The diary of a British medical student’s experiences in the liberated Bergen- Belsen concentration camp in 1945 is being published for the first time, with proceeds going to End Polio Now and Amnesty International.
In April 1945, medical student, Michael Hargrave answered an advertisement at the Westminster Hospital Medical School for volunteers. Only on the day of his departure, did the 21 year old learn that he was being sent to Bergen-Belsen, liberated only a few weeks before.
Michael kept a diary of his month long experience for his mother, which has lain in a book case for decades until recently. The diary gives a first hand account of the conditions in the camp from the point of view of a medical student volunteer.
Michael relates the horrendous living conditions suffered by the prisoners, describing the sickness and disease he encountered and his desperate, often fruitless, struggle to save as many lives as possible. Amidst immeasurable horrors, his descriptions of the banalities of everyday life and diagrams of the camp’s layout take on a new poignancy, while line drawings detail the medical conditions and Michael’s efforts to treat them.
Many previously unpublished original newspaper cuttings and photographs of the camp add interest to this record of the endeavours of an inexperienced medical student faced with extreme human suffering.
The book, Bergen-Belsen 1945: A Medical Student’s Diary has an introduction by Michael’s son David, who contracted polio in 1953. At the request of the Hargrave family, sales of the book will financially support End Polio Now and Amnesty International. It will be published by Imperial College Press in October and there will be a book launch at Amnesty International UK headquarters in London in November.
