Bergen-Belsen, or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an "exchange camp", where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp was later expanded to hold Jews from other concentration camps.
The Belsen trials were a series of several trials that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II. British Army and civilian personnel ran the trials and staffed the prosecution and judges.
Clongowes Wood College SJ is a Catholic voluntary boarding school for boys near Clane, County Kildare, Ireland, founded by the Jesuits in 1814. It features prominently in James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. One of five Jesuit secondary schools in Ireland, it had 450 students in 2019.
Belvedere College S.J. is a voluntary secondary school for boys in Dublin, Ireland. The school has numerous notable alumni in the arts, politics, sports, science, and business. Alumni and teachers at Belvedere played major roles in modern Irish literature, the standardisation of the Irish language, as well as the Irish independence movement – both the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence. The school's notable alumni and former faculty include two Taoisigh, one Ceann Comhairle, several cabinet ministers, one Blessed, one Cardinal, one Archbishop, one signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, two Supreme Court Justices, one Olympic medallist, thirty Irish international rugby players and numerous notable figures in the world of the arts, academia and business. Belvedere College forms the setting for part of James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dubbed The Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was a German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British Army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes, and hanged on the gallows in the prison at Hamelin by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
William Robert Fitzgerald Collis (1900–1975) was an Irish doctor and writer. As an author he was known as Robert Collis. As a doctor, he was commonly known as Dr Bob Collis. Maurice Collis was his elder brother. John Stewart Collis was his twin brother.
Mungret College was a Jesuit apostolic school and a lay secondary school near Limerick, Ireland. Located on the western outskirts of the modern-day suburban town of Raheen, it was operational from 1882 until 1974 when it closed as a school for the last time. The college produced over 1000 priests in that period. It had previously been an agricultural college and a Limerick diocesan seminary until 1888.
William Joseph Gabriel Doyle, was an Irish Catholic priest who was killed in action while serving as a military chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. He is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.
St Stanislaus College was a Jesuit boys boarding school, novitiate and philosophy school, in Tullabeg, Rahan, County Offaly. St Carthage founded a monastery of 800 monks there in 595 before founding his monastery in Lismore. The Presentation Sisters also have a convent in Rahan, Killina, which was founded at the same time as the Jesuits founded St Stanislaus College.
Francis Patrick Mary Browne, was a distinguished Irish Jesuit and a prolific photographer. His best known photographs are those of the RMS Titanic and its passengers and crew taken before its sinking in 1912. He was decorated as a military chaplain during the First World War.
Robin Roe was an Irish clergyman known for his work as an army chaplain, and a rugby union player.
Reverend Leslie Henry Hardman MBE HCF was an Orthodox Rabbi and the first Jewish British Army chaplain to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, an experience "that made him a public figure, both within his community and outside it".
Father Francis Gleeson was an Irish Roman Catholic priest who served as a British Army chaplain during Ireland's involvement in the First World War. Educated at seminaries near Dublin, Gleeson was ordained in 1910 and worked at a home for the blind before volunteering for service upon the outbreak of war. Commissioned into the Army Chaplains' Department and attached to the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers he served with them at the First Battle of Ypres. During this battle Gleeson is said to have taken command of the battalion after all the officers were incapacitated by the enemy. He was highly regarded by his men for tending to the wounded under fire, visiting the frontline trenches, and bringing gifts.
The Reverend Thomas James Stretch was one of the first people to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when it was liberated by British troops in 1945. He commented that never in his life had he seen such damnable ghastliness.
Arnold Peter Meiklejohn was an English physician and academic, specializing in nutrition.
In early April 1945, at the request of the British Army, the British Red Cross and the War Office called for 100 volunteer medical students from nine London teaching hospitals to assist in feeding starving Dutch children who had been liberated from German occupation by advancing Allied forces. However, in the meantime, British troops had liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the students were diverted there on the day they were due to travel to the Netherlands. The students had previously spent most of the Second World War at school and in medical training.
Michael John Hargrave was a British general practitioner in Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, who in 1945 assisted British Army occupation forces at the recently-liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when he volunteered as a medical student from Westminster Hospital at the age of 21.
Henry Gill S.J., M.C., D.S.O., was an Irish Jesuit priest and scientist, who for four years served as a chaplain in the Great War. Fr. Gill earned the Military Cross, Distinguished Service Order, serving with the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles. Henry Vincent Gill, was born in Cabra, Dublin, on 8 June 1872. He was the son of Henry Joseph Gill former Irish Party MP and manager of the family M. H. Gill and Sons publishing company.
