Michael Hargrave

Belsen

Hargrave had, until May 1945, spent the Second World War at school and studying medicine. In April 1945, he was among eleven medical students from Westminster who volunteered to help relieve a famine in Holland, a part of the Netherlands still occupied by the Germans but awaiting liberation. On the day of departure, the students were informed that they were instead being sent to help at the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

At Belsen, army medics were trying to prevent the spread of disease and save those they could. Hargrave described in his daily journal the process by which the huts in Camp One were cleaned, disinfected and turned into basic temporary hospitals, after which its inmates were cleaned, disinfected and then moved out. He led this process in hut 210 and performed treatments including the excision of eyelid cysts and tuberculous glands in the neck. He became accustomed to seeing boils, gangrene, diarrhoea, typhus and severe malnutrition. Supervision and briefings were given by nutritionist Arnold Peter Meiklejohn, Brigadier Hugh Glyn-Hughes and Colonel James Johnston. Hargrave also taught a Polish girl, Zosia Wiśniowska, how to speak English. in Egypt and Kenya, returning to Wootton Bassett in 1950 to become a general practitioner. By 1956, he had a purpose-built surgery with an appointment system and radiotelephone. He also helped at the ear, nose and throat clinic at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon. In 1957, he became a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners. His memoirs were used by historian Ben Shephard in his 2005 book After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945. with all royalties donated to Amnesty International and the polio charity Rotary Club PolioPlus.

Selected publications "A New Surgery for a Group Practice of Three Doctors". Journal of the College of General Practitioners and Research Newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 4 (1958), pp. 356–359. (With J. N. Watson and R. D. C. Hart) "The Radiotelephone". Journal of the College of General Practitioners, (1961) Vol. 4, p. 446. (With R. D. C. Hart and P. S. Mitchell) "Acute otitis media; A survey of 400 cases". Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Vol. 16, Issue 1 (1968), pp. 78–80.