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ABSTRACT
Russell Barton was one of the 96 London medical student volunteers who went to Belsen concentration camp in Germany, 2 weeks after its liberation in 1945, to help survivors. Barton later became a psychiatrist. In 1968, he wrote about the medical students’ experiences and his understanding of Belsen based on his time there, in an invited article in Purnell’s History of the Second World War. He perceived parallels between the regimes controlling Belsen and National Health Service psychiatric hospitals, noted similar harmful psychological consequences for those held within and commented that the public appeared to turn a blind eye to both. His article outraged readers. While some of his interpretations of Belsen were incorrect, his experience there connected intimately with his passion and persistence to provide humane and dignified treatment and care for patients and to improve hospital facilities. Later, Holocaust deniers cited his article. This article seeks to provide an informed review and analysis of the controversy.
Abbreviations
National Health Service (NHS)AEGIS (Aid for the Elderly in Government Institutions)United States of America (USA)
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr David Jolley, Prof Tom Arie and Dr Michael Hilton who made numerous valuable comments, and to Dr Rhiannon Starks who lent me a copy of her dissertation about the medical students. I would also like to thank the anonymous peer-reviewers for their advice, and participants at the Limmud Conference in December 2016 who contributed to a discussion on the theme of this article.
Disclosure statement
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Notes
1. Geoffrey Tooth, Ministry of Health, memo, 30 October 1965, MH 160/486 (The National Archives, TNA).
2. Rollin, “Barton”. He did not mention the Purnell episode. Rollin was Jewish, of East European origin (Bluglass, “Dr Henry Rollin”).
3. Record card, photographs and sports reports, Eltham College Archives.
4. Barton, Institutional Neurosis, front matter, third edition.
5. Gittins, Madness in its Place, 74.
6. WHA, “Personality”; Barton, “Belsen,” 3085; Whitehead, Service of Old Age.
7. Barton, Institutional Neurosis, (Second edition, 1966) 5.
8. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, http://hmd.org.uk/genocides/holocaust/ Accessed 28 August 2017.
9. Reilly, Belsen, 189.
10. Lipstadt, “Denying the Holocaust.”
11. Kushner, “The Impact of the Holocaust,” 368; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Holocaust Denial Timeline.” https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008003 Accessed 2 April 2018. Holocaust denial is associated with anti-Semitism, perpetuating long-standing stereotypes of Jews conspiring to seek world domination, charges that were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust. Common themes include that six million Jews were not murdered; that the Nazis had no official policy or intention to exterminate the Jews; and that the gas chambers at Auschwitz never existed. Holocaust denial research methodology is a reversal of standard historical practice, beginning with the premise of the denial and seeking evidence to prove it.
12. Kushner, “The Impact of the Holocaust”, 358.
13. Schulze, “Why Bergen-Belsen’s 1945 Liberation.”
14. Kushner, “The Impact of the Holocaust”, 349–350.
15. Robb, Sans Everything.
16. Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care.
17. e.g. History and Policy, http://www.historyandpolicy.org/ Accessed 21 August 2017.
18. Scull, “Psychiatry and its Historians,” 239.
19. Carr, What is History? 19.
20. Cesarani, “A Brief History,” 13.
21. Kolb, Bergen Belsen, 31. All references to Kolb are to the English edition, 1985.
22. Kolb, Bergen Belsen, 37; Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, http://auschwitz.org/en/ Accessed 1 August 2017.
23. Kolb, Bergen Belsen, 42.
24. Typhoid is a different illness.
25. Reilly, Belsen, 23.
26. See note 23 above.
27. Shephard, After Daybreak, 35.
28. See note 12 above.
29. Celinscak, Distance from the Belsen Heap, 47–50.
30. Shephard, After Daybreak, 32.
31. MacAuslan, “The RAMC.”
32. Shephard, After Daybreak, 36–41.
33. Ibid., 41–42.
34. Ibid., 89.
35. Reilly, Belsen; Ibid.
36. Shephard, After Daybreak, 90.
37. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, 11.
38. Ibid., 1.
39. MacAuslan, Darling Darling Meg, 116.
40. Many in Imperial War Museum (IWM) archives.
41. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, xvi.
