Day 6

"There is no such thing as your own opinion when it comes to official military orders. This is where comprehension ceases. So there are people who will murder and torture under 'orders', who will gladly waive their human dignity, because, to them, the 'order' is above all morality." Who is to blame?

Bergen Belsen. It's a beautiful spring day, the thick grove of trees contain every shade of green imaginable and as you glance through the tall glass windows that line one wall you get a glimpse of blue sky or the occasional lazy cloud. The perfect silence is punctuated only by a never ending chorus of bird song and a the rustle of leaves as a slight wind moves quietly through the park. There are long narrow mounds of earth, two in the foreground and many more scattered as far as the eye can see. They are covered in new spring wildflowers but they belie the truth of what lies underneath and what human beings can do to one another when morality is lost.

Over 50,000 people died in this now seemingly ideallic place - 35,000 in the six weeks prior to its liberation by the British in 1945.

Among them was Anne Frank and her sister Margot who both died, probably of starvation and typhoid, within weeks of the liberation. The images I have seen here today will remain with me all my life, most of them incomprehensible to the human mind. When the British liberated Bergen Belsen on the 15th April 1945, they found fields of dead bodies, tens of thousands of them lying where they died. The stench must have been horrific and existing in amongst the corpses were breathing corpses, skeletal bodies, their gender almost indeterminable. Many more died in the days following liberation from Typhus and previous maltreatment. There are not words to describe the scene adequately or the process the allies had to take to bury the dead in mass graves but under each long mound lie the remains of 1000 or sometimes 5000 unidentifiable humans.

The video testimonial from the survivors makes you want to weep, not only for their experience but for what feels like hopelessness for the future. Have we changed or learnt at all or does fear turn us back to our basest animal selves, capable of the most unbelievable intolerance and cruelty. I previously believed that human beings are by nature inherently good, capable of great love and compassion but do I believe it's the stronger half of our nature? After today I'm not sure.

Although this was not the only thing we did today, I feel this entry should be dedicated to our experience at this extraordinary place.