Nazi Guards Looted Food Sent to Jews in Belsen Camp, British Officer Testifies

The third day of the trial of Josef Kramer, Known as the “Beast of Belsen,” and 44 of his S.S. colleagues who are accused of torturing and murdering thousands of Jews and other internees at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, concluded today with the completion of the testimony of Bridadier H.L.Glyn Hughes, deputy medical chief of the British Second Army, who was the first medical officer to enter Belsen.

Brigadier Hughes, who began testifying yesterday, told the court that he had found a great stock of Red Cross packages containing meat extract, canned food and other food sent by Jewish organizations for Jews in the Belsen camp. The food parcels, he testified, had all been looted by Kramer, the Nazi director of the camp, and his subordinates.

Brigadier Hughes described the horrors he witnessed upon entering the camp immediately after the retreat of the German Army. “There were piles of corpses of varying sizes,” he testified. “The gutters were full of them. They dotted the camp. in the huts corpses lay in some bunks with sick persons too emaciated and weak to move. The floors were piled with bodies so thickly that one had to walk on them to move. One great open pit was half full of dead. In a great pile near the children’s compound was a stack containing thousands of dead.” He added that the inmates were not given any bread for two weeks before the camp was liberated, and no water at all for more than five days.