42. MacAuslan, Darling Darling Meg.
43. e.g. Forsdick, “Another Letter from Belsen”; Hankinson, “Belsen”; Crisp and Smith, “Belsen Concentration Camp.”
44. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, 15–16.
45. Russell Barton, interviewed by Diana Gittins, 1995–1996, Wellcome Library, GC/244/2/19, transcript, 6.
46. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, 25.
47. Ibid., 18–19. Minor differences in wording appear between Hargrave’s and Barton’s accounts. For consistency, I have quoted all from Barton’s version. Whether differences were Barton’s or editorial, is not known.
48. Starks, “Belsen Medical Students,” 14–19.
49. Glyn Hughes, “Medical Students and Belsen.”
50. Reilly, Belsen, 20.
51. Belton, The Good Listener.
52. MacAuslan, Darling Darling Meg, 162–168.
53. Alan MacAuslan, cited in Starks, “Belsen Medical Students,” 36.
54. Gerald Korn, cited in Matthews, “The Belsen Experience,” 21.
55. Starks, “Belsen Medical Students,” 29.
56. Ibid., 24.
57. Ibid., 36.
58. Paton, “Mission to Belsen 1945”; Matthews, “The Belsen Experience.”
59. Hines, “Dr Kenneth Easton”; Latham, “David Philip Bowler”.
60. Starks, “Belsen Medical Students,” 23, 59.
61. Brook, “Who’s for psychiatry?”; Goldacre et al., “Choice and Rejection.” Earliest specific evidence available is in 1961. Similar estimates can be calculated for 1948 from Anon. “More Doctors Back NHS,”, and Anon. “One Hundred and Eleventh Meeting,” 1–16.
62. Starks, “Belsen Medical Students,” 42–53.
63. Barton, interviews by Gittins, transcript, 40–41.
64. Barton, Institutional Neurosis; Dutton, Mental Handicap.
65. Dutton, “Gordon Dutton.”
66. Anon. “Dr Michael Davys.”
67. Kushner, “The Holocaust in the British Imagination,” 368–369.
68. Kushner, “The Impact of the Holocaust”, 360.
69. Ibid., 355.
70. Ibid., 362.
71. Levi, If this is a Man. (Italian 1947, English 1957).
72. Wiesel, Night. (French 1958, English 1960).
73. Hart, I am Alive.
74. Hardman and Goodman, The Survivors.
75. Heger, Pink Triangle; Pond, “Romanies”. Historical analysis was also later.
76. Perry (ed.) “Reliving 1940”.
77. Kushner, “The Holocaust in the British Imagination,” 376.
78. See note 13 above.
79. Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/17527 Accessed 3 September 2017.
80. Kushner, “The Holocaust in the British Imagination,” 367.
81. See note 78 above.
82. Pearce, “The development,” 72–73.
83. Churchill, The Second World War.
84. Reitlinger, The Final Solution.
85. See note 70 above; Kushner, “The Holocaust in the British Imagination,” 368.
86. Oxford English Dictionary, citing Manchester Guardian Weekly 10/4, 25 April 1968. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/87793?rskey=GrLH4T&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid. Accessed 3 September 2017.
87. Kolb, Bergen Belsen, 7.
88. Woollacott, “Pitt’s Battle.”
89. Basil Liddell Hart, “General foreword to the series”, typescript, (Barrie Pitt papers, box 13, Liddell Hart Archive, King’s College London (KCL)).
90. Letter, Barrie Pitt to Basil Liddell Hart, 11 July 1968 (Barrie Pitt papers, box 13, Liddell Hart Archive, KCL).
91. Pitt, editorial, vol 7, issue 15, inside front cover.
92. Anon. announcement, vol 7, issue 14, inside back cover.
93. Barton, Institutional Neurosis (First Edition), 12.
94. Barton, “Belsen,” 3085.
95. I am grateful to Dr David Jolley for his guidance on this point.
96. Mental hospitals and psychiatric hospitals: In England, at the time Barton wrote the Purnell article, the official NHS term was ‘psychiatric’ hospital, taken to indicate a more modern, forward looking institution. My preference is to use ‘psychiatric’ as it was the official term. However, ‘mental hospital’ was still used, particularly when on-going problems and challenges were discussed. I have used the term ‘mental’ and ‘psychiatric’ hospital interchangeably according to specific contexts.
