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Front Cover

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After Belsen: Christian Encounters with Holocaust Survivors

Author:Robert Thompson
ISBN:9789376549252
Binding:Hardcover
Pages:282 with 20 b/w halftones
Size:16 x 24 cm
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About the Book
After Belsen reveals the deeply personal ways in which British and American Christians responded to and were affected by survivors of the Holocaust in the years immediately following the liberation of concentration camps.

British and American Christians—men and women, army chaplains and relief workers, government officials and interfaith activists—listened to testimony, confronted postwar issues facing Jews, pioneered the fight against antisemitism, and reapproached their Christian faith as they encountered survivors. At camps like Bergen-Belsen, these encounters forced Christians to confront their long-held beliefs, their complicity, and the meaning of solidarity in the face of atrocity.

Using neglected archives, private correspondence of British and American Christians, and interviews with their families, Robert Thompson pieces together stories that complicate the idea of Christian silence. He highlights the emotional and theological impact of direct witness—moments when Christian and Jewish lives intersected amid the devastation. In doing so, he also reveals the previously unheard voices of women relief workers and chaplains who offered care, challenged antisemitism, and began to reformulate their beliefs from the ground up.

After Belsen is not only a moving contribution that unites Holocaust studies, religious history, and interfaith reflection but also a vital new perspective on how ordinary people responded to extraordinary horror and how their responses resonate today. Their previously untold human stories demonstrate how lived experience—not just institutional declaration—shaped postwar Christianity.
About the Author
Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson is a historian and Deputy Director for Public Programmes at Westminster Abbey Institute.
Editorial Reviews



“With impressive detail, Robert Thompson reveals the lost and neglected stories of the Christian army chaplains, interfaith activists, relief workers, and government officials that interacted with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. After Belsen provides a new, important category of witnessing that complicates existing narratives concerning Christian responses to the Holocaust.”
—Zoë Waxman, author of Women in the Holocaust
“Thompson’s description and analysis of the growing relationship between Jewish and Christian chaplains are striking and breaks new ground. The dual focus in After Belsen on both the historical and theological implications of these early encounters offers new insight into that early period of post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian relations.”
—Victoria J. Barnett, author of Bystanders
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