Nazi concentration camp
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
in what is today
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 ...
in
northern
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a ra ...
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, southwest of the town 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 of ...
near
Celle
Celle () is a town and capital of the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town is situated on the banks of the river Aller, a tributary of the Weser, and has a population of about 71,000. Celle is the southern gateway to the Lü ...
. Originally established as a
prisoner of war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...
, in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an "exchange camp", where
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp was later expanded to accommodate Jews from other concentration camps.
After 1945, the name was applied to the
displaced persons camp
A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for interna ...
established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945, almost 20,000
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
and a further 50,000 inmates died there. Overcrowding, lack of food and poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
,
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
,
typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
and
dysentery
Dysentery (UK pronunciation: , US: ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications ...
, leading to the deaths of more than 35,000 people 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
The 11th Armoured Division was an armoured division of the British Army which was created in March 1941 during the Second World War. The division was formed in response to the unanticipated success of the German panzer divisions. The 11th Armour ...
."The 11th Armoured Division (Great Britain)" United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied. A memorial with an exhibition hall currently stands at the site.
Operation
Prisoner of war camp
In 1935, the
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
began to build a large military complex close to the village of
Belsen
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 concentrati ...
, a part of the town of Bergen, in what was then the
Province of Hanover
The Province of Hanover (german: Provinz Hannover) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1868 to 1946.
During the Austro-Prussian War, the Kingdom of Hanover had attempted to maintain a neutral position, ...
. This became the largest military training area in Germany of the time and was used for armoured vehicle training. The barracks were finished in 1937. The camp has been in continuous operation since then and is today known as
Bergen-Hohne Training Area
Bergen-Hohne Training Area (German: ''NATO-Truppenübungsplatz Bergen'' or ''Schießplatz Bergen-Hohne'') is a NATO military training area in the southern part of the Lüneburg Heath, in the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany. It covers a ...
. It is used by 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 ...
armed forces.
The workers who constructed the original buildings were housed in camps near
Fallingbostel
Bad Fallingbostel (Northern Low Saxon: ''Bad Fambossel'') is the district town (''Kreisstadt'') of the Heidekreis district in the German state of Lower Saxony. Since 1976 the town has had a state-recognised Kneipp spa and has held the title of ...
and Bergen, the latter being the so-called Bergen-Belsen Army Construction Camp. Once the military complex was completed in 1938–39, the workers' camp fell into disuse. However, after the
German invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
in September 1939, the ''Wehrmacht'' began using the huts as a
prisoner of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of wa ...
(POW) camp.
The camp of huts near Fallingbostel became known as
Stalag XI-B
Stalag XI-B and Stalag XI-D / 357 were two German World War II prisoner-of-war camps ('' Stammlager'') located just to the east of the town of Fallingbostel in Lower Saxony, in north-western Germany. The camps housed Polish, French, Belgian, Sovie ...
and was to become one of the ''Wehrmacht''s largest POW camps, holding up to 95,000 prisoners from various countries. In June 1940, Belgian and French POWs were housed in the former Bergen-Belsen construction workers' camp. This installation was significantly expanded from June 1941, once Germany prepared to invade the Soviet Union, becoming an independent camp known as
Stalag XI-C Stalag XI-C Bergen-Belsen, initially called Stalag 311, was a German Army prisoner-of-war camp located near the town of Bergen in Lower Saxony.
Timeline
* May 1940: The camp was built to house Belgian and French enlisted men captured in the Battle ...
(311). It was intended to hold up to 20,000
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
POWs and was one of three such camps in the area. The others were at
Oerbke
Oerbke is an unincorporated German village in Soltau-Fallingbostel district in the southern part of the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Oerbke lies on the A7 autobahn east of Bad Fallingbostel and is the seat of administration for the Osterheide ...
(Stalag XI-D (321)) and
Wietzendorf
Wietzendorf ( Eastphalian: ''Witzendörp'') is a municipality in the district of Heidekreis, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately 14 km southeast of Soltau, and 50 km southwest of Lüneburg. The population as of 31 Dec ...
(Stalag X-D (310)). By the end of March 1942, some 41,000 Soviet POWs had died in these three camps of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. By the end of the war, the total number of dead had increased to 50,000. When the POW camp in Bergen ceased operation in early 1945, as the ''Wehrmacht'' handed it over to the SS, the cemetery contained over 19,500 dead Soviet prisoners.
In the summer of 1943, Stalag XI-C (311) was dissolved and Bergen-Belsen became a branch camp of Stalag XI-B. It served as the hospital for all Soviet POWs in the region until January 1945. Other inmates/patients were Italian military internees from August 1944 and, following the suppression of the
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...
in October 1944, around 1,000 members of the
Polish Home Army
The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) esta ...
were imprisoned in a separate section of the POW camp.
Concentration camp
In April 1943, a part of the Bergen-Belsen camp was taken over by the SS Economic-Administration Main Office (''SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA''). It thus became part of the
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 simply ...
system, run by the ''SS
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...
'' but it was a special case. Having initially been designated a ''Zivilinterniertenlager'' ("civilian internment camp"), in June 1943 it was redesignated ''Aufenthaltslager'' ("holding camp"), since the
Geneva Conventions
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...
stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees. This "holding camp" or "exchange camp" was for Jews who were intended to be exchanged for German civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency. The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the "Hungarian camp", the "special camp" for Polish Jews, the "neutrals camp" for citizens of neutral countries and the "Star camp" for
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
Jews). Between the summer of 1943 and December 1944 at least 14,600 Jews, including 2,750 minors were transported to the Bergen-Belsen "holding" or exchange camp. Inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to the camp from all over Germany and occupied Europe. In general the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of Bergen-Belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value. However, only around 2,560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany.
