Last night we welcomed special guests to the launch of our latest exhibition, Traces of Belsen, with a chance to see this ground-breaking project first hand.
The exhibition explores the full story of the camp, little about which is known in Britain beyond its liberation by British forces 80 years ago this week.
The Director of the Library, Dr Toby Simpson OBE, welcomed guests and spoke about the importance of the Wiener’s collections, and of displaying them for free for those who wishes to learn from the remarkable stories we hold.
We heard from the curator of the exhibition, Dr Barbara Warnock, who described some of the artefacts on display including archaeological finds from the site of the camp, eyewitness testimony gathered by Library researchers in the years after the war, personal photograph albums and SS documents.
She also explained the motivation for the exhibition: to uncover the scarce evidence remaining of the camp to reveal lesser known aspects of its history, in particular its origins as a Soviet Prisoner of War camp, and its afterlife as a place where Displaced Persons rebuilt their lives in the aftermath of tragedy.
Guests heard from the Deputy German Ambassador to the UK, Karl-Matthias Klaus, who celebrated the Library’s collections on Belsen and the team’s work to engage the public in these vital stories.
We also had the honour to be joined by Renee Salt BEM, who survived Belsen, arriving in the final weeks of the war after being transported in a cattle truck from Hamburg. She spoke movingly about her experience, surviving the Łódź ghetto, Auschwitz, forced labour clearing bombsite rubble, and her eventual survival and return to Poland only to be faced with further antisemitism.
On arrival at Belsen Renee was separated from her mother, who at this point was too ill and wounded to work. Although she was saved by the arrival of British soldiers on 15 April1945, her mother died just 12 days after liberation. She described her feelings on first entering the camp: “We’d been through so much, this was something new, and horrifyingly different”.
Traces of Belsen is on display at the Library until 10 July 2025. A series of accompanying events will explore further stories and provide important context to the curation.
