Interesting article. On reading your post I thought I had pictures of Belsen in my collection but turns out they were of Vught, a concentration camp in the Netherlands. I used some photos of it for one of my books. At left are the IWM images by a British war photographer named Laing, showing the electric fence, gallows, and portable crematorium for burning bodies. Vught was not explicitly an extermination camp, so they didn't need the large industrial crematoria of the death camps.
The article made me think of these images, particularly the soldier who still remembers the terrible sights of Belsen. At right are photos from a private collection - a platoon commander from the Calgary Highlanders had donated all his pictures to our regimental archives. Included in them was this road sign to the camp, as well as a posed snap by the camp crematorium. Sgt. Laing had taken a photo of this oven with the human bones lying in front, these intrepid Canadians seem a bit more blasé about the thing - but of course people deal with traumatic experiences in different ways. Lieutenant McKenzie, at centre, is the source of the photos. I talked to him on the phone once when I was talking about using his photos for the book. I never did ask him about the crematoria photo. Feels like a missed opportunity now but I'm not sure how I would have put it into words.
www.theguardian.com
