Jersey Belsen survivor's account tells of mass graves and cannibalism

Thursday 31 March 2016

A Jerseyman’s harrowing account of life at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp has been published in documents released by the National Archives.

Harold Le Druillenec was the only British survivor of the death camp to give evidence at the Belsen trials – a fresh account of his experience has been released in a new batch of files about compensation claims against abuse by the Nazis.

He was a school teacher in Jersey at the time of the Occupation, and he and his sisters Louisa Gould and Ivy Forster were reported to the Nazi authorities for helping to shelter escaped Russian forced workers.

The three were found guilty - Ivy was too ill to be deported from the Island, Louisa died in the gas chambers at Ravensbruck, and Mr Le Druillenec was sent from camp to camp until he ended up at Belsen, arriving just days before it was liberated by British soldiers.

Mr Le Druillenec, who died in 1985, lost more than half his bodyweight during his ordeal and spent almost a year recovering from dysentery, scabies, malnutrition and septicaemia. Nevertheless, just months after being freed he gave evidence at a trial in which Josef Kramer, the Commandant of the camp, and 44 guards were accused of war crimes – 11 were executed, and 18 were imprisoned.

The papers released by the National Archive include 900 compensation applications filed by victims and their families in the 1960s, with thousands more to come. Mr Le Druillenec was eventually awarded £1,835 – worth around £30,000 today.

He was one of 1,015 victims to be paid compensation.

The files released today graphically describe mass graves and cannibalism at the Belsen camp.

He wrote: “All my time here was spent in heaving dead bodies into the mass graves kindly dug for us by 'outside workers' for we no longer had the strength for that type of work which, fortunately, must have been observed by the camp authorities.

“Jungle law reigned among the prisoners; at night you killed or were killed; by day cannibalism was rampant.

“The bulk of Auschwitz had been transferred to Belsen when I arrived and it was here that I heard the expression: 'There is only one way out of here - through the chimney!' (crematorium).

“Jungle law reigned among the prisoners; at night you killed or were killed; by day cannibalism was rampant.”