The Army Film and Photographic Unit (AFPU) was a division within the British military that documented the activities of the Commonwealth and British armed forces. When the British arrived at Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945, photographers and motion-picture cameramen (no women were in the AFPU, but American photographer Margaret Bourke-White, who accompanied General George Patton”s Third Army through Germany during spring 1945, created now-famous photos of the Buchenwald concentration camp upon liberation) of the No. 5 AFPU accompanied them. The unit stayed until June 9, 1945, photographing and filming the conditions in the camp upon arrival and the subsequent rescue mission. They took hundreds of photos and shot approximately two and a half hours of silent footage. In conjunction with the photos and film reels, the photographers and cameramen compiled detailed notes about the shots and their impressions on their caption sheets. Some 481 photographs are digitally archived on the Imperial War Museum website under “Belsen Photographs.” Also digitized on the website are 77 films and 391 audio recordings related to the relief efforts: “The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen.” Several photographs, 11 unedited rolls (11 minutes) of the silent-film footage by the British Unit, and a 10-minute edited version (original is 20 minutes) of sound footage taken by the newsreel company British Movietone News form part of the exhibit at the Bergen Belsen Memorial Site.

Assistance of prisoners in the camps includes any kind of help that an inmate could receive that would have been out of the ordinary and even against camp regulations and might have helped inmates survive. The Russian woman Schura in Ravensbrück offers Ceija and other inmates tea and bread in the barracks. Ceija”s story of the Kinderweihnachten (Children”s Christmas; see entry below) could also belong to stories about assistance. Just before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, a guard throws a sandwich down to Stojka from his watchtower. Stories about SS officers and personnel offering prisoners assistance also surface in several interviews with other survivors, and especially with child survivors. One child survivor of Bergen-Belsen talks about a piece of chocolate that anSS officer gave her that she believes helped her to survive another two weeks.