Commenting on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Susan Carruthers, Professor of International History at The University of Warwick said:

“Entering Bergen-Belsen on April 15 1945, British troops encountered not only thousands of unburied corpses, but also a typhus epidemic annihilating the camp’s survivors. Overcrowded, emaciated, and freezing, some inmates had stripped clothing from corpses for warmth, ignoring the risk of infection from the disease-carrying lice burrowed into the seams. Others, like Anne Frank, were so terrified of catching the deadly disease that they had gone naked.

“Medical personnel experienced a dire shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) as they struggled to triage survivors, bury the bodies, and burn infected garments. In a foreshadowing of the 2020 COVID PPE crisis, where bin bags were pressed into action as gowns, the Belsen liberators had to improvise protection with whatever they could find. British medical students appropriated German Wehrmacht uniforms to wear, Red Cross nurses swapped regulation skirts for battle dress trousers, and the medical corps adopted a proto ‘hazmat’ suit with a drawstring hood. Everyone in the camp was thoroughly doused in DDT, which later proved to be carcinogenic.

“In a calculus of expendability, captured German SS personnel were forced to carry the thousands of bodies to mass graves. Most did so with uncovered mouths and bare hands. Belsen’s liberators felt few ethical qualms about exposing prisoners to the risk of infection. Twenty SS guards died of typhus before their war crimes trial could be held. Seven British medical students also succumbed to infection, but survived.

“At Belsen, as in 2020, lack of protective apparel carried entirely predictable consequences.”