Belsen camp
Bergen-Belsen (or Belsen) was a detention centre and concentration camp in National Socialist Germany in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as the prisoner of war camp (Stalag XI-C) in 1943, it became a holding facility, where Jewish prisoners were held with the intention of exchanging them for German hostages held overseas. Later still, the name was applied to the displaced persons camp (German expellees) established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp it became in 1944, as conditions deteriorated at the end of the war.
Contents
History
This camp was mostly for prisoners, who were to weak to work, prisoners got here after "selections" in other camps. For example, Anne Frank and her sister were also transported to this camp from Auschwitz. Even the Jews admit she died of typhus.
The camp was taken over (from the Jewish point of view: "liberated") on April 15, 1945 by the British 11th Armoured Division.[2] 60,000 prisoners were found inside, most of them seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lay around the camp unburied.[2]
Rise of the death toll
From 1940 to 1943: The change and expansion of an existing ‘Baracken’ compound into a POW camp (Stalag 311) was made in preparation for Soviet POWs in the summer of 1941. Mass-dying occurred during a ‘Fleckfiber’ (spot fever) epidemic.
In April 1943, the camp was turned over to the SS and changed into ‘Aufenthaltslager Bergen-Belsen’ (a holding facility) for the encampment of several thousand Jews who, if possible, were to be exchanged for Germans held by the Allies.
Since March of 1944, the camp was used to shelter, in a separate compound, inmates from different Concentration Camps who had become unable to work.
In October/November 1944, a temporary expansion of one part of the camp was made for the arrival of 8,000 women from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In December 1944 the completion of the change-over of Bergen-Belsen into a concentration camp was made. SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer, previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, became the new camp commandant. The number of inmates in the camp on 1 December 1944 was 15,257.
Since January 1945, there were numerous arrivals of rail transports from concentration camps near the (eastern) front lines. It was the start of the Infernos. Intolerably overcrowded conditions at the camp existed, resulting in hunger and epidemics and very high death rates.
| Date | Number of inmates: | Time period: | Number of deaths: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 1st 1945 | 22,000 | in February 1945 | 7,000 |
| March 1st | 41,520 | in March | 18,168 |
| April 1st | 43,042 | half of April | 9,000 |
On April 15th about 60,000 inmates were at Bergen-Belsen - four times the number the camp was able to accommodate.
On April 15th 1945 British troops arrived. In spite of large efforts to help the survivors, about another 9,000 inmates succumbed and by the end of June of 1945 another 4,000 had died.
Total number of deaths
The total number of deaths at Bergen-Belsen from 1943 to 1945 was about 50,000.
The graphic page dramatically shows the progressive death rate at Bergen-Belsen during the closing months and days of the war:
Until December 1944 a total of 360 deaths had been recorded during the entire existence of the camp.
During January 1945 a total of 800 to 1,000 deaths occurred
During February 1945 deaths totaled between 6,000 and 7,000
During March 1945 the death rate rose to 18,168
During April 1945 another 18,356 inmates had died.
Perspective
To put this horrific sounding story into perspective you have to view it as part of a time-line. By the time British invasion troops arrived on 15 April 1945, Hitler was about to commit suicide, the fronts were collapsing, Dresden was burned to cinders, together with its inhabitants, not to mention all the refugees who had fled from the advancing Red Army into the city of Dresden.
Revenge of the victors
At Bergen-Belsen, most of the German guards have been stated to have been beaten with rifle butts, kicked, stabbed with bayonets, shot, or worked to death. Furthermore, the residents of the nearby town of Bergen have been stated to been expelled, the camp inmates allowed to loot the houses, and much of the town was set on fire.
Quotes
"Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were Jews or other prisoners gassed. The gas chamber in Dachau was never entirely ‘completed’ and put into operation. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners who perished in Dachau or other concentration camps in the territory of the Reich proper, were victims above all of the catastrophic hygienic and supply conditions […]. The mass extermination of the Jews by gassing began in 1941/1942 and took place exclusively at several […] locations, above all in the occupied Polish territory (but nowhere in the Reich proper): in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Sobibór on the Bug, in Treblinka, Chelmno, and Belzec. There, but not in Bergen-Belsen, Dachau or Buchenwald, those mass extermination facilities disguised as shower baths or disinfection rooms were set up […]."—Dr. Martin Broszat, 1960, the German federal Institute for Contemporary History
“As an 11 year-old boy held captive at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II, Moshe Peer was sent to the gas chamber at least six times. Each time he survived, watching with horrors as many of the women and children gassed with him collapsed and died. To this day, Peer doesn’t know how he was able to survive.”—"Witness" Moshe Peer in a newspaper interview, later debunked
"The camp was not really inefficient before you [British and American forces] crossed the Rhine. There was running water, regular meals of a kind […]. But then they suddenly began to send me trainloads of new prisoners from all over Germany. It was impossible to cope with them. […] Then as a last straw the Allies bombed the electric plant that pumped our water. Loads of food were unable to reach the camp because of the Allied fighters. Then things really got out of hand. […] I did not even have sufficient staff to bury the dead, let alone segregate the sick. […] I tried to get medicines and food for the prisoners and I failed. I was swamped."—Josef Kramer, Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen camp.[3]
See also
- Belsen trials
- Moshe Peer
- Anne Frank
- Hadassah Rosensaft
- Holocaust camps
- Western Holocaust camps
- Aufseherinnen
External links
References
- ↑ Bergen-Belsen. Retrieved on April 3, 2012.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The 11th Armoured Division (Great Britain)", United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- ↑ Holocaust Handbooks, Volume 15: Germar Rudolf: Lectures on the Holocaust—Controversial Issues Cross Examined 3rd, revised and corrected edition.