In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an ''Erholungslager'' ("recovery camp"), where prisoners too sick to work were brought from other concentration camps. They were in Belsen supposedly to recover and then return to their original camps and resume work, but many of them died in Belsen of disease, starvation, exhaustion and lack of medical attention.
In August 1944, a new section was created and this became the so-called "women's camp". By November 1944 this camp received around 9,000 women and young girls. Most of those who were able to work stayed only for a short while and were then sent on to other concentration camps or slave-labour camps. The first women interned there were Poles, arrested after the failed Warsaw Uprising. Others were Jewish women from Poland or Hungary, transferred from Auschwitz.
Margot Margot (; ) is a feminine French given name, a variant of Marguerite. It is also occasionally a surname. Persons named Margot include the following:
People with the given name Margot
* Margot Asquith, countess of Oxford and Asquith
* Marguerite ...
and
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...
Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
''
Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 Apr ...
, previously at
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
, became the new camp commandant, replacing ''SS-Hauptsturmführer'' , who had been in post since the spring of 1943. In January 1945, the SS took over the POW hospital and increased the size of Bergen-Belsen. As eastern concentration camps were evacuated before the advance of the Red Army, at least 85,000 people were transported in cattle cars or marched to Bergen-Belsen. Before that the number of prisoners at Belsen had been much smaller. In July 1944 there were 7,300; by December 1944 the number had increased to 15,000; and by February 1945 it had risen to 22,000. Numbers then soared to around 60,000 by April 15, 1945. This overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease: particularly
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
, as well as
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
,
typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
,
dysentery
Dysentery (UK pronunciation: , US: ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications ...
and
malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
in a camp originally designed to hold about 10,000 inmates. At this point also, the special status of the exchange prisoners no longer applied. All inmates were subject to starvation and epidemics.
''Außenlager'' (satellite camps)
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had three satellite camps. These were at regional armament works. Around 2,000 female concentration camp prisoners were forced to work there. Those who were too weak or sick to continue with their work were brought to Bergen-Belsen.
''Außenlager Bomlitz-Benefeld'' at
Bomlitz
Bomlitz is a village and a former municipality in the Heidekreis district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. On 1 January 2020, it was merged into the town Walsrode.
Geography
Location
Bomlitz lies on the Lüneburg Heath in a heavily wooded area. ...
near
Fallingbostel
Bad Fallingbostel (Northern Low Saxon: ''Bad Fambossel'') is the district town (''Kreisstadt'') of the Heidekreis district in the German state of Lower Saxony. Since 1976 the town has had a state-recognised Kneipp spa and has held the title of ...
was in use from September 3 to October 15, 1944. It was located at the facility of Eibia GmbH, a gunpowder works. Around 600 female Polish Jews were used for construction and production work.
''Außenlager Hambühren-Ovelgönne'' (Lager III, Waldeslust) at
Hambühren
Hambühren is a municipality in the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately west of Celle.
History
From the summer of 1944 to February 1945, a satellite camp of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was in operatio ...
south of Winsen was in use from August 23, 1944, to February 4, 1945. It was an abandoned
potash
Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.
mine, now intended as an underground production site for Bremen plane manufacturer
Focke-Wulf
Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG () was a German manufacturer of civil and military aircraft before and during World War II. Many of the company's successful fighter aircraft designs were slight modifications of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. It is one of the ...
. Around 400 prisoners, mostly female Polish or Hungarian Jews, were forced to prepare the facility and to help lay train tracks to it. This was done for the company
Hochtief
Hochtief AG is a German construction company based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
''Außenlager Unterlüß-Altensothrieth'' (Tannenberglager) east of Bergen was in use from late August 1944 to April 13, 1945. It was located at
Unterlüß
Unterlüß is a village and former municipality in the district of Celle in Lower Saxony, Germany. It became part of the municipality of Südheide on 1 January 2015. It is about 30 km north-east of Celle and 25 km south-west of Uelzen. ...
, where the Rheinmetall-Borsig AG had a large test site. Up to 900 female Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yugoslavian and Czech Jews had to clear forest, do construction work or work in munitions production.
Prisoners were guarded by SS staff and received no wages for their work. The companies instead reimbursed the SS for the labour supplied. Wage taxes were also levied by local authorities.
Treatment of prisoners and deaths in the camp
Current estimates put the number of prisoners who passed through the concentration camp during its period of operation from 1943 to 1945 at around 120,000. Due to the destruction of the camp's files by the SS, not even half of them, around 55,000, are known by name. As mentioned above, treatment of prisoners by the SS varied between individual sections of the camp, with the inmates of the exchange camp generally being better treated than other prisoners, at least initially. However, in October 1943 the SS selected 1,800 men and women from the ''Sonderlager'' ("special camp"), Jews from Poland who held passports from Latin American countries. Since the governments of these nations mostly refused to honour the passports, these people had lost their value to the regime. Under the pretext of sending them to a fictitious "Lager Bergau", the SS had them transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were sent directly to the gas chambers and murdered. In February and May 1944 another 350 prisoners from the "special camp" were sent to Auschwitz. Thus, out of the total of 14,600 prisoners in the exchange camp, at least 3,550 died, more than 1,400 of them at Belsen, and around 2,150 at Auschwitz.
