The Relief Of Belsen

It was April 1945, two weeks before the end of the war, when a British ambulance unit was diverted from frontline battle to handle a crisis behind enemy lines. An outbreak of typhus in a nearby prison camp had prompted a local truce. That camp was Bergen-Belsen. The arriving British thought it would be a straightforward matter but they were utterly unprepared for the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe they faced. 60,000 inmates of the Belsen concentration camp - dying of starvation, disease and despair.

Under the guidance of Brigadier Glyn Hughes (Corin Redgrave), heroic 34-year-old Lt Col James Johnston (Iain Glen) is put in charge of the relief effort. With a core team of just eight doctors and eight nurses - plus Jewish dentist Dr Bimko (Frog Stone) and English volunteer nurse Jean McFarlane (Jemma Redgrave) - he calls on the support of an international team of experts, students, inmates, soldiers and POWs to work together to rehabilitate and evacuate the inmates.

This is the inspiring and extraordinary story of one of the most heroic medical relief operations in European history. Using scripted drama, testimony and extensive news footage from the 'horror camp', The Relief of Belsen depicts the desperate struggle of the British-led medical team to bring the camp's starving inmates back from the brink of death., It was April 1945, two weeks before the end of the war, when a British ambulance unit was diverted from frontline battle to handle a crisis behind enemy lines. An outbreak of typhus in a nearby prison camp had prompted a local truce. That camp was Bergen-Belsen. The arriving British thought it would be a straightforward matter but they were utterly unprepared for the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe they faced. 60,000 inmates of the Belsen concentration camp - dying of starvation, disease and despair.

Under the guidance of Brigadier Glyn Hughes (Corin Redgrave), heroic 34-year-old Lt Col James Johnston (Iain Glen) is put in charge of the relief effort. With a core team of just eight doctors and eight nurses - plus Jewish dentist Dr Bimko (Frog Stone) and English volunteer nurse Jean McFarlane (Jemma Redgrave) - he calls on the support of an international team of experts, students, inmates, soldiers and POWs to work together to rehabilitate and evacuate the inmates.

This is the inspiring and extraordinary story of one of the most heroic medical relief operations in European history. Using scripted drama, testimony and extensive news footage from the 'horror camp', The Relief of Belsen depicts the desperate struggle of the British-led medical team to bring the camp's starving inmates back from the brink of death.

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