On April 29th, 1945, the prisoner-of-war camp Sandbostel was liberated by British troops (Guards Armoured Division and 51. Highland Division). If you remember some of the pages above, you might think, that it wasn’t so bad at all in the Camp, where the inmates did play soccer and theatre. The photos beneath and the letter, written by Major C. Nield Adams, who was present at the liberation, and published in the Hertfordshire Mercury on June 8th, 1945 show the reality: „I#ve seen in this camp men in such a bad physical shape, that one could see, literally, every bone in their bodies. Every part of the spine was prominent like cotton spindles, scapulae and claviculae were covered by no flesh at all and the hollows on every side of the neck could hold half a pint. The ribs were prominent too and the part, where the belly could be found was an indentation, so deep, that the skin did seem to rest directly on the spine. It was virtually unbelievable, that human beings could become such skeletons and still live. The Camp’s stench was absolutely horrible and you couldn’t get it out of your nose for a long time. See, there didn’t exist any sort of sanitary installations and no water for washing, so the men had to vomit and relieve themselves where they stood. The new arrivals had to do this outside, but the huts were locked during the nights, so the inmates had to answer the calls of nature in the huts, that’s where they did live and eat (the scarce food they did receive). So the widespread appearance of dysentery was obvious.

When our men did occupy the Camp, they had to climb over death and dying, to weak to move; they found them in their hundreds in own and foreign excrements, their bodies were sticky with these and please remember,many of those were highly cultivated, civilised men bevor coming to this camp. The dilapidation and torture of body and soul they had to go through to reach this terrible state, lower than animals, we can scarcely imagine. (....) I’ve seen men in their twenties reduced by the maltreatment given to them to wrinkled, small apes, looking like 90 years of age. Many have completely lost their memory and don’t even know their name. It‘ s questionable, if a majority will regain their complete physical and mental capabilities.(...)

Concludingly I have to point out, that these photos were not taken at Auschwitz or Bergen Belsen, but in the prisoner-of-war camp Sandbostel.