Held as part of our Traces of Belsen exhibition events series.

In April 1945, when the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated, British and Canadian forces arrived on scene to provide support, to bear witness, and to document the crimes. They were overwhelmed, understaffed, and left without adequate supplies, equipment, and medicine. Their encounters at the camp were haunting, transformative experiences that forever changed their lives.

This talk will explore emotions present in liberator narratives of Belsen, including anger and disgust. This research complicates our understanding of the reactions of Allied soldiers to, and actions during, liberation.

About the speaker

Dr. Mark Celinscak is the Louis and Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and the Executive Director of the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is the author of Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp (2015), winner of a Vine Award for Non-Fiction, and Kingdom of Night: Witnesses to the Holocaust (2022), winner of a Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Holocaust literature.

He is also the co-editor of Artistic Representations of Suffering: Rights, Resistance, and Remembrance (2021), as well as the forthcoming Global Approaches to the Holocaust: Memory, History, and Representation (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) and Two Roses (University of Toronto Press, 2026). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of History and currently serves as co-chair of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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