This episode of the RCRM Speakers Series will explore the little-known role of Canadian soldiers in the liberation of Nazi concentration and transit camps. In spring 1945, First Canadian Army was working to liberate the Netherlands from German occupiers. Here, they discovered Nazi camps and the Holocaust survivors left abandoned within them. After coming upon the camps, Canadian soldiers moved from a position of combat to providing humanitarian relief assistance. Soldiers dealt with challenges that six years of war had not prepared them to face such as the logistical issues of securing essential supplies necessary to combat mass famine, malnourishment, and disease as well as longer-term issues like the repatriation of the survivors. The discovery of the Nazi camps across Europe forever changed the meaning of the Second World War for Canadians as a conflict not only about preventing Nazi world domination but also providing relief and rehabilitation for their millions of victims. As Royal Canadian Air Force Flight Lieutenant T.S. Byrne explained, liberation was “Why we fought World War II.”