Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
General material designation
- Textual record
- Photographic material
Parallel title
Other title information
Title statements of responsibility
Title notes
- Source of title proper: Title based on provenance of fonds.
Level of description
Repository
Reference code
Edition area
Edition statement
Edition statement of responsibility
Class of material specific details area
Statement of scale (cartographic)
Statement of projection (cartographic)
Statement of coordinates (cartographic)
Statement of scale (architectural)
Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)
Dates of creation area
Date(s)
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1939–1994, predominant 1945 (Creation)
- Creator
- Winfield, Stanley H.
Physical description area
Physical description
11 photographs : prints
11 photographs : negatives
4 cm of textual records
Publisher's series area
Title proper of publisher's series
Parallel titles of publisher's series
Other title information of publisher's series
Statement of responsibility relating to publisher's series
Numbering within publisher's series
Note on publisher's series
Archival description area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Stanley Winfield was born in August of 1923 in Calgary, Alberta. He left Calgary in 1941 to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he served as a private and aircraftsman in Halifax. In October, 1944 he left Halifax for England, where he was posted to various air stations. In May 1945 he was stationed at Celle, Germany, and served as sergeant with the squadron leader E.M. (Ted) Aplin, as part of the Royal Air Force 84 Group Disarmament HQ Unit that was responsible for ensuring that the Luftwaffe was incapacitated in northwest Germany. Winfield visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp several times after its liberation, got to know some of the camp's residents and worked with Aplin to organize shipments of food from Canada for distribution at the camp. Prior to the Lüneburg war crimes trial in the fall of 1945, prisoners at Celle, Germany—most of whom had been guards and functionary workers at Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz and other camps—were paraded in a courtyard four times a day, at times posted for public viewing; Winfield went to the prison for these public viewings.
After the war, Winfield attended law school at UBC; he graduated in 1952. Winfield and Ted Aplin remained close until Aplin’s death in 1973. Winfield continued his military service with the Canadian Intelligence Corps. He was director and secretary of the [Sir Winston] Churchill Society of BC and president of the Jewish Historical Society of BC. He and his wife, Odile, had two children, and spent their retirement years in New Westminster. In 1995, he returned to Belsen for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the camp. Stanley Winfield died in 2011.
Custodial history
Scope and content
Fonds consists of photographs, publications, reports and correspondence created or collected by Stanley Winfield while he was a sergeant with the Royal Canadian Air Force, related to the time he spent at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly after its liberation. Fonds consists of a copy of a scrapbook created by Winfield on the subjects of Bergen-Belsen and Ted Aplin; passports belonging to the Lichtensterns, who were a Jewish couple related to Winfield’s mother and who fled Austria for the United States in 1939; and the program for and copies of speeches delivered at the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Fonds is arranged into three series: Photographs (1945), Belsen and Ted Aplin scrapbook (ca. 1977) and Collected textual records (1939–1995).
Notes area
Physical condition
Immediate source of acquisition
Donated by Stanley Winfield in 1993, 1994 and 1996.
Arrangement
Language of material
- English
- Yiddish
- German
Script of material
Location of originals
Availability of other formats
Restrictions on access
Terms governing use, reproduction, and publication
Finding aids
Item list is available.
Associated materials
Accruals
No further accruals are expected.
Alternative identifier(s)
Standard number
Standard number
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
- Aplin, Ted (Subject)
Genre access points
Control area
Description record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules or conventions
Rules for Archival Description
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Created March 2020 by Shyla Seller