Opening the gates of Hell by Mark Hodkinson

‘The untold story of Herbert Kenny, the man who discovered Belsen’ is the factual story of an energetic young man who joined up to fight in WWII determined to do what was needed and get the job done. He knew the job was tough, he saw soldiers maimed or killed in huge numbers. But battle-hardened as he became, nothing prepared him for the day he led a British battalion through the gates of Belsen concentration camp. The horrors he encountered there left him scarred for life. It is hard even to read about the suffering and degradation of the prisoners who were little more than the ‘living dead’ surrounded by rotting corpses and filth.

Hodkinson’s well researched account reveals the impact on a soldier who was so shocked by what he encountered, the experience was smothered and never revealed to family members, but not without consequences for his mental health and his relationships, something we would now recognise as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It is an account of an unimaginable descent into hell, something that just defies comprehension as to how human beings could treat their fellow men in such a way. Attempts to explain the Nazi attitude towards those they saw as sub-human just collapse before the undeniable feeling that it was just innately wrong.

The last chapter of the book is titled ‘If all good people unite and speak out’. It is a plea that all forms of discrimination and persecution be challenged, so that the past does not repeat itself, a plea for people to learn to live together in peace.

Themes: Non-fiction, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, World War II, PTSD, Trauma.

Helen Eddy