On what date did British forces liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp?

British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945.

The British 11th Armoured Division reached Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany after the camp was transferred to British control under an agreement intended to prevent fighting around the site. Soldiers found tens of thousands of prisoners suffering from starvation, disease, and severe overcrowding.

More than 13,000 unburied bodies were present when British troops arrived, and many additional prisoners died after liberation because they were already critically ill. British medical teams attempted to provide emergency care, while the camp was later burned because of a typhus epidemic.

Anne Frank and her sister Margot had died at Bergen-Belsen several weeks before liberation. Their father, Otto Frank, survived Auschwitz and later published Anne’s diary. Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp, not a purpose-built extermination camp, though its prisoners experienced lethal Nazi persecution.