Sixties Fan
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- Mar 6, 2017
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Some echoes of 7th October in Israel when large numbers of ordinary Gazan civilians also joined Hamas’s killing spree.
On 8th April 1945 a freight train carrying 4,000 concentration camp prisoners to Belsen stopped at Celle, Germany en route. During an allied air strike, an ammunition train nearby was hit and the secondary explosions killed & wounded some of the prisoners and destroyed much of the train (photo shows the rail yard after the bombing).
Surviving prisoners fled into the town or away to the west, fired at by the SS as they went. As soon as the air raid ended the SS as well as ordinary Celle locals gave chase. According to some estimates up to 1,000 prisoners who escaped the train were murdered during what became known locally as the “Celle Hare Hunt”.
The remaining survivors were marched 25 km to Belsen. Some were left to die en route, some dumped in Heidekaserne to die. Others were shot on the march. The 487 survivors arrived at Belsen on the morning of 10 April, which was also the day British forces entered Celle (shown in lower photo).
In 1947 British military authorities tried 14 people for the massacre. Seven were acquitted, 4 sentenced to prison & 3 sentenced to death, all of which were commuted to prison terms.
