British soldier Bernard Levy, who was just 19-years old when he entered Bergen-Belsen in 1945, has died at the age of 96.
The Jewish corporal took part in helping evacuate the survivors from the concentration camp after it was liberated, the UK Jewish News reported.
He also processed German war criminals, deciding who was guilty and would face judgment at the Belsen trial in 1945, and who would be send home.
When the war ended, Levy returned home to Hull and worked for his father’s menswear firm.
In 2015, upon returning to Bergen Belsen for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp, Levy said: “There was barbed wire everywhere. Chaos and bodies. They looked like skeletons. There were great white clouds of DDT [disinfectant], because everybody coming out was being deloused, so my greatest memory is standing there, doing what we can.”
“We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Bernard Levy. Following the liberation of Belsen by the British army, sorting the living from the dead became Bernard’s responsibility,” Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told the Jewish News. “The experience stayed with him and he didn’t speak about the horrors he saw for 70 years.”