Picture post: Scarborough’s reminder of life scarred by memories of Nazi horror

Freddie Gilroy and the Belsen Stragglers first arrived in the seaside resort back in 2011. It was only supposed to be a temporary stop-off, but Scarborough wasn’t prepared to let him go.

The work is inspired by the former miner who was one of the first Allied soldiers to enter the Belsen concentration camp on its liberation at the end of the Second World War. Like many of the troops, Fred was an ordinary man who found himself thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

Belsen had been intended as a detention camp for foreign prisoners, but by early 1945 it has witnessed the execution of thousands of Jews. Before Freddie and the rest of the men even entered the camp, they could smell the stench of rotting bodies from some three miles away.

Typhus, dysentery and tuberculosis were rife within the camp which was the final resting place of 20,000 naked and emaciated corpses. Of the 50,000 remaining inmates, 20,000 were seriously or critically ill, so much so that a further 13,000 died after liberation, despite receiving medical treatment.

One month after its liberation, Fred marked his 24th birthday within the camp. It was a day that he would grieve over for the rest of his life, telling a newspaper journalist in the 1980s, that he had sat and cried on every birthday since that fateful day. The steel artwork by Ray Lonsdale struck a particular chord with one philanthropic pensioner. Maureen Robinson who donated £50,000 to secure the sculpture as a permanent gift to the place she calls home.

Freddie now sits staring out to sea, which even on the wildest days is a much calmer scene than the one he witnessed all those years ago.

Technical details: Nikon D3s, 17 -55mm lens, 500th sec @ F11, ISO 200.

Picture: Gerard Binks

Words: Sarah Freeman