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Camp in the
concentration camp system of Nazi Germany, located in Lower Saxony
near the city of Celle and officially established in April 1943, for
persons who were designated for exchange with German nationals in
Allied countries. Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald and Natzweiler
worked at building the camp. Bergen-Belsen came under the SS
Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic-Administrative Main
Office; WVHA). It's first commandant, Adolf Haas, was succeeded by
Josef Kramer on December 2, 1944.
Satellite Camps
By the autumn of 1944, five satellite camps were set up:
1. A "prisoners' camp," for the 500 inmates who had been brought in
for construction work. Conditions were terrible and mortality high.
The camp was closed on February 23, 1944, and the prisoners were
sent to Sachsenhausen.
2. The "special camp," for two transports of Jews from Poland, some
2,400 people, in possession of various documents, mostly South
American. In October 1943, 1,700 of these inmates were deported to
their deaths to Auschwitz; 350 more were deported early in 1944. The
remaining Jews were not assigned to work teams and had no contact
with other sections of the camp.
3. The "neutral camp," in which 350 Jews were housed from July 1944
until liberation. The inmates, nationals of neutral countries, were
treated better than other prisoners.
4. The "star camp," for some 4,000 Jewish prisoners who ostensibly
were designated for exchange. Mostly Dutch, these inmates did not
wear uniforms, but did wear a yellow badge in the form of a Star of
David - hence the camp's name.
5. The "Hungarian camp," in which 1,685 Jews from Hungary, the
transport organized by Rezsoe Kasztner, were housed.
Only a few of the Jews who were brought to Bergen-Belsen were set
free: on July 10, 1944, 222 Jews reached Palestine; in two parts, in
August and December, the Kasztner transport was sent to Switzerland;
and on January 25, 1945, 136 Jews with South American passports also
reached Switzerland.
Beginning in March 1944, Bergen-Belsen gradually became a "regular"
concentration camp, the Germans transferring to it, from other
camps, prisoners who were classified as "unfit to work." The first
group of 1,000 that arrived from Dora were housed in terrible
conditions in a new part of the camp; nearly all died quickly and at
liberation, only 57 were alive. More transports arrived and most of
the prisoners were housed in the former "prisoners' camp." German
convicts were also transferred from Dora, to serve as "block elders"
and Kapos. They treated the other inmates very brutally.
In August 1944, a women's camp was added. From Buchenwald, 4,000
women prisoners were transferred to the camp and then dispatched to
Flossenbuerg. Most of them returned to Bergen-Belsen, sick or
exhausted. Women from Plaszow and Auschwitz also were sent to
Bergen-Belsen in October 1944, among them Anne Frank and her sister
Margot.
At the end of 1944 and early in 1945, a complete deterioration of
living conditions set in when thousands of survivors of death
marches began to reach the camp. The administration did not even try
to house them and a raging typhus epidemic broke out. From January
to mid-April 1945, 35,000 prisoners perished.
On April 15, 1945, the camp was liberated by the British, who were
appalled to find most of the 60,000 inmates in critical condition
and who were totally unprepared to deal with the situation. During
the next five days, 14,000 died, and in the following weeks, another
14,000 succumbed. Bergen-Belsen became the site of a displaced
persons' camp, which remained in existence until 1951. Forty-eight
former members of the camp staff were tried by the British. Eleven
were sentenced to death, including Josef Kramer. They were executed
on December 12, 1945.
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