‘The True Physicians Here are the Padres’: British Christian Army Chaplains and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Abstract

Abstract When a senior medical officer summarised the work of army chaplains in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he said: ‘The true physicians here are the padres, and they are doing more good to the patients than anyone else’. Chaplains, however, have been largely absent from the extensive scholarship on Belsen. Similarly, widespread interest in post-Holocaust Christian–Jewish relations has ignored the accounts of those Christians who encountered the aftermath of the Holocaust in the liberation of the camps. This article shows that chaplains fulfilled a unique role at Belsen, providing pastoral care which encouraged survivors as they shared their stories. This process of listening was the first encounter of British Christian ministers with the realities of the Holocaust as experienced by its survivors. As a consequence, they differ from most contemporary British narratives of Belsen in their appreciation of the Jewishness of the experience: they largely recognised survivors as Jews and sought to understand the specific nature of Jewish suffering. Finally, this article shows that chaplains recorded their experiences and displayed a sensitive approach to survivor testimony, ensuring not only that a wider audience learned the truth of the liberation of Belsen, but that those accounts were defined by the experiences of the Jewish survivors themselves. The article concludes that the experience of Christian chaplaincy in the liberation of Belsen uncovers a singular example of Christian–Jewish encounter in the aftermath of the Holocaust, one in which Christian ministers demonstrated a profound care for survivors, their identities and their stories.