Liberation
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On April 15, 1945, British forces, including units of the British Second Army and the 11th Armoured Division, entered Bergen-Belsen and liberated the remaining prisoners. The sight that greeted the liberators was horrifying. They found tens of thousands of emaciated and diseased prisoners, along with thousands of unburied corpses strewn throughout the camp. The liberation…
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Dachau Concentration Camp was the first of the Nazi concentration camps established in Germany. It opened in 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, and it operated until its liberation by American troops in 1945. Situated just north of Munich, Dachau served as a model for other concentration camps that followed. Initially, Dachau held political…
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The liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945, marked a significant moment in the final months of World War II. Located near the German town of Gotha, Ohrdruf was a subcamp of the larger Buchenwald concentration camp. The camp’s discovery by the advancing United States Army not only revealed the atrocities committed…
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Liberation for Bergen-Belsen arrived on 15 April 1945. Major Dick Williams, one of the first British soldiers to enter and liberate the camp said, “It was an evil, filthy place; a hell on Earth.” The British comedian Michael Bentine, who took part in the liberation of the camp, wrote this on his encounter with Bergen-Belsen:“Millions…
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By mid-September 1944, the Allies had made substantial progress in their liberation of Western Europe following the successful Normandy landings in June. Operation Market Garden, launched on September 17, was a large-scale Allied offensive aimed at quickly advancing through the Netherlands, securing key bridges, and eventually entering Germany to end the war sooner. This operation…
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On September 18, 1944, American paratroopers entered Eindhoven, liberating the city. Their mission was not only to free the population but also to secure the advance route and the bridges over the River Dommel, ensuring they remained open for the approaching British ground forces. Citizens of Eindhoven, many dressed proudly in orange, lined the streets…
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Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands and one of the first settlements. It was also the first city to be liberated in World War 2. On 13 and 14 September 1944 it was the first Dutch city to be liberated by Allied forces of the US Old Hickory Division.. These are…
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On 4 May 1945, the German Admiral Von Friedeburg at Lüneburg surrendered to British Field Marshal Montgomery on behalf of the German troops in Northwest Germany, the Netherlands, Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark. On 5 May, Canadian General Charles Foulkes summoned the German Supreme Commander Johannes Blaskowitz to Hotel De Wereld in Wageningen to discuss the effect…
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s Allied forces closed in on Germany in early 1945, the SS began evacuating inmates from camps like Dachau in a series of forced marches, hoping to hide evidence of atrocities and prevent liberation by the Allies. Prisoners, already debilitated by starvation and disease, were forced to march dozens of miles in the brutal cold…
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When the gates of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mauthausen and other Nazi concentration camps were finally unshackled in 1945, the world watched as skeletal survivors stumbled out of hell. The war was ending, and freedom had come. But for thousands of victims, it came too late. These are the stories we don’t always hear—the stories of…
History of Sorts 