In the ''Männerlager'' (the male section of the "recovery camp"), inmates suffered even more from lack of care, malnourishment, disease and mistreatment by the guards. Thousands of them died. In the summer of 1944, at least 200 men were murdered by orders of the SS by being injected with
phenol
Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it req ...
.
There were no
gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
Histor ...
s at Bergen-Belsen, since the mass-murders took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, current estimates put the number of deaths at Belsen at more than 50,000
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
s,
Czechs
The Czechs ( cs, Češi, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, c ...
,
Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...
, anti-Nazi
Christians
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
,
homosexual
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
s, and
Roma
Roma or ROMA may refer to:
Places Australia
* Roma, Queensland, a town
** Roma Airport
** Roma Courthouse
** Electoral district of Roma, defunct
** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council
*Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...
and
Sinti
The Sinti (also ''Sinta'' or ''Sinte''; masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintesa'') are a subgroup of Romani people mostly found in Germany and Central Europe that number around 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today o ...
(Gypsies). Among them was Czech painter and writer
Josef Čapek
Josef Čapek (; 23 March 1887 – April 1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word "robot", which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek.
...
(estimated to be in April 1945). He had coined the word ''
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...
'', popularised by his brother
Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek (; 9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer, playwright and critic. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel ''War with the Newts'' (1936) and play ''R.U.R.'' (''Rossum's Universal Ro ...
.
The rate at which inmates died at Belsen accelerated notably after the mass transport of prisoners from other camps began in December 1944. From 1943 to the end of 1944 around 3,100 died. From January to mid-April 1945 this rose to around 35,000. Another 14,000 died after liberation between April 15 and the end of June 1945, in the
Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp
Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp was a displaced persons (DP) camp for refugees after World War II, in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. It was in operation from the summer of 1945 until Septem ...
under British authority.
After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it), was "of a privileged nature", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...
against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen "as a special favor" granted by the Germans.
Liberation
When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus. On April 11, 1945
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
(the ''Reichsführer SS'') agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, ''Wehrmacht'' representatives approached the British, D Squadron of the
Inns of Court Regiment
The Inns of Court Regiment (ICR) was a British Army regiment that existed under that name between May 1932 and May 1961. However, the unit traces its lineage back much further, to at least 1584, and its name lives on today within 68 (Inns of Cour ...
VIII Corps 8th Corps, Eighth Corps, or VIII Corps may refer to:
* VIII Corps (Grande Armée), a unit of the Imperial French army during the Napoleonic Wars
* VIII Army Corps (German Confederation)
* VIII Corps (German Empire), a unit of the Imperial German Ar ...
. At around 1 a.m. on April 13, an agreement was signed, designating an area of around the camp as a neutral zone. Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to "uphold order inside the camp". The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops who were returned to the German front lines by the British shortly afterwards. Due to heavy fighting near Winsen and
Walle
Walle is a surname of Norway, Norwegian and Germany, German origin, which is a variant of the surname Wall (surname), Wall. Wall in turn is a topographic name, which meant a person who lived by a defensive or stone-built wall.''Dictionary of Americ ...
, the British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945. The first two to reach the camp were a British
Special Air Service
The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...
officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance. American soldiers attached to the British forces also helped liberate the camp.
When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and (including the satellite camps) around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival, partially due to Allied bombing. Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus. The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
's
Richard Dimbleby
Frederick Richard Dimbleby (25 May 1913 – 22 December 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster, who became the BBC's first war correspondent, and then its leading TV news commentator.
As host of the long-running current affairs ...
, who accompanied them:
Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently, SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of the starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from the store houses. The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from
Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora (also Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen-Dora) was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour ...
had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of the others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these " Kapos" were killed on April 15, 1945. On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies.
Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German
Panzer
This article deals with the tanks (german: panzer) serving in the German Army (''Deutsches Heer'') throughout history, such as the World War I tanks of the Imperial German Army, the interwar and World War II tanks of the Nazi German Wehrmacht, ...
army camp, which became the
Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp
Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp was a displaced persons (DP) camp for refugees after World War II, in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. It was in operation from the summer of 1945 until Septem ...
. Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved to the displaced persons (DP) camp. Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp's administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence.
The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves. The personnel were given starvation rations, not allowed to use gloves or other protective clothing, and were continuously shouted at and threatened to make sure that they did not stop working. Some of the bodies were so rotten that arms and legs tore away from the torso. Within two months, 17 staff members had died of typhus due to being forced to handle the bodies with no protection. Another committed suicide, and three others were fatally shot by British soldiers after trying to escape.
Some civil servants from Celle and ''
Landkreis Celle
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 ...
'' were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep. Military photographers and cameramen of No. 5
Army Film and Photographic Unit
The Army Film and Photographic Unit was a subdivision of the British armed forces set up on 24 October 1941, to record military events in which the British and Commonwealth armies was engaged. During the war, almost 23 percent of all AFPU soldier ...
documented the conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945, were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...
. These documents had a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day. According to Habbo Knoch, head of the institution that runs the memorial today: "Bergen-Belsen ..became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule."
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrowing"Bren gun" carriers and
Churchill Crocodile
The Churchill Crocodile was a British flame-throwing tank of late Second World War. It was a variant of the Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill Mark VII, although the Churchill Mark IV was initially chosen to be the base vehicle.
