THE MAN WHO FOUND BELSEN

SOLDIER STRUGGLED TO LIVE WITH THE HELL HE DISCOVERED

- LEE GRIMSDITCH

AN ‘unimaginable darkness’ met the eyes of one unsuspecting soldier from Manchester who pushed open the gates and walked into an infamous Nazi concentration camp.

In April 1945, the total defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany in Europe was only three weeks away. The Allied forces were advancing through northern mainland Europe on multiple fronts and the decimated German Army was in retreat.

Herbert Kenny was a young soldier with the British Army and part of the 35th Coy RASC (Royal Army Service Corps). As an army despatch rider with the liberating forces, he was the first man to stumble across Belsen death camp.

What Herbert saw that day caused him such anguish that he kept it to himself for 40 years. Herbert only broke his silence on the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Belsen in 1985.

In May 1985, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited the site of the former Belsen concentration camp to mark the 40th anniversary of its liberation by British forces. Mark Hodkinson was a young reporter working for the Middleton and North Manchester Guardian.

The reporter had picked up a letter that had arrived at the newspaper offices written by 72-year-old Herbert Kenny. The title was at the top of several pages of typed correspondence: ‘THE ENTRY OF THE FIRST BRITISH SOLDIER INTO BELSEN’.

Mark quickly realised the letter had been written by the man claiming to be the very first soldier to whom the German Chancellor had referred. This led to the reporter contacting Herbert and visiting him in his Middleton maisonette for an interview.

The story appeared in Friday’s edition of the newspaper on May 10, 1985, under the headline, ‘The man who found Belsen’.