Belsen is a village within the German borough of

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...

in the northern part of

Celle district Celle () is a district (''Landkreis'') in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Uelzen, Gifhorn, Hanover and Heidekreis. Geography The district is located in the southernmost parts of the L ...

on the Lüneburg Heath in

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

. The village, whose original site lies about southwest of Bergen, has 331 inhabitants (as at: 31 December 2000). The Belsen

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

was named after it. Today Belsen is dominated by the former British Army camp of Hohne (German: ''Lager Hohne'') on the edge of the NATO firing ranges.

History

Belsen was first mentioned in the records in 1235 under the name ''Bellenhusen''. Formerly an independent municipality, it is part of the town Bergen since 1971.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

The

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentra ...

was near Belsen. The site of the former concentration camp and the present-day Bergen-Belsen Memorial Centre are mainly within the municipality of Winsen (Aller) and its parish of Walle (Winsen). Between Bergen and Belsen, there were railway ramps onto which prisoners from the incoming goods wagons alighted and from where they had to cover the remaining distance of about to the camp on foot. The original ramps have been replaced and the current ramps are used today to off-load military vehicles of the British, Dutch, French, German, Belgian, Luxembourg and Polish forces in order to take part in exercises on the

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

military training area of Bergen-Hohne. File:Belsen, Fuchsmoorgraben.jpg, The river ''Fuchsmoorgraben'' File: Belsen, Diecksdammweg.jpg, The crossing of the ''Diecksdammweg'' and the ''Im alten Dorf'' roads File: Belsen, Im alten Dorf 2.jpg, Farm

Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp

After the Second World War, a displaced persons (DP) camp was created in the military base of ''Lager Hohne'' (called Bergen-Hohne Station or Hohne Camp during its British tenure), opposite the village. Called the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. It was in operation from the summer of 1945 until September 1950. For a time, Belsen DP camp was the largest Jewish DP camp in Germany and the only one in the British occupation zone with an exclusively Jewish population.

Politics and administration

Since the merging of local councils as part of the Lower Saxon administrative reforms of 1971, Belsen has been part of the borough of

. Belsen is represented by a local council (''Ortsrat'') and a chairman (''Ortsbürgermeister''). The council is empowered, ''inter alia'', to make decisions about public services in the village, is responsible for maintaining the appearance of the village and for overseeing its clubs and societies, and has to be consulted by the town of Bergen on all important matters affecting the village.Information about the Lower Saxony Community Constitution
/ref> It consists of five elected representatives who, together with the chairman, sit on the Bergen town council. The village council elects its own chairman. The current incumbent is Sven Marquardt.

Footnotes and references

Literature

* Friedrich Barenscheer u.a., ''Bauernbuch'', o.J. (about 1935). In the Bergen Town Archives (''Stadtarchiv Bergen'') * ''Quellensammlung zur Ortsgeschichte Belsen'', In the Bergen Town Archives * ''Lehnsbriefe über Belehnung der Mühle Belsen'', (from 1554), In the Bergen Town Archives {{Authority control Villages in Lower Saxony Bergen, Lower Saxony Celle (district) Holocaust locations in Germany