The Crocod ...
louse
Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...
infestation. As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point, the name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp.
There were massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier Glyn Hughes, deputy director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, and James Johnston, the Senior Medical Officer. Despite their efforts, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had died. (After liberation 13,994 people died.)
Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with the feeding problem. The first, led by A. P. Meiklejohn, included 96 medical student volunteers from London teaching hospitals who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners. A research team led by Dr
Janet Vaughan
Dame Janet Maria Vaughan, Mrs Gourlay (18 October 1899 – 9 January 1993), was a British physiologist, academic, and academic administrator.Evelyn IronsObituary: Dame Janet Vaughan ''The Independent'', 12 January 1993. She researched in haem ...
was dispatched by the Medical Research Council to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes.
The British troops and medical staff tried these diets to feed the prisoners, in this order:
*
Bully beef
Bully beef (also known as corned beef in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and other Commonwealth countries as well as the United States) is a variety of meat made from finely minced corned beef in a small amount of ge ...
from Army rations. Most of the prisoners' digestive systems were in too weak a state from long-term starvation to handle such food.
*
Skimmed milk
Skimmed milk (British English), or skim milk (American English), is made when all the milkfat is removed from whole milk. It tends to contain around 0.1% fat.
Background
Historically, skimmed milk was used for fattening pigs, and was recommended ...
. The result was a bit better, but still far from acceptable.
* Bengal Famine Mixture. This is a rice-and-sugar-based mixture which had achieved good results after the
Bengal famine of 1943
The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India (present-day Bangladesh, West Bengal and eastern India) during World War II. An estimated 0.8 to 3.8 million Bengalis perished, out of a population of 60.3 millio ...
, but it proved less suitable to Europeans than to Bengalis because of the differences in the food to which they were accustomed. Adding the common ingredient
paprika
Paprika ( US , ; UK , ) is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers. It is traditionally made from ''Capsicum annuum'' varietals in the Longum group, which also includes chili peppers, but the peppers used for paprika tend to be milder an ...
to the mixture made it more palatable to these people and recovery started.
Some were too weak to even consume the Bengal Famine Mixture.
Intravenous feeding
Parenteral nutrition (PN) is the feeding of nutritional products to a person intravenously, bypassing the usual process of eating and digestion. The products are made by pharmaceutical compounding companies. The person receives a nutritional mix ...
was attempted but abandoned. SS doctors had previously used injections to murder prisoners, so some panicked at the sight of the intravenous feeding equipment.
Aftermath
Legal prosecution
Many of the former SS staff who survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British military at the Belsen trial. Over the period in which Bergen-Belsen operated as a concentration camp, at least 480 people had worked as guards or members of the commandant's staff, including around 45 women. From September 17 to November 17, 1945, 45 of those were tried by a military tribunal in Lüneburg. They included former commandant Josef Kramer, 16 other SS male members, 16 female SS guards and 12 former kapos (one of whom became ill during the trial). Among them were
Irma Grese
Irma Ilse Ida Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945) was a Nazi concentration camp guard at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and served as warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen. She was a volunteer member of the SS.
Grese was convi ...
,
Elisabeth Volkenrath
Elisabeth Volkenrath (née Mühlau; 5 September 1919 – 13 December 1945) was a German supervisor at several Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
Volkenrath, née Mühlau, was an ''ungelernte Hilfskraft'' (unskilled worker) when she vo ...
Fritz Klein
Fritz Klein (24 November 1888 – 13 December 1945) was an Austrian Nazi doctor and war criminal, hanged for his role in atrocities at Auschwitz concentration camp and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust.
Early life and educ ...
. Many of the defendants were not just charged with crimes committed at Belsen but also earlier ones at Auschwitz. Their activities at other concentration camps such as
Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora (also Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen-Dora) was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour ...
Neuengamme
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...
, the
Gross Rosen
, known for =
, location =
, built by =
, operated by =
, commandant =
, original use =
, construction =
, in operation = Summer of 1940 – 14 February 1945
, gas cham ...
Gross Werther
Gross may refer to:
Finance
*Gross Cash Registers, a defunct UK company with a high profile in the 1970s
*Gross (economics), is the total income before deducting expenses
Science and measurement
* Gross (unit), a counting unit equal to 144 ...
were not subject of the trial. It was based on British military law and the charges were thus limited to war crimes. Substantial media coverage of the trial provided the German and international public with detailed information on the mass killings at Belsen as well as on the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death. They included Kramer, Volkenrath and Klein. The executions by hanging took place on December 13, 1945, in Hamelin. Fourteen defendants were acquitted (one was excluded from the trial due to illness). Of the remaining 19, one was sentenced to life in prison but he was executed for another crime. Eighteen were sentenced to prison for periods of one to 15 years; however, most of these sentences were subsequently reduced significantly on appeals or pleas for clemency. By June 1955, the last of those sentenced in the Belsen trial had been released. Ten other members of the Belsen personnel were tried by later military tribunals in 1946 and 1948, with five of them being executed.
Denazification
Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...
courts were created by the Allies to try members of the SS and other Nazi organisations. Between 1947 and 1949 these courts initiated proceedings against at least 46 former SS staff at Belsen. Around half of these were discontinued, mostly because the defendants were considered to have been forced to join the SS. Those who were sentenced received prison terms of between four and 36 months or were fined. As the judges decided to count the time the defendants had spent in Allied internment towards the sentence, the terms were considered to have already been fully served.
