Maj Benjamin George Barnett (63rd ATR)

Major Ben Barnett, one of the first British officers to arrive at Belsen, wrote: “There are no words in the English language that can give a true impression of the ghastly horrors of this camp.”
BARNETT, Maj Benjamin George (b 1912)
Born in 1912; 2nd Lt, 100 Army Field Bde, Territorial Army, 1936; Lt, 1939; Capt, 1939; Officer Commanding, 249 Battery, 63 Anti-Tank Regt, Oxfordshire Yeomanry, 1944-1946; Maj, 1946.

Ref 1
https://www.dw.com/en/bergen-belsen-survivors-warn-of-rising-anti-semitism-on-70th-anniversary-of-liberation/a-18409868

Ref 2
Papers relating to his military service, 1944-1945, principally comprising war diary including maps and photographs, Sep 1944-Jul 1945; copy of report on the liberation of Belsen written for the Director of Military Government by Lt Col R I G Taylor, Officer Commanding, 63 Anti Tank Regt, [1945]; orders relating to the occupation and administration of Belsen, from Brig General Staff of 8 Corps, British Liberation Army, April 1945; report on Belsen by Capt Barker, Royal Army Medical Corps, 63 Anti Tank Regt, Jun 1945; letter to British officers from a group of Czech women prisoners describing their treatment in Belsen, 1945; Barnett’s notes for a talk on Belsen, ND; photographs showing inmates and conditions in Belsen, 1945; newspaper cuttings relating to Victory in Europe Day, the liberation of Belsen and the Belsen trial, May-Oct 1945; ‘Report by the Supreme Commander to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the operations in Europe of the Allied Expeditionary Force, June 1944-May 1945’, issued by HMSO, 1946.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/688548c2-5747-3f51-949d-fc72cc6e8f7d

B Troop. 63rd ATR – Could that be Barnett in the centre of this photo?

 8,552 total views