--- title: Bergen-Belsen: Photos From the Liberation of the Notorious Camp, 1945 description: In April 1945, photographs and eyewitness accounts from camps like Bergen-Belsen gave the world a horrifying picture of Nazi depravity. canonical: https://time.com/3679103/at-the-gates-of-hell-the-liberation-of-bergen-belsen-april-1945/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-04-12T19:22:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:06:05.101Z og:title: At the Gates of Hell: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945 og:description: In April 1945, photographs and eyewitness accounts from camps like Bergen-Belsen gave the world a horrifying picture of Nazi depravity. og:url: https://time.com/3679103/at-the-gates-of-hell-the-liberation-of-bergen-belsen-april-1945/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt90d347579344e09f/69877b5fe20a8728a8a84a94/150122-bergen-belsen-17.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Bergen-Belsen 1945 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: At the Gates of Hell: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945 twitter:description: In April 1945, photographs and eyewitness accounts from camps like Bergen-Belsen gave the world a horrifying picture of Nazi depravity. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt90d347579344e09f/69877b5fe20a8728a8a84a94/150122-bergen-belsen-17.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # At the Gates of Hell: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945 by [Ben Cosgrove](/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Apr 12, 2013 7:22 PM CUT  Female prisoners in the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. Female prisoners in the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945.George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Apr 12, 2013 7:22 PM CUT Compared to the appalling number of men, women and children killed at the Nazi extermination camps—places like Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka and others where, cumulatively, millions perished—the death toll at the [Bergen-Belsen](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 "undefined") concentration camp in northwest Germany was (a horrible thing to say!) relatively small. More than a million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone; at Belsen, by most estimates, fewer than 100,000 died—from starvation and disease (typhus, for example), as well as outright slaughter. But in the spring of 1945, photographs and eyewitness accounts from the liberation of camps like Bergen-Belsen afforded the disbelieving world outside of Europe its first glimpse into the abyss of Nazi depravity. All these years later, after countless reports, books, oral histories and documentary films have constructed a terrifyingly clear picture of the Third Reich’s vast machinery of murder, it’s difficult to grasp just how shocking these first revelations really were. The most horrific rumors about what was happening to the Jews and millions of other “undesirables—Catholics, pacifists, homosexuals, Slavs—in Nazi-occupied lands paled before the reality revealed by the liberation of the camps. Here, seven decades after the April 1945 liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British troops, LIFE.com presents a series of photographs made at the camp by the great [George Rodger](http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31%5F10%5FVForm&ERID=24KL53ZWR0 "undefined") (later a founding Magnum member). In an issue of LIFE published a few weeks later, in which several of the pictures in this gallery first appeared, the magazine told its readers of a “barbarism that reaches the low point of human degradation.” --- > “” --- --- > “” --- In Rodger’s own typed picture captions, meanwhile, dated April 20, 1945, the photographer detailed what he had witnessed when he accompanied the British 11th Armoured Division (the fabled “Black Bull”) into the camp just days earlier. Somehow, the stark, almost telegraphic language of the notes carries more power—more _immediacy_—and are thus more terrifying than so many of the passionate, outraged articles and editorials that appeared in newspapers and on the radio in the weeks and months to come. Here are just a few examples: --- > “” --- --- > “” --- --- > “” --- --- > “” --- --- > “” --- Indelibly scarred by the savagery and suffering he confronted during World War II—in England during the Blitz; in war-torn Southeast Asia and Europe; and, especially, in Bergen-Belsen—George Rodger did not work as a war photographer again. He did, however, continue to travel and photograph around the world in the decades after the war—particularly in Africa, where he made some of his most celebrated pictures. By the time of his death in 1995, at the age of 87, Rodger was acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s indispensable photojournalists, and one of its greatest witnesses. --- _Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com_  A small boy strolls down a road lined with dead bodies near the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images   Hundreds of corpses on the ground beneath trees at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, April 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Dying men stretch out on a dirt bank behind one of the Bergen-Belsen barracks, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Male and female German SS soldiers forced to load corpses onto trucks under British guard at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Female SS soldiers fill a mass grave with corpses while under guard by British soldiers at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Female German camp guards unload a truck full of bodies of dead prisoners at Bergen-Belsen, April 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Annaliese Kohlmann, former Nazi female guard noted for her cruelty, Bergen-Belsen, 1944. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Dying women huddle on the ground behind the barbed-wire enclosure at Bergen-Belsen, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A British doctor uses DDT while delousing newly freed female prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  British doctors using DDT to delouse newly liberated prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration cam, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A British doctor administers delousing treatment of DDT up the skirt of an embarrassed-looking female prisoner at Bergen-Belsen, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Prisoners at the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A group of women at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony during World War II, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  New internees of the freshly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp included this pair of French brothers, Charles and Louis Perret, wearing white boots they took from the Germans, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Newly liberated prisoners wait on line for food at Bergen-Belsen, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Female prisoners in the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Corpses cover the ground at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Scene at Bergen-Belsen, 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass grave at Bergen-Belsen, April 1945. George Rodger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  The body of a dead inmate at Bergen-Belsen, photographed shortly after the liberation of the camp by Allied troop, April 1945. 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