An Irish Jesuit priest serving as a chaplain with the British army was among the liberators of Bergen-Belson, the first Nazi concentration camp to be liberated on the Western Front during World War II. Father Michael Morrison was with the British and Canadian troops who entered the camp in western Germany, 72 years ago, on April 15, 1945. The liberators had no idea what theyd encounter when they entered Bergen-Belson. Sixty thousand people were squashed into a camp designed to hold 10, 000. The troops came upon hundreds of prisoners in mass graves and people suffering from severe malnutrition. Although there were no gas chambers at the camp, the horrid conditions led to the death of 50, 000 individuals between 1941 and 1945, including diarist Anne Frank, who died only three weeks before the camp was liberated. In the immediate aftermath of the liberation, Father Michael Morrison worked tirelessly to help the wounded and tend to those still alive in the camp, reported TheJournalreel about the camps liberation, said Bergen-Belsen was not a name one ever forgot and became a place of horror long before Auschwitz. Father Morrison was profoundly affected by what he witnessed at the camp. Conor Dodd, a historian at Glasnevin Cemetery, where Morrison is buried, said: It affected him for the rest of his life. He never quite got over it. After the war, Morrison briefly served as a parish priest in Australia before returning to Ireland. He died in 1973. * Originally published in 2017, updated in Aug 2024.
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/michael-morrison-nazi-concentration-camp