The author of the report, a Dutch political prisoner, arrived in Bergen-Belsen on 10 February 1945 with a transport of about 1,000 prisoners from Sachsenhausen. He was to be executed because the SS had found out that, as head of the “Political Department” in Sachsenhausen, which had the task to register newly arrived prisoners, he had saved many prisoners from execution by substituting their names for others who were already dead.

Of the prisoners the SS had singled out for execution, most had been shot in Sachsenhausen in the “Industriehof”. But the executions were interrupted by an air raid alarm, and the last group of 21 - whose hames began with one of the last letters of the alphabet - were sent by Erdmann, the commander of Sachsenhausen with other prisoners to Bergen-Belsen to be executed there. The German journalist Rudolf Kuestermeyer was a member of this group.

In Belsen typhus was rampant. The SS therefore confined itself to guarding the camp but did not enter it. The registration of new arrivals was done by prisoners. Some knew Zwart, who had helped them in Sachsenhausen. In return, they arranged for Zwart's group to be “administratively dead“ by listing them as having died on the transport while giving them names of prisoners who had really died. Most of the prisoners died from typhus or starvation, prisoners who were allowed to get parcels were often murdered by the block elders who then kept the parcels. There were cases of cannibalism.

Shortly before the Allies arrived, when the SS regime was already disintegrating, Zwart was elected senior camp leader. When the British arrived, on 15 April he asked them to feed the prisoners with boiled rice. Instead they got corned beef, and some prisoners slaughtered the pigs of the SS and distributed the meat. As a result, 4,000 - 5,000 prisoners died from overeating during the first days after the liberation. More over, the British left the Hungarian SS, who had guarded the camp, on duty with their arms for three days. Not until they had killed 41 people by firing into the camp could the British be persuaded to disarm them. Neither the British, with the exception of Derrick Sington, nor an American film team which arrived soon afterwards, had any idea about the nature of the SS and the National Socialist regime.

Report describes the infinite kindness of the Dutch. Anti-Jewish laws in Holland, 1941 - 1943. 60% of the Jews who at first succeeded to live underground were caught later. “Sperrstempel”. Mrs B., her husband and their two children are sent from Vught to Westerbork (good hospital in this camp which is run by Jews) and deported to Bergen Belsen in March1944. Here it proved an advantage that Mrs B. was British by birth. Exchange Camp : 5 categories of privileged Jews. Shameful conditions in the other camps. “Presstempel”. “Sperrstempel”. When finally the B. family was sent off, Mr B. died on the train and their young daughter died some days later, after their liberation by the Russians. Mrs B. is now living in London with her son.

The author, with her husband and small daughter, was taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on a transport of 220 people from Warsaw. All these people were prospective emigrants to the USA or Palestine who had been promised by the German authorities that they would be allowed to leave. They were, instead, kept at Belsen for twenty-two months. Conditions were primitive and dirty; food was insufficient, medical services were quite inadequate. When the author's husband fell ill, he lost so much weight that he weighed only 35 kilos in the end. When the Allied Armies approached, a train was ordered to transport 2,500 inmates eastward beyond the river Elbe; American tanks, however, liberated the prisoners in time. These experiences are described in great detail.

F. Joseph and his wife were living in Holland when they were arrested one night in July 1943, taken to the Schouwburg in Amsterdam, to Westerbork and to Bergen-Belsen on the way to their destination Theresienstadt (p.1-5). Hauptsturmführer Seidel (p.5, 13). Joseph describes forced labour, twelve hours days, debating club and the teaching of children at Theresienstadt (p.8-9). The report also includes details when a thousand newcomers from Holland arrived in January 1944 (p.12). A lucid description of conditions and life in the Ghetto at Theresienstadt as known through many other reports, but is especially valuable through its vivid and thoroughly detailed representation.

Joseph also describes the transport of 5,000 men to Auschwitz (p.28-33), Auschwitz itself (p.33-43) including homosexual criminals (p.36-38), suicides (p.38-39), lack of water (p.40, 52), weekly selections (p.41-42) and the murder of 200 children (p.42).

Also included are details on the transport to Buchenwald Aussenkommando (p.43). Meuselwitz, Hasag, manufacturing the ‘Panzerfaust’. Volksdeutsche SS, not recruited voluntarily (p.47-48). Medical help (p.48, 51-53). As hairstyle of bush-negroes was forced on the prisoners, the population successfully protested (p.55-56). Bombing in January and February (p.50-56) brought work in the factory to an end; evacuation of the labour camp in April. The prisoners were carried around in a train for days and nights without food, bombed by the Allies, shot by the camp leader. The author escaped, was caught again, unwashed, unshaven, in rags, nearly starved to death and ill, was taken back to the rest of the transport of 120, all of them moribund (p.60). He managed to get into a hospital for an operation, was liberated and joined his wife in the Sammellager of Falkenau, after they had not heard from each other for eight months.

A personal report by Kaete S.J. on 3½ years mainly spent in concentration camps belonging to the Riga Ghetto, in the Ghetto itself (p.45), and finally Fuhlsbuettel prison (Hamburg) and Kiel concentration camp. The author, not yet 20 and just married, was deported with her husband, a Jewish schoolteacher from Wuerzburg (p.2), on 27 November 1941. Actually they went voluntarily in order to accompany a transport of his schoolchildren (p.98) who disappeared immediately to "Duenamuende", a place which as a matter of fact existed but was never reached by a transport.

The report is dedicated to “Gori”, Mrs S.J.’s husband, from whom she was separated in April 1945, just before she and a few survivors of the Ghetto were taken to Sweden by the Red Cross. After a short time of hope against hope Mrs S.J, came to know that he had died in Bergen-Belsen of typhoid fever, within 10 days of their separation. This is a moving and instructive report on conditions and life in the eastern camps.