Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

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This article is about the Nazi concentration camp. For the displaced persons camp established by British forces, see Bergen-Belsen DP camp.

For other uses, see Bergen-Belsen.

Present-day entrance to Bergen-Belsen

Bergen-Belsen, (or Belsen) was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Between 1943 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 European civilians died there. A memorial and an exhibition centre exist on the site today.

1 History
2 Liberation and after
3 Personal accounts
4 Trivia
5 References
6 External links
7 Notes

[edit] History

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Bergen-Belsen was created in 1940 as a POW camp Stalag XI-C. Between this time and the spring of 1942, about 18,000 Soviet soldiers died of hunger, cold and disease.
In 1942, Bergen-Belsen became a concentration camp; it was placed under SS command in April 1943. Initially it was designated Aufenthaltslager (Detention camp) to hold several thousand Jews intended to be sent overseas in exchange for German civilians that were interned.
In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an "Erholungslager" ("Recovery Camp"), [1] where prisoners from other camps too sick to work were brought.
August 1944 a shipment of approximately 8,000 female prisoners of various nationalities arrived from Auschwitz. Most of them were sent to Arbeitskommandos to work in factories.
Dec. 1944 completion of the change-over of Bergen-Belsen into a concentration camp. SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer, previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, became the new camp commander. The number of inmates in the camp on December 1st, 1944 was 15,257.
In 1945, the Nazis moved prisoners from eastern camps to Belsen as the Soviet forces advanced. The resulting overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease (particularly typhus) and malnutrition. The bodies of these prisoners were buried in mass graves.
Number of inmates: Feb 1st 1945 - 22,000. March 1st - 41,520. April 1st - 43,042. April 15th - about 60,000.
Number of deaths: During February 1945 - 7,000. During March - 18,168. During the first half of April - 9,000. It was originally designed to hold about 10,000.

There were no gas chambers in Bergen-Belsen, since the mass executions took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, an estimated 50,000 Jews, Czechs, Poles, anti-Nazi Christians, homosexuals, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) died in the camp. Among them were czech painter and writer Josef Čapek (est. April 1945), as well as Amsterdam residents Anne Frank (who died of typhus) and her sister Margot, who died there in March 1945. The average life expectancy of an inmate was nine months.

[edit] Liberation and after

Mass grave at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945

When the British advanced near the camp in 1945, the German army negotiated an exclusion zone around it to prevent the spread of typhus. Hungarian and regular German troops guarding the camp returned to German lines after the engagement. Some SS guards also fled the camp; however, a number remained wearing white armbands as a sign of surrender.

When British and Canadian troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, they found thousands of bodies unburied, and forced the remaining SS personnel to bury them. The surviving prisoners were moved to a nearby German Panzer army camp. Bergen-Belsen was then burned to the ground by flamethrowers because of a typhus epidemic and louse infestation. Subsequent accounts of Belsen after this time refer to events at the nearby army camp.

In spite of great efforts to help the survivors, about another 9,000 died in April. By the end of June of 1945 another 4,000 had died. The total number of deaths at Bergen-Belsen from 1943 to June 1945 was about 50,000.

Although the camp was burned to the ground, the site is today open to the public, featuring a visitors' center, a monument to the dead, [2] and a "House of Silence" for reflection.

Many of the former SS staff that survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British at the Belsen Trial. At the trial, the world got its first view of Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Juana Bormann, Fritz Klein, Josef Kramer and the rest of the SS men and women who before served at Mittelbau Dora, Ravensbrück, Auschwitz I, II, III, and Neuengamme. Many of the female guards had served at tiny Gross Rosen subcamps at Neusalz, Langenleuba, and the Dora Mittelbau (Mittelbau Dora) subcamp at Gross Werther. Typhus spread drastically through the camp and caused many of the deaths.

[edit] Personal accounts

Symbolic grave of Anne Frank

Michael Bentine wrote this on his encounter with Belsen:

We were headed for an airstrip outside Celle, a small town, just north of Hanover. We had barely cranked to a halt and started to set up the ‘ops’ tent, when the Typhoons thundered into the circuit and broke formation for their approach. As they landed on the hastily repaired strip – a ‘Jock’ doctor raced up to us in his jeep.

‘Got any medical orderlies?’ he shouted above the roar of the aircraft engines. ‘Any K rations or vitaminised chocolate?’

‘What’s up?’ I asked for I could see his face was grey with shock.

‘Concentration camp up the road,’ he said shakily, lighting a cigarette. ‘It’s dreadful - just dreadful.’ He threw the cigarette away untouched. ‘I’ve never seen anything so awful in my life. You just won’t believe it till you see it – for God’s sake come and help them!’

‘What’s it called?’ I asked, reaching for the operations map to mark the concentration camp safely out of the danger area near the bomb line.

‘Belsen,’ he said, simply.

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.

After VE. Day I flew up to Denmark with Kelly, a West Indian pilot who was a close friend. As we climbed over Belsen, we saw the flame-throwing Bren carriers trundling through the camp – burning it to the ground. Our light ME. 108 rocked in the superheated air, as we sped above the curling smoke, and Kelly had the last words on it.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ he said, fervently.

And his words sounded like a benediction.

Banksy's manifesto consists of an account of Mervin Willett Gonin, DSO of the immediate aftermath to the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Gonin's diary extract is sourced to the Imperial War Museum.

Leonard Webb, British veteran from the liberation of the camp.

[edit] Trivia

Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein's account of her time in Bergen-Belsen inspired the song Red Sector A by Rush. Rubenstein's son Geddy Lee is Rush's bassist and vocalist.^[1]