“It was like going into a zoo – they were staring out at us, wondering whether we were Russian, American, British, Polish... Nobody said a word.”
For Ian Forsyth, remembering the prisoners of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after his Comet tank arrived there on April 15, 1945, is always painful.
Aged just 21 at the time, he and his comrades had spent days fighting to make inroads into Nazi territory following the Normandy landings.
When they reached Bergen-Belsen’s perimeter, they had no idea about the camp or what they would encounter.
“We had been stopped for about two hours,” says the 96-year-old, who now lives in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire.
“We had been firing at traffic going up and down the road and then we were told to stop firing, which was something strange.”
He still has nightmares about what he saw next.
“There were bodies lying everywhere, rotting,” he says.
“Some had clothes removed from them, because the other folk were cold, and they were lying there naked.
“Those who were still alive were lined up inside the barbed wire fence.
“And the folk at the back, when we threw food over the fence, which we were told not to do, crushed forward, bumping the folk at the front.
“Those prisoners, they did not know who we were. Most of them had given up hope.”
On Wednesday, Mr Forsyth joined thousands across Europe and the world to remember the 75th anniversary of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation.
The first Nazi death camp to be taken by British troops, it originally functioned as a prisoner of war facility when it was established in 1940 in northern Germany.
In total, more than 50,000 prisoners were killed there or died later. Conditions inside were appalling, particularly in the last months of the war, with diseases such as typhus and diphtheria claiming a huge number of lives.
“We were told not to open the gates and to let nobody out because of the infections,” recalls Mr Forsyth.
“There was everything in that camp.”
The tank’s front gunner on liberation day was a German Jew who had escaped to live with a family in Ayrshire thanks to the “Kindertransport” rescues that took place before the outbreak of the Second World War.
His mother and father were murdered at Auschwitz.
“He was not allowed to be part of the soldiering as such, we realised, until later on, when we began to run out of recruits and he came in as a front gunner,” says Mr Forsyth.
“I can’t remember his name. He was in the tank when we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. It was a terrible thing for him to see, knowing his mum and dad had been killed at Auschwitz.”
Mr Forsyth didn’t get a chance to discuss Bergen-Belsen’s liberation with his comrade.
The day after they moved away from the camp, their tank was hit by a shell and the gunner was sent away to be treated for a shrapnel injury.
“I don’t know if he was blinded or what happened,” says Mr Forsyth, “because he disappeared to hospital and was taken off the books.”
And yet, he adds, the moral significance of fighting alongside him on the tank is clear.
“We had two Englishmen, an Irishman, a Jew and myself, who was Scottish.
“We had a very mixed crew and one of the things I emphasise now is that nobody ever asks to be born white or black, or into a religion. That all just happens. We’re no better or worse than the person who’s a different colour or religion.”
Today, Mr Forsyth, who became an engineering teacher after he left the army, gives talks to school pupils in an attempt to promote his message of solidarity, equality and compassion.
“I have made it my job to talk about it,” he adds.
However, Mr Forsyth admits the current state of social and world affairs gives little cause for hope, adding his feeling on the 75th anniversary of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation is largely one of sorrow.
“We don’t seem to have moved on,” he says.
“There are still concentration camps in the world – and hatred.
“We still condemn other people because they are a different colour, because their religion is not the same as ours. It’s so stupid.”
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