Bergen-Belsen (or Belsen) was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp^{[citation needed]}, in 1943 parts of it became a concentration camp. Originally this was an "exchange camp", where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. Eventually, the camp was expanded, to house Jews from other concentration camps.

Later still the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941-1945 almost 20,000 Russian prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there, with up to 35,000 of them dying of typhus in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation.

The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945 by the British 11th Armoured Division. They discovered around 53,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied. The horror of what the British found in the camp, documented on film and in pictures, made the name "Belsen" emblematic of Nazi crimes in general for public opinion in Western countries in the immediate post-1945 period.

Frederick Richard Dimbleby CBE (25 May 1913 – 22 December 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest figures in British broadcasting history.

Dimbleby was born near Richmond, in the western suburbs of London, the son of Gwendoline Mabel (Bolwell) and Frederick Jabez George Dimbleby, a journalist. He was educated at the independent Mill Hill School in North London. He did not go to university. His great grandfather Jabez Bunting (J.B.) Dimbleby, born in Beverley, Yorkshire, was the first of the Dimbleby family to become involved in journalism. He was editor of the journal All Past Time "A journal devoted to the application of Astronomy to the measurement of time" and was described as the premier chronologist to the "British Chronological and Astronomical Association". He wrote a number of works on chronology, including The Appointed Time (translated into Swedish and Norwegian), and the anti-darwinian "The Bible’s Astronomical Chronology versus Evolution" (1905). Richard's grandfather Frederick William Dimbleby joined the Richmond and Twickenham Times in 1874 and bought the newspaper in 1894 after its founder, Edward King was declared insane.

Ronald Arthur "Ronnie" Biggs (born 8 August 1929) is an English criminal, known for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, for his escape from prison in 1965, for living as a fugitive for 36 years and for his various publicity stunts while in exile. In 2001, he voluntarily returned to the United Kingdom and spent several years in prison, where his health rapidly declined. On 6 August 2009, Biggs was released from prison on compassionate grounds.

Biggs was born in the London Borough of Lambeth, England. As a child during the Second World War, he was evacuated to Flitwick, Bedfordshire for a time. In 1947, at age 18, he joined the RAF but was dishonorably discharged in 1949 for desertion, serving for only two years. In 1960, he married Charmian Brent, with whom he had three sons (one deceased). In 1963, Biggs participated in the Great Train Robbery. Together with other gang members, he stole £2.6 million from a mail train, the equivalent of around £40 million (US$67 million) today^[when?], after holding up a mail train from Glasgow to London in the early hours of the morning on 8 August 1963 (his 34th birthday).Jack Mills, the engine driver, was beaten with an iron bar in the course of the robbery. In 1964, 9 of the 16-strong gang that were at the track were jailed for the crime,. Most received sentences of 30 years (10,957 days). Biggs served 19 months before escaping from HM Prison Wandsworth on 8 July 1965 by scaling the wall with a rope ladder and dropping on to a waiting removal van. He initially fled to Brussels via boat, then to Paris with his wife Charmian and two sons, Nicholas and Chris, where he acquired new identity papers and underwent plastic surgery.