When the British Army arrived at Bergen-Belsen 80 years ago the unsuspecting troops were confronted by the first grotesque glimpse of the Holocaust. More than 60,000 skeletal prisoners – most of the Jewish – scattered around the camp, deep in Nazi Germany, as over 13,000 corpses lay rotting and unburied around them. Witnessing this harrowing sight was the BBC’s distinguished war correspondent Richard Dimbleby who was the first journalist to enter the camp on a day he would describe as “the most horrible of my life”.

Yet when he filed his unsparing radio report detailing the hell of Belsen, corporation bosses back in London refused to believe Dimbleby’s devastating dispatch and would not broadcast it. Only after he threatened to resign did the BBC relent. Today we remain indebted to the veteran reporter for his integrity and principled stand in ensuring his report was released to a largely unsuspecting world.

His unvarnished, real time account endures as vital testimony of the fathomless evil not only of the Nazis but of which mankind can descend in the name of Jew-hatred and racial bias. It’s a testimony rendered all the more vital since the British had no choice but to blow up the remains of Belsen to prevent the spread of disease.

Indeed how much do we also owe to the bravery of those young British soldiers who stumbled into hell on that April day 80 years ago, unaware of the charnel house which lay inside Belsen’s gates? As we do the nurses, doctors and medical students and army personal who subsequently tried under impossible circumstances to save life wherever they found a fluttering pulse.

But eight decades on, as hostages languish in the dungeons of Gaza because of Hamas Jew-killers and hate marches thunder across our cities, we may remember Belsen but do we even learn from its lesson?

The BBC, albeit reluctantly, may have brought news of the Holocaust to the world. Yet today our national broadcaster is repeatedly accused of systematic bias in its reporting of Israel and, by default encouraging antisemitism which has spiralled in the wake of October 7 – the day, ironically in which the largest number of Jews were slaughtered in a single day since the Holocaust.

Whereas Richard Dimbleby reported with laser focused accuracy about what he saw, the likes of Jon Donnison and Jeremy Bowen have been guilty of misreporting, relying instead on surmise and guess work. Not least in blaming Israel for a rocket attack on the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City when in fact the missiles had been fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Meanwhile the landmark Asserson Report has exposed huge failings in the BBC’s legal obligations regarding impartiality in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. A position underpinned by the more than 200 Jewish people in the BBC and broadcasting industry who wrote a letter of complaint to BBC board members in early June about perceived bias and antisemitism within our national broadcaster.

What, one wonders would Richard Dimbleby have made of these repeated accusations against his former employer?. As well as the institutionalised antisemitism uncovered in the so-called safe spaces of campus life and in the NHS? How would he have reported on our Met Police either unwilling or unable to deal with the spiralling hatred directed at Jewish people?

And what too of our Army? At its most depleted for the first time since the Napoleonic era. While a study earlier this year found just 11% of Gen Z would be willing to fight for Britain in a war.

So as we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belsen, it isn’t enough to remember how Nazi monsters carried out industrialised mass murder and slaughtered six million Jewish men, women children and babies.

We need to remember what hatred is capable of achieving. And how ignorance, prejudice and disinterest are willing servants of antisemitism.

Richard Dimbleby fought for his report on Belsen to be heard. Now, more than ever, we have to do more than just listen.