Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
In the Black Shadow
Michael Bentine, Dennis Norden and Eric Sykes, some of the funniest men in post-war British comedy, shared a terrible, haunting experience, witnesses to the first days and weeks of liberation at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
"The Ultimate Blasphemy"
Bentine, one of the first British officers to enter, described Belsen as “the ultimate blasphemy”. The camp became a symbol of the horror and inhumanity perpetrated by the Nazi regime, not least because the liberation was documented by Richard Dimbleby in his devastating broadcast as he entered the camp with the British 11th Armoured Division. Each year, the Holocaust slowly, inexorably, passes out of living memory into our collective memory, but the raw power of lived experience is lost.
Grasping Significance
Sometimes the memorialisation of terrible events becomes muddied by the passage of time, the immediacy of recent dreadful events, or the distraction of newer priorities. It becomes harder to retain what has become second or third-hand testimony. New generations may even find it inconvenient to remember. Those first-hand witnesses knew that it was imperative that our collective memory did not become clouded or diminished. Clarity can be helped if we are able to bring such huge, powerful events into our own orbit, not to diminish them in any way, but to be able to grasp their significance. Two individuals who bore witness to Belsen and are part of the heritage of Leeds Beckett, in their separate ways, tried to make sense of and pass on their terrible memories to us, generations far removed from that stark horror of Belsen.
Eric Taylor
Eric Taylor, Principal of Leeds College of Art and briefly Associate Director of Leeds Polytechnic, entered Belsen in April 1945. A Sergeant in the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, a front-line soldier, he was not an official war artist, but his response to what he saw was to draw and paint. The War Artists Advisory Committee invited him to submit his pictures. For Taylor, words could not express what he had witnessed. His haunting images depict individual survivors of starvation, disease and cruelty; they capture their stunned silence, broken in mind and body, as they contemplate the enormity of their loss and suffering.
Daphne Waite
Daphne Waite, a Vice Principal of the City of Leeds Training College, was a skilled linguist, especially in German, visiting the country in the 1930s. Her passion for German culture continued into her retirement when she planned to complete a PhD in German Education. During the war, she was recruited for the war effort because of her fluency in German and understanding of the culture. In the summer of 1945, she found herself interviewing and interpreting at Belsen. This harrowing experience greatly affected her outlook on life. In later years, she chose to share her experience with older pupils and students, many of whom remember the talks as both shocking and inspirational and an experience never forgotten.
Whom We Haunt
An old French proverb, obliquely hinted at by Andre Breton in his novel Nadja, says, “tell me whom you haunt, and I’ll tell you who you are”. An interpretation of this aphorism is that those we remember, memorialise, those ideas we keep alive, tell us about who we are. In forgetting, we run a terrible risk of repetition. We are, and should be, haunted and haunt the testimonies, the words, the images of Belsen.