Only one trial was ever held by a German court for crimes committed at Belsen, at Jena in 1949; the defendant was acquitted. More than 200 other SS members who were at Belsen have been known by name but never had to stand trial. No German soldier was ever put on trial for crimes committed against the inmates of the POW camps at Bergen-Belsen, albeit some were tried for participating in death marches headed towards Bergen-Belsen and in the region around it, despite the fact that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg had found in 1946 that the treatment of Soviet POWs by the ''Wehrmacht'' constituted a war crime.
Memorial
The area of the former Bergen-Belsen camp fell into neglect after the burning of the buildings and the closure of the nearby displaced persons' camp in the summer of 1950. The area reverted to heath; few traces of the camp remained. However, as early as May 1945, the British had erected large signs at the former camp site. Ex-prisoners began to set up monuments. A first wooden memorial was built by Jewish DPs in September 1945, followed by one made in stone, dedicated on the first anniversary of the liberation in 1946. On November 2, 1945, a large wooden cross was dedicated as a memorial to the murdered Polish prisoners. Also by the end of 1945 the Soviets had built a memorial at the entrance to the POW cemetery. A memorial to the Italian POWs followed in 1950, but was removed when the bodies were reinterred in a Hamburg cemetery.
The British military authorities ordered the construction of a permanent memorial in September 1945 after having been lambasted by the press for the desolate state of the camp. In the summer of 1946, a commission presented the design plan, which included the obelisk and memorial walls. The memorial was finally inaugurated in a large ceremony in November 1952, with the participation of Germany's president
Theodor Heuss
Theodor Heuss (; 31 January 1884 – 12 December 1963) was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His cordial nature – something of a contrast to the stern character of chancellor Ko ...
, who called on the Germans never to forget what had happened at Belsen.
For a long time, however, remembering Bergen-Belsen was not a political priority. Periods of attention were followed by long phases of official neglect. For much of the 1950s, Belsen "was increasingly forgotten as a place of remembrance". Only after 1957 did large groups of young people visit the place where Anne Frank had died. After anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the Cologne synagogue over Christmas 1959, German chancellor
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a Germany, German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the fir ...
followed a suggestion by
Nahum Goldmann
Nahum Goldmann ( he, נחום גולדמן) (July 10, 1895 – August 29, 1982) was a leading Zionist. He was a founder of the World Jewish Congress and its president from 1951 to 1978, and was also president of the World Zionist Organization from ...
, president of the
World Jewish Congress
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) was founded in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress' main purpose is to act as ...
, and visited the site of a former concentration camp for the first time. In a speech at the Bergen-Belsen memorial, Adenauer assured the Jews still living in Germany that they would have the same respect and security as everyone else. Afterwards, the German public saw the Belsen memorial as primarily a Jewish place of remembrance. Nevertheless, the memorial was redesigned in 1960–61. In 1966, a document centre was opened which offered a permanent exhibition on the persecution of the Jews, with a focus on events in the nearby Netherlands – where Anne Frank and her family had been arrested in 1944. This was complemented by an overview of the history of the Bergen-Belsen camp. This was the first ever permanent exhibit anywhere in Germany on the topic of Nazi crimes. However, there was still no scientific personnel at the site, with only a caretaker as permanent staff. Memorial events were only organized by the survivors themselves.
In October 1979, the president of the
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
Simone Veil
Simone Veil (; ; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a French magistrate and politician who served as Health Minister in several governments and was President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. A ...
, herself a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, came to the memorial for a speech which focused on the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti. This was the first time that an official event in Germany acknowledged this aspect of the Nazi era.
In 1985, international attention was focused on Bergen-Belsen. The camp was hastily included in
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
's itinerary when he visited West Germany after a controversy about a visit to a cemetery where the interred included members of the ''Waffen SS'' (see
Bitburg controversy
The Bitburg controversy concerned a ceremonial visit by Ronald Reagan, the incumbent President of the United States, to a German military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany in May 1985. The visit was intended to commemorate the 40th anniversary ...
). Shortly before Reagan's visit on May 5, there had been a large memorial event on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the camp's liberation, which had been attended by German president
Richard von Weizsäcker
Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 15 April 1920 – 31 January 2015) was a German politician ( CDU), who served as President of Germany from 1984 to 1994. Born into the aristocratic Weizsäcker family, who were part of the German nobilit ...
and chancellor
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. Kohl's 16-year tenure is the longes ...
. In the aftermath of these events, the parliament of Lower Saxony decided to expand the exhibition centre and to hire permanent scientific staff. In 1990, the permanent exhibition was replaced by a new version and a larger document building was opened.
Only in 2000 did the Federal Government of Germany begin to financially support the memorial. Co-financed by the state of Lower Saxony, a complete redesign was planned which was intended to be more in line with contemporary thought on exhibition design. On April 15, 2005, there was a ceremony, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation and many ex-prisoners and ex-liberating troops attended. In October 2007, the redesigned memorial site was opened, including a large new Documentation Centre and permanent exhibition on the edge of the newly redefined camp, whose structure and layout can now be traced. Since 2009, the memorial has been receiving funding from the Federal government on an ongoing basis.
The site is open to the public and includes monuments to the dead, including a successor to the wooden cross of 1945, some individual memorial stones and a "House of Silence" for reflection. In addition to the Jewish, Polish and Dutch national memorials, a memorial to eight Turkish citizens who were killed at Belsen was dedicated in December 2012.
