As I said, my Uncle was part of the British lot that liberated Belsen. I was lucky to get the one shot deal of him telling his story. He wasn't out to garner any sympathy from me, in fact, It was one of those moments where he'd kept quiet for over 50 years, and unleashed after we had attended a memorial service at Belsen. He recalled their fight in the area against Waffen SS troops, meeting those who had reached the main camp, not quite believing what they were saying until he got there himself. He talked about the aroma of death that could be smelled in the air two miles away that became an overpowering, cloying stench that stayed with him after they had moved on. The piles of emaciated corpses that lay there unburied, and the emaciated walking dead that begged for food. The children that appeared, wailing with hands outstretched for something to eat. An officer wordlessly handing his crew a couple of bottles of Scotch. Looking for guards who tried to disguise themselves as prisoners, but were easy to find as they were glowing with health, and the realisation that it was far more fun to shoot them in the legs or hips, rather than kill them outright. Being ordered to take your seat on a D-4, and move the empty husks of human beings into a large hole. This was a man who had not spoken (as far as I'm aware) to anyone, and was used to seeing dead bodies, or even creating them. As he said to me, that was not warfare, that was genocide.
[Emphasis mine]