97. Goffman, Asylums, 24–30, 50.
98. Foot, The Man who Closed the Asylums, 4.
99. ‘Whistle-blower’ is a modern term used to describe staff who speak out in an attempt to prevent wrongdoing in their workplace.
100. e.g. Milgram, “Behavioural Study”; Darley and Latané, “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies.”
101. Barton, “Foreword,” x.
102. First Zündel Trial (District Court of Ontario, January to March 1985), 2953. Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, http://codoh.com/media/files/1985Z%C3%BCndelTrialTranscript.pdf Accessed 5 August 2017.
103. Moodie, “Nobody Wants to Know,” 14.
104. Ibid.
105. Dickinson, ‘Curing Queers’, 149.
106. Ibid., 149–153.
107. Wing and Brown, Institutionalisation and Schizophrenia.
108. Gittins, Madness in its Place, 67.
109. Ibid.
110. David Jolley, e-mail 2015.
111. Russell Barton, “Potential Murderers?” Image ID: LDBTH: 596, Museum of the Mind. Reproduced with permission from Museum of the Mind, Beckenham.
112. Source: No 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit, War Office Second World War Official Collection, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205127625 Accessed 20 August 2017.
113. Source: No 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit, War Office Second World War Official Collection, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194141 Accessed 20 August 2017.
114. Barton, “Foreword,” ix-x.
115. Lord Strabolgi, “Community Care.”.
116. Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care, 25, 41, 70, 118.
117. See note 15 above.
118. See note 94 above.
119. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007822 Accessed 16 November 2016.
120. Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care, 87.
121. See note 94 above. Ibid., 97, 143–144.
122. Milne, “Biafra.”
123. See note 15 above.
124. Davie, “Massive Corruption and Cruelty”, 8–12; Storthes Hall Inquiry Report, 1967, part 1, B, 16, MH 159/230 (TNA).
125. Robb, Sans Everything, 8–12.
126. Letters, Mr Leak and Barbara Robb, November 1965, AEGIS/4/5 (AEGIS Archive, London School of Economics, LSE).
127. Russell, “Think on These Things.”
128. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, 43; Barton, “Belsen”, 3081.
129. Ibid., 45; Ibid., 3083.
130. Ibid., 24, 41.
131. Letter, Barton to Glyn Hughes, 2 December 1968, RAMC/1218/2/18, Wellcome Library.
132. Glyn Hughes, “Day of Liberation.”
133. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, 17.
134. Barton, Institutional Neurosis (First Edition), 12–13.
135. Hargrave, Bergen Belsen 1945, 26; Barton, “Belsen”, 3083. See also: No 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit, War Office Second World War Official Collection, Imperial War Museum:
IWM BU 4016 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205127856 and IWM BU 4274 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194181 Accessed 3 September 2017.
136. Barton, “Belsen,” 3083.
137. Shephard, After Daybreak, 89.
138. Ibid.
139. Scrivenor, “Who was to Blame”.
140. Priestley, “Studying the Evidence”.
141. Barton, “Seeking Motives for Belsen.”
142. Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care, 212.
143. Whitehead, Service of Old Age.
144. Howe, “Management of Public Inquiries.”
145. See note 97 above.
146. See note 136 above.
147. Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care, 83–84.
148. Ibid., 222–224.
149. Letter, Barton to Robb, 18 December 1970, AEGIS/1/10/B (LSE).
150. See note 136 above.
151. Reilly, Belsen, 15.
152. Cesarani, “A Brief History,” 17.
153. See note 94 above.
154. Abel-Smith, “The Cost of the Support of the Aged”; Ministry of Health, The Activities of Psychiatric Hospitals, 1968, 8.