Personal accounts
* The British comedian
Michael Bentine
Michael Bentine, (born Michael James Bentin; 26 January 1922General Register Office for England and Wales – Birth Register for the March Quarter of 1922, Watford Registration District, Reference 3a 1478, listed as "Michael J. Bentin", mother ...
, who took part in the liberation of the camp, wrote this on his encounter with Belsen:
Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I've tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won't come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy.
* ''Memories of Anne Frank'', a book written by Alison Leslie Gold on the recollections of Hannah Goslar, a friend of
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...
*
Mervin Willett Gonin Mervin may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People
* Mervin (given name), a list of people with this name
* Barbara Mervin (born 1982), Canadian rugby union player
* Edmund Mervin, Anglican Archdeacon of Surrey from 1556 to 1559
Places
* Rural Municipality of ...
DSO wrote about the immediate aftermath to the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in his diary.
*
Leslie Hardman
Reverend Leslie Henry Hardman MBE HCF (18 February 1913 – 7 October 2008) was an Orthodox Rabbi and the first Jewish British Army chaplain to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, an experience "that made him a public figure, both within his ...
,
Rabbi
A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
chaplain
A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric (such as a Minister (Christianity), minister, priest, pastor, rabbi, purohit, or imam), or a laity, lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secularity, secular institution (such as a hosp ...
to enter the camp, two days after its liberation, and published his account in the collective book ''Belsen in History and Memory''.
* In '' Bergen-Belsen 1945: A Medical Student's Journal'', volunteer
Michael Hargrave
Michael John Hargrave (8 December 1923 – 25 July 1974) was a British general practitioner in Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, who in 1945 assisted British Army occupation forces at the recently-liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when he ...
gives his first-hand testimony of working at the displaced persons camp after liberation.
*
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (born 17 July 1925) is a German-British cellist, and a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz.
Family
Lasker was born into a German Jewish family in Breslau, then Germany (present-day Wrocław, Poland), o ...
describes life in Belsen, its liberation and her stay at the
displaced persons camp
A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for interna ...
in her autobiography ''Inherit the Truth''.
*
Shaul Ladany
Shaul Paul Ladany ( he, שאול לדני; born April 2, 1936) is an Israeli Holocaust survivor, racewalker and two-time Olympian. He holds the world record in the 50-mile walk (7:23:50), and the Israeli national record in the 50-kilometer walk ...
, who was in the camp as an 8-year-old and later survived the
Munich Massacre
The Munich massacre was a terrorist attack carried out during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by eight members of the Palestinian people, Palestinian militant organization Black September Organization, Black September, who i ...
at the 1972 Summer Olympics recalled:
I saw my father beaten by the SS, and I lost most of my family there... A ransom deal that the Americans attempted saved 2,000 Jews and I was one. I actually went into the gas chamber, but was reprieved. God knows why.
* In his book ''From Belsen to Buckingham Palace'' Paul Oppenheimer tells of the events leading up to the internment of his whole family at the camp and their incarceration there between February 1944 and April 1945, when he was aged 14–15. Following publication of the book, Oppenheimer personally talked to many groups and schools about the events he witnessed. This work was continued by his brother Rudi, who shared the experiences.
* Leonard Webb, British veteran from the liberation of the camp.
* Describing the concentration camp, Major Dick Williams, one of the first British soldiers to enter and liberate the camp, said: "It was an evil, filthy place; a hell on Earth."
*
Abel Herzberg
Abel Jacob Herzberg (17 September 1893 – 19 May 1989) was a Dutch Jewish lawyer and writer, whose parents were Russian Jews who had come to the Netherlands from Lithuania. Herzberg was trained as a lawyer and began a legal practice in Amsterdam, ...
wrote the diary ''Between Two Streams'' ( nl, Tweestromenland) during his internment in Bergen-Belsen
* British servicemen
Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden (6 February 1922 – 19 September 2018) was an English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during the Second World War. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the ...
and
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes (4 May 1923 – 4 July 2012) was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor, and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading com ...
, who later became popular comedians, stumbled upon the camp in 1945 shortly after liberation; "Appalled, aghast, repelled – it is difficult to find words to express how we felt as we looked upon the degradation of some of the inmates not yet repatriated," Sykes later wrote. "They squatted in their thin, striped uniforms, unmoving bony structures who could have been anywhere between 30 and 60 years old, staring ahead with dead, hopeless eyes and incapable of feeling any relief at their deliverance."
* A number of British artists depicted the aftermath of the liberation of the camp. These included Eric Taylor, Leslie Cole,
Doris Zinkeisen
Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991) was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist, and writer. She was best known for her work in theatrical design.
Early life
Doris Zinkeisen was born in C ...
,
Mary Kessell
Mary Merlin Kessell (13 November 1914 – 1977)Les peintres Britannique dans les salons parisiens des origines a 1939, Béatrice Crespon-Halotier, Oliver Meslay, Echelle de Jacob, 2003, p. 308 was a British figurative painter, illustrator, des ...
and Edgar Ainsworth.
* In his 2011 autobiography ''I Was a Boy in Belsen'', Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental recounts his experiences as a prisoner in the Bergen- Belsen concentration camp.
* ''In The Dead Years - Holocaust Memoirs'' (), published by Amsterdam Publishers, survivor Joseph Schupack (1922-1989) tells about his last camp, Bergen-Belsen (pp. 173–174):
* ''And The Month Was May: A Memoir'' () by Lilian Berliner The book traces the life of Lillian Berliner, from her childhood in Hungary, to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, to her eventual liberation and resettlement in New York.
