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British MP Describes Visit to Liberated Buchenwald
(Jerusalem Post) Shai Ben-Ari - An official report written by British MP Tom Driberg, part of a delegation from Parliament sent in April 1945 by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to examine the newly liberated concentration camps in Europe, has been discovered in the archives of the National Library of Israel. At Buchenwald, he writes, "One half-naked skeleton, tottering painfully along the passage as though on stilts, drew himself up when he saw our party, smiled, and saluted." Driberg described seeing a laboratory "with a large number of glass jars containing preserved specimens of human organs." He mentioned "experiments in sterilization" performed on Jews. He and his colleagues were told of "articles made of human skin," collected by Frau Koch, the wife of the German camp commander. One such item which Driberg saw with his own eyes "clearly formed part of a lampshade." Driberg concluded, "The memory of what we saw at Buchenwald will haunt us ineffaceably for many years."