155. BBC, Something for Nothing.
156. See note 136 above.
157. Kolb, Bergen Belsen, 43.
158. First Zündel trial, 1985, 2960.
159. Letter, Barton to Glyn Hughes, 2 December 1968, RAMC/1218/2/18, Wellcome Library.
160. See note 18 above.
161. See note 159 above.
162. Letter, Major Eugene Hinterhoff to Barrie Pitt, 25 January 1968, 3/183 2, Liddell Hart Archive (KCL).
163. Farrell, “Russell Barton is a Rare Man.”
164. Barton, Institutional Neurosis (Third Edition), 7.
165. Staff Reporter, “Belsen ‘not too bad’”.
166. e.g. See note 132 above; See note 139 above; See note 140 above.
167. Taylor, “Belsen.”
168. Reilly, Belsen, 15
169. Ben Azai (no title).
170. See note 18 above.
171. See note 13 above.
172. e.g. Ministry of Health, Internal Memo 8 February 1967, annotated by Mr Mottershead. MH 150/349 (TNA); C. Benwell, Ministry of Health memo, ‘Condition of the elderly in mental hospitals’, 10 March 1967, MH 150/349 (TNA); Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care, 181, 194.
173. Ministry of Health, Findings and Recommendations.
174. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies.
175. Gittins, Madness in its Place, 84–85; BBC1, 24 Hours, 28 July 1967, transcript, AEGIS/1/6; BBC2, Man Alive, 16 July 1968, transcript, 18, AEGIS/2/7/A.
176. Ministry of Health, ‘Meeting with the Minister to discuss whether to set up an enquiry into the allegations about treatment of the elderly in mental hospitals’, 21 February 1967. MH 150/349 (TNA).
177. DHSS, Ely.
178. Ibid., Paragraphs 504, 483, 495; Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care, 214–222.
179. Zündel and Kulaszka, Did Six Million Really Die? 21–5169.
180. First Zündel Trial, 1985, 3932.
181. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?
182. First Zündel Trial, 1985; Zündel and Kulaszka, Did Six Million Really Die?
183. Rowan MacAuslan, discussion, 2017, about her current research on the students.
184. First Zündel Trial, 1985, 2956.
185. Ibid., 2960.
186. Ibid., 2920.
187. Zündel and Kulaszka, Did Six Million Really Die? 21–5233.
188. Zündel interviews Russell Barton, 1985, Samisdat Publishers. The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/ErnstZundelInterviewsRusselBarton-HiddenHolocaust Accessed 6 September 2017.
189. First Zündel Trial, 1985, 2949–2950.
190. Geoffrey Tooth, Ministry of Health, memo, 30 October 1965, MH 160/486 (TNA).
191. Rollin, “Barton.”
192. Bewley, “Obituaries (with advice on how to read them).”
193. See note 191 above.
194. Zündel and Kulaszka, Did Six Million Really Die? 21–5167.
195. Ibid., 21–5170.
196. Julia Jones, e-mail discussion, 2017.
197. See note 183 above.
198. Hilton, “Media”.
199. Holocaust Memorial Day, http://www.hmd.org.uk/page/about-hmd-and-hmdt Accessed 19 April 2018.
200. Ngram Viewer, https://books.google.com/ngrams Accessed 19 April 2018.
201. Stier, Holocaust Icons, 115, 143, 147, 150, 152.
202. Television Programmes. Times, Thursday, 18 November 1965.
203. Kushner, “The Impact of the Holocaust”, 363.
204. e.g. Sankalan Baidya, ‘10 Interesting Concentration Camp Facts—Lies Exposed!’ (updated January 2017). In Facts Legends. http://factslegend.org/10-interesting-concentration-camp-facts-lies-exposed/ Accessed 15 October 2017.
205. Jolley, “Remembering”.
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Claire Hilton
Claire Hilton was a NHS consultant old age psychiatrist in North-West London (1998-2017). Her MD research was on psychiatric complications of sickle cell disease, and her history PhD was about the development of old age psychiatry services in England c.1940-1989. Her book Improving Psychiatric Care for Older People: Barbara Robb’s Campaign 1965-1975, (2017) is free to download https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319548128. Currently she is researching civilian mental health services during the First World War. She is chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group. She is particularly keen to bring high-quality historical evidence into discussions today about psychiatric policy, service development and other issues relating to clinical work.