attended Brighton College, was Jewish and was horrified to see “thousands of bodies of his own kind strewn across the camp”.
When British soldiers arrived at the camp on April 15, 1945, thousands of bodies lay unburied around the camp and some 60,000 starving and mortally ill people were packed together without food, water or basic sanitation. Many were suffering from typhus, dysentery and starvation.
John Wood, with Rachel Riley, who was also in attendance (Image: John Wood) John said: “In 1975, when I was 15, he suddenly told me the whole story. I was so shocked to discover my dad was connected to a really grisly bit of history.
“He started talking about it more because he was really irked by Holocaust deniers. He couldn’t believe anyone could deny what he had seen. Others were so traumatised by being anywhere near it, they couldn’t ever speak about it.”
During his lifetime, Leonard, who died in 2016, featured in two documentaries about the Holocaust and in 2015 he published a memoir to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust.
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