Editing Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (section)

==Operation==

===Prisoner of war camp===
[[File:Bergen-Belsen - 2018-02-26 (088).jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|Memorial to Soviet prisoners of war]]
In 1935, the [[Wehrmacht]] began to build a large military complex close to the village of [[Belsen (Bergen)|Belsen]], a part of the town of Bergen, in what was then the [[Province of Hanover]].<ref name="Memorial website"/> This became the largest military training area in Germany of the time