Letters from Belsen 1945: An Australian nurse's experiences with the survivors of war

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When British troops arrived at Beslen concentration camp in April 1945, they found 40,000 desperately ill prisoners who had been withheld food and water for a week, and 10,000 unburied bodies. Muriel Knox Doherty arrived as Chief Nurse with the task of creating a hospital, scrounging supplies and saving as many of the camp survivors as possible. In letters to her mother and friends at home in Australia, describes her experiences at Belsen in moving detail. She tells of the plight of Jewish survivors unable to return home, and the challenge of rebuilding their health and their self-respect. She is inundated with appeals from desperate families trying to find their loved ones among the camp survivors and the many displaced people at Belsen. On one particularly memorable day, she attends the Luneberg Trials as Belsen survivors gave evidence against war criminalsWhen British troops arrived at Beslen concentration camp in April 1945, they found 40,000 desperately ill prisoners who had been withheld food and water for a week, and 10,000 unburied bodies. Muriel Knox Doherty arrived as Chief Nurse, and in her letters to home, describes her experiences.

Author Bio

Muriel Knox Dougherty (1896-1988) was a leading figure in Australian nursing and nurse education, and author of one of the first Australian nursing textbooks, Modern Practical Nursing Procedures. Professor R. Lynette Russell AO was Foundation Dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Sydney and author of From Nightingale to Now: Nurse education in Australia. Judith Cornell AM was formerly Executive Director of the New South Wales College of Nursing.