8.0/10 (30787 reviews)
Best-prices for top-rated guided, full-day, half-day, and round-trip transport options. Make your trip easy with hotel pickup service, mobile tickets, and easy cancellation.
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.
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. Many were suffering from typhus, dysentery and starvation.
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.
On April 15, 1945, the 11 th Armoured Division of the British army entered the Bergen-Belsen camp complex; this was the first concentration camp liberated by British forces, who were unprepared for what they found. British soldiers arriving were unprepared for the devastating conditions of the camp.
On 12 April 1945, the Nazis agreed to surrender the Bergen-Belsen camp. On 15 April 1945, the British troops officially occupied and liberated the camp. The huge influxes of prisoners following the death marches of early 1945 meant that conditions within the camp were extremely inhumane.
Bergen-Belsen, Nazi German concentration camp near the villages of Bergen and Belsen, about 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Celle, Germany. It was established in 1943 on part of the site of a prisoner-of-war camp and was originally intended as a detention camp for Jews who were to be exchanged for.
This Bergen-Belsen lesson gives students the opportunity to uncover the Nazi camp system in greater detail. It covers the unfolding events of the Nazi plan to annihilate Jews and its...