After a day’s journey, we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. This concentration camp was hopelessly overcrowded and we were not accepted. The right hand no longer knew what the left hand was doing, so we were sent to an adjoining Wehrmacht compound. As the soldiers of the Wehrmacht marched out, we moved in. The confusion was unbelievable; this time it was disorder with German perfection. We were moved into clean barracks, equipped for human beings with excellent bathrooms and clean beds stacked three on top of each other. After all we had experienced in the preceding year, this was sheer luxury. There was no mention of the usual camp rituals, no roll calls and no work, but also no food.
* Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO
It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
* ''Belsen Uncovered'' by Derrick Sington (1946)
The twentieth century has so far produced no more terrifying example of collective human wickedness than the Belsen Concentration Camp, a black spot which it fell to the lot of the British Army to occupy. This book is the personal story of the first British officer to enter the camp on its liberation and the last to leave, after a stay of five months. The author and two of his N.C.O.'s between them spoke five languages, so they had unrivalled opportunities for discovering what the inmates, men, women and children, experienced and felt. The evil which produced the concentration camps is fully exposed, and here too will be found a record of how the psychological and medical problems were tackled, as well as such complicated matters as supplies, welfare and rehabilitation.
But what should you do when faced with 60,000 dead, sick and dying people? We were in the army to fight a war and to beat the enemy. We were good at that, having been in combat for the last ten months, but none of us had any experience of dealing with the situation in Belsen and we were all more or less traumatized by the sights we had seen. I myself, although a 'senior officer', had turned 25 years of age only a few days before. Most of the men sent to deal with that human disaster were in their late teens or early twenties, even younger than I was. What we suddenly found ourselves faced with was beyond anyone's comprehension.
Media
* ''
The Relief of Belsen
''The Relief of Belsen'' is a feature-length drama that was first shown on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on 15 October 2007. It depicts events that unfolded at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp following the liberation of the camp by British t ...
'' (2007 film)
* ''
Frontline
Front line refers to the forward-most forces on a battlefield.
Front line, front lines or variants may also refer to:
Books and publications
* ''Front Lines'' (novel), young adult historical novel by American author Michael Grant
* ''Frontlines ...
'': "Memory of the Camps" (May 7, 1985, Season 3, Episode 18), is a 56-minute television documentary that addresses Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps
* ''
Memorandum
A memorandum ( : memoranda; abbr: memo; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered") is a written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviated "memo," these messages are usually brief and ...
'' (1965 film)
* ''
Night Will Fall
''Night Will Fall'' is a 2014 documentary film directed by Andre Singer that chronicles the making of the 1945 British government documentary ''German Concentration Camps Factual Survey.'' The 1945 documentary, which showed gruesome scenes from ne ...
'' is a 2014 documentary film that includes video footage shot by British armed forces upon their liberation of Bergen-Belsen
Notable inmates
This list contains some of the notable people who were either imprisoned or died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
* Julius Adler - a German politician
*
Eduard Alexander
Eduard Ludwig Alexander (14 March 1881 – 1 March 1945, also known as Eduard Louis Alexander and Eduard Ludwig) was a German politician of the Communist Party (KPD) and a representative in the Reichstag.
Career
Eduard Ludwig Alexander was bor ...
- a German politician
*
Kalmi Baruh
Kalmi Baruh ( sr-cyrl, Калми Барух; 26 December 1896 – 1945) was a Bosnian Jewish scholar in the field of Judeo-Spanish language, pioneer of the Sephardic studies and Hispanic studies in former Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Life and a ...
scholar
A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...
in the field of
Judeo-Spanish language
Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (autonym , Hebrew script: , Cyrillic: ), also known as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. Originally spoken in Spain, and then after the Edict of Expulsion spreading through the Ottoman Emp ...
*
Hélène Berr
Hélène Berr (27 March 1921 – 10 April 1945) was a French woman of Jewish ancestry and faith, who documented her life in a diary during the time of Nazi occupation of France. In France she is considered to be a "French Anne Frank".
Life ...
- a French woman of Jewish ancestry who documented her life in a diary during the time of Nazi occupation of France
* Thierry de Briey - a Belgian
equestrian
The word equestrian is a reference to equestrianism, or horseback riding, derived from Latin ' and ', "horse".
Horseback riding (or Riding in British English)
Examples of this are:
*Equestrian sports
*Equestrian order, one of the upper classes in ...
*
Bruno Brodniewicz Bruno Brodniewicz (also spelled Brodniewitsch) born 22 July 1895 in Posen, was a German prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Brodniewicz was the first Lagerälteste (camp elder), carrying prisoner tag number 1. He died in April 15–16, 1 ...
- the first
Lagerälteste
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
(camp elder) of the Auschwitz concentration camp
*
Josef Čapek
Josef Čapek (; 23 March 1887 – April 1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word "robot", which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek.
...
- a Czech artist
*
Amédée Dunois
Amédée Dunois (16 December 1878 – March 1945) was a French lawyer, journalist and politician.
Life
Amédée Catonné was born in Moulins-Engilbert, Nièvre on 16 December 1878.
He came from a respectable family.
He was a brilliant student, ...
- a French lawyer, journalist and politician
* Ernst Flersheim - a German Jewish art collector
*
Anne
Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie.
Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...
and
Margot Frank
Margot Betti Frank (16 February 1926 – ) was the elder daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank and the elder sister of Anne Frank. Margot's deportation order from the Gestapo hastened the Frank family into hiding. According to the diary of her ...
, who both died of
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
there in February or March 1945, shortly before the camp was liberated on April 15, 1945.
* Hanneli Goslar - a friend of Anne Frank, spoke about memories of Frank after surviving Bergen-Belsen.
*
Marianne Franken
Marianne Franken (11 March 1884 – 4 April 1945) was a Dutch people, Dutch painter.
Biography
Franken was born on 11 March 1884 in Amsterdam. She studied at the ''Internationaal schildersatelier (Amsterdam)'' (International painting studio). Fr ...
- a Dutch painter
* Oscar Ihlebæk - a Norwegian newspaper editor and resistance member
* Mirjam Jacobson - a Dutch painter
*
Heinrich Jasper
Heinrich Jasper (21 August 1875 – 19 February 1945) was a German politician (SPD). During the 1920s, he served three terms as regional prime minister (''Ministerpräsident'') of the Free State of Brunswick. He died in the Bergen-Belsen conc ...
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
Suzanne Kohn
Suzanne Kohn (née Netre, 18 September 1895 – 8 March 1945) was a French Jew who was murdered in the Holocaust.
Kohn was born into one of France's most prominent Jewish families; her father owned a tobacco company, her grandparents were person ...
- a French Jew born into one of France's most prominent Jewish families
*
Shaul Ladany
Shaul Paul Ladany ( he, שאול לדני; born April 2, 1936) is an Israeli Holocaust survivor, racewalker and two-time Olympian. He holds the world record in the 50-mile walk (7:23:50), and the Israeli national record in the 50-kilometer walk ...
- an Israeli Olympic athlete and survivor of the
Munich massacre
The Munich massacre was a terrorist attack carried out during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by eight members of the Palestinian people, Palestinian militant organization Black September Organization, Black September, who i ...
Rywka Lipszyc
Rywka Bajla Lipszyc (ʁivka lipʃitz) (15 September 1929 – 1945?) was a Polish-Jewish teenage girl who wrote a personal diary while in the Łódź Ghetto during the Holocaust in Poland. She survived deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentr ...
- a Polish-Jewish teenage girl who wrote a personal diary while in the
Łódź Ghetto
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...
* Augustin Malroux - a French socialist politician and member of the French Resistance
*
Benjamin Marius Telders
Benjamin Marius Telders (19 March 1903 – 6 April 1945) was a professor of law at Leiden University. He is known for standing up for his belief in the rule of law and civil society during the German Occupation.
From 1938 he became involved in D ...
- a professor of law at
Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...
*
Gino Parin
Federico Guglielmo Jehuda Pollack, known as Gino Parin (25 August 1876, in Trieste – 9 June 1944, in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen) was an Italian painter of Jewish ancestry; known primarily for his portraits of women. He was ...
- an Italian painter of Jewish ancestry
*
Gisella Perl
Gisella Perl (10 December 1907 – 16 December 1988) was a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, where she helped hundreds of women, serving as an inmate gynecologist for them. She worked without the b ...
- a Hungarian doctor and author
*
Julius Philipp
Julius Philipp (1 March 1878 – 15 March 1944) was a German-born metal trader who co-founded ''Philipp Brothers''.
Biography
Julius Philipp was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Germany. He was a cousin to Martha Bernays, the wife of Sigmu ...
- a German-born metal trader
*
Yvonne Rudellat
Yvonne Claire Rudellat, MBE, (née Cerneau, born, France, 11 January 1897 – died, 23 or 24 April 1945), code name Jacqueline, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in World War II. The p ...
- an agent of the
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...
*
Zuzana Růžičková
Zuzana Růžičková () (14 January 1927 – 27 September 2017) was a Czech harpsichordist. An interpreter of classical and baroque music, Růžičková was the first harpsichordist to record Johann Sebastian Bach's complete works for keyboard, ...
- a Czech harpsichordist
*
Felice Schragenheim
Felice Rahel Schragenheim (9 March 1922 – 31 December 1944) was a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II. She is known for her tragic love story with Lilly Wust. She was murdered via a death march from Gross-Rosen concentration camp (tod ...
- a Jewish resistance fighter
*
Georges Valois
Georges Valois (real name ''Alfred-Georges Gressent''; 7 October 1878 – February 1945) was a French journalist and national syndicalist politician. He was a member of the French Resistance and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp ...
- a French journalist and
national syndicalist
National syndicalism is a far-right adaptation of syndicalism to suit the broader agenda of integral nationalism. National syndicalism developed in France in the early 20th century, and then spread to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It is generall ...
long-distance runner
Long-distance running, or endurance running, is a form of continuous running over distances of at least . Physiologically, it is largely Aerobic exercise, aerobic in nature and requires endurance, stamina as well as mental strength.
Within e ...
Holocaust memorial landscapes in Germany Holocaust memorial landscapes in Germany encompass a large group of commemorative works dealing with the outdoor built environment. Most often these memorials attempt to keep the memory of Holocaust victims alive through dissemination of this memory ...
*
List of Nazi concentration camps
According to the ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos'', there were 23 main concentration camps (german: Stammlager), of which most had a system of satellite camps. Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that ...
*
Alan Moore (war artist)
Alan Moore (1 August191424 September 2015) was an Australian official war artists, Australian war artist during World War II. He is best known for his images of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and the Australian War Memorial holds many o ...
Channel Islands
The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...