Clothing can Kill. So, Too, Can the Absence of Personal Protective Equipment. For Decades, The Medical Establishment Has Undersood the Role of Fabric in Both Spreading Contagion and Guarding Against ITS Transmission – But Never With Greater Urgency Than 80 years ago.
On April 15 1945, British Tooops Liberated BERGEN-BELSEN Concentration Camp Near Celle in Northern GERMANY. Shocking Scenes Awited Behind the Barbed Wire.
On Entry, British Personnel Found An Epidemic of Typhus Decimating The Camp’s Survival Population. Thousands of Unburied CorpsesAppallingly OverCrowded HUTS, The Absece of Running Water and Chronic Emaciation Contiableeded to the Rapid Spread of this Louse-Borne Disease. So Too Did Unwashed Garments InTo Which Lice Burrowed and DePosITEDTAR Contaminated Faeces.
For Warmth, Some Camp Inmates Removed Clothing from Corpses, Heedless of the Danger of Contagion. Others featured information so Acutely that they is unclothed rackher Than Risk Contamination. Anne Frank Died, Just Weeks Before The Camp’s Liberation, in a State of Naked Terror.
David bagnall / Alamy Stock Photo
For Military and Medical Personnel, Burying Bodies and Burning Garments Was Imberative, Along With Tricing Survivors and Moving the Fittest from the Camp’s Corpse-Strewn Huts to A Hastily Establised Hospital Area. To Transform a site of Mass Death INTO A Place of Recovery WasnT Easy. Staff Lacked Supplies of every Sort, Substituting Newspace for Mackintosh Sheeting and Commandeering Dog Bowls for Use as Bedpans.
Protective Clothing was also in Desperately Short Supply. There, Too, Improvisation Was the Order of the Day. Around 100 British Medical Students DRAFDED INTO Action at Belsen SPORTED A Motley Assemblage of BRITISH Military and Appropriated German Wehrmacht Apparel. They, like everyone else in the camera, we Liberally sprayed with DDT. This PESTICIDE WAS LATER Proven to Be Carcinogenic.
Female British Red Cross Workers Modified their Uniforms, Ditching Regulation Skirts. “I always go About in Slacks and Battle Dress, TROSERS BEINING A Greater Protection Against the Lose!” Margaret Ward Wrote Home to Her Mother with Forced Bravado.
Meanwhile, Members of the Royal Army Medical CorpsBetter Provisioned Than Anyone Else at Belsen, WORE “Typhus Suits” as they stretchered patiences from the Huts to the Hospital. Thesefits – Complete With Drawstring Hoods, Gauntlets and Gaiters, But No MASKS – Help Keep Contagion at Bay, Though their alien APEARANCE Terified Some Patiences.
British Authorites “Solved” their Protective Equipment Crisis at Belsen by Compleming Capture German Ss Personnel to Undertake the Most Dangerous Work. Sometimes, Prisoners Were Given Rubberised Capes. But More often, as numerous photographs Taken by British Military Photographies Attest, GERMAN Prisoners Handled Corpses With Any Protection at All.
Dressed in their ss uniforms, german men and Women set to work (Under Armed Guard) Removing Piles of Contaminated Cluting and Dead Bodies from the Huts. With uncovered mouses and bare homes, they carried corpses to Mass Graves.
In April and May 1945, Anti-Nazi Feelings Ran Undrestables High Among Allied Personnel, Particularly Those Who Just Participated in the Camps’ Liberation. Found of Anything Ethiolyly Wrong with the Decision to Expose German Prisoners to A High Risk of Information.
War Crimes TrialsWith the Prospect of Execution for Defendants Found Guilty, AWAIRED SS Prisoners. Forcing GERMAN CAMP Personnel to Confront the Deadly Consequences of Their Actions – in the Most Vision Way Possible – Struck Most Uniform Medons As an Entirely Warranted Form of Retribution. A Mural Corrective for Ss Prisoners Was Also A Medical Expendient Made Necessary by the Camp’s Directage of Protective Equipment.
At belsen, the consequences were predictable. Seven of the British Medical Students Contracted Typhus, Though None Seemingly Died of the Disease.
The BRUNT WAS BORNE by The Captured Enemies. Reuters Reported on June 28 1945 That 20 SS Guards Had “Died of Typhus Before Their Trials by the War Crimes Court Coup Be held”, adding that it was “belied that they came the conditions when They was forced to bussy the body of some of the prisoners. ”
Meanwhile, Belsen’s Survivors Urgently Required Garments and Footwear. Retributive Justice Played A Role here Too. BRITISH Military Personnel Orded GERMAN CIVILIANS in the Environments of the Camp to Surrender Clothing, Shoes and Bedding for Use by Survivors. Here was postwar Redress at its Most Literal. People Stripd of So Much by the Third Reich Welf Beife Life Anew in Apparel Remove from Gemsans.
