Life is not all smiles, in fact if you believe Buddhists, life is suffering. I think we all have periods of our lives when we can relate to that.

We experience bad things, this is only natural, although who can say that they experience pain (physical or psychological). This week I decided to go back to a place I went to as a child and never really understood, Belsen, one of the Nazi concentration camps of WWII.

Now to put this in context, I used to live near to Belsen as a child growing up in a forces environment, but as a child you should not understand these things (sadly this is not the case for all children). Going back to the new museum (since I was a child), I was initially shocked by the museum, it felt cold, impersonal, forbidding. As I spent time in there, the more I understood it.

My wife’s Grandfather served in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War and was one of the first to enter Belsen. As a keen amateur photographer who had his own kit, he was requested to take some photographs of what he saw, such was the dis belief of what they did see, there must have been a real fear that the outside world would simply not believe it. Sadly he suffered the effects of what he witnessed for the rest of his life. Many of the photographs and negatives were destroyed on the advice of a psychiatrist in the 60’s or 70’s. A few did survive and were given to the Imperial War Museum together with the camera they were taken on.

On reflection as you see the exhibits, the photos, the artifacts later discovered, it becomes clear. How can you soften this place, no matter how uncomfortable you make the museum, it CAN never be as dreadful as it was for these inmates.

I will always remember the story told to me by my Grandfather in law, on entering the camp there was a young girl, sat near the abandoned gates, malnourished and to weak to even stand. By the time he walked past her again a couple of hours later, she was dead.

Part of the exhibition (that does not feel like the right way to describe it), the memorial, is a video exhibit filmed by the AFPU (Army Film & Photography Unit), the fore runners of our existing trade of RLC photographers. The video is harrowing to see, as it shows the reality that made me a little uneasy, watching the dead being dragged around in ceremoniously by a limb only to be dumped in huge ditches. I am realistic enough to understand that due to the sheer scale of the problem, it had to be dealt with so quickly as the stench of death must have been almost too much to bear.

Sadly it would be at least a little bit comforting to know that as a result of these atrocities, similar events would be avoided, but alas, this has been proven not to be the case.
Even more disturbing I think is the groups that deny that these events have been fabricated, they never happened. I don’t understand that even with the weight of evidence in still and video imagery, there can be any doubt, but it makes me wonder what motivates this denial, or the continued refusal to accept the worst in human behavior. Whist that continues, should we continue to accept these situations? How do we, as a species stop it?