London medical students who assisted at Belsen

In early April 1945, at the request of the British Army, the British Red Cross and the War Office called for 100 volunteer medical students from nine London teaching hospitals to assist in feeding starving Dutch children who had been liberated from German occupation by advancing Allied forces.

However, in the meantime, British troops had liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the students were diverted there on the day they were due to travel to the Netherlands.

The students were tasked with taking over one or two of the 200 camp huts each, with the responsibility of cleaning and feeding the survivors and supervising a fair distribution of food.

The Imperial War Museum holds a number of the students' letters and diaries which were a source for Ben Shephard's 2005 book After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945.

Student Michael Hargrave described in his diary that day that there were "some very faked photographs of me shaking hands with the Dean - supposed to be saying goodbye".

However, Belsen, in Germany, had in the interim been liberated by British troops and a request for extra help was made upon realising the extent of the problems there.

[8] Initially, the role of the students was to take over one or two of the 200 huts each, with the responsibility of getting them cleaned (human laundry) and supervising the feeding of and fair distribution of food to the inmates.

[3][8] Some of the challenges the students faced were reported by student Thomas Gibson, who disclosed the difficulties in caring for people when medicine and adequate nursing help was lacking, on the background of the dilemma of how “to explain to a Pole who speaks little French”, and how difficult it was “to give a course of sulphonamide to a Russian with erysipelas who only speaks Russian".

[20] Michael Hargrave, in his journal, described the human laundry, assembled in two adjacent stables where 17 tables were each surrounded by four German nurses, who washed the inmates, covered them in DDT and then wrapped them in clean towels before they were transported again.

[26] Bart's student Andrew Dossetor was hospitalised with typhus,[27] as too was John Hancock from The London,[28] who was later cared for by Horace Evans.

[4][15] One newspaper reported that year, that 21 cases of typhus were diagnosed in England, seven of which were volunteer medical students returning from Belsen.

[31] Meiklejohn, who was responsible for administering the "starvation mixture", paid tribute to them[32] and majors A. P. Prior and E. M. Griffin gave particular thanks to students D. G. A. Westbury and J.

[14] In 2006, St Mary's student, Andrew B. Matthews' story was told in the Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.

[35] The operation was also portrayed in the 2007 feature-length drama titled The Relief of Belsen in which Alex Paton says "in my hut there were no deaths today, sir".