Search results
Bergen-Belsen (pronounced [ˈbɛʁɡn̩ˌbɛlsn̩]), 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, [1] in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp.
- Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a...
- Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp
Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp was a displaced persons...
- Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a 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 April 1945).
- The Polish Camp
- The Jewish Camp
- Camp Leadership
From June 1945 Poles and Jews had separate sections in the camp. In the Polish section, a lively social and cultural life developed. The Poles had established a Camp Committee on the day after liberation — initially its meetings were also attended by Polish Jews.: 314 A school opened in the summer of 1945, attended by up to 600 children, and two ki...
With the closure of the Polish section, Belsen became the only exclusively Jewish facility in the British sector, something for which the Jewish survivors had struggled with the British. The camp was for a while the largest Jewish DP camp in Germany.: 34 Although some had left, in late 1945 thousands of Jews who had survived the Holocaust in Poland...
In mid-June 1945, Major Leonard Berneywas made commandant of Camp 4. Both sections of the camp, Polish and Jewish, were largely self-administrating. External security was provided by the British Army. In March 1946, the British transferred administration of the camp to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) but remained respons...
Bergen-Belsen began as a camp for Allied prisoners of war. After it was turned over to the SS, it became a Nazi concentration camp in 1943. Beginning in fall 1944, the SS deported to Bergen-Belsen large numbers of prisoners evacuated from Nazi camps further east.
British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945. Thousands of bodies lay unburied around the camp and some 60,000 starving and mortally ill people were packed together without food, water or basic sanitation.
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. An estimated 50,000 prisoners died there, as well as 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). [1] Up to 35,000 of them died of typhus just before and after the camp was liberated (freed). [2]
Explore a timeline of the history of the Bergen-Belsen camp in the Nazi camp system. Initially a POW camp, it became a concentration camp in 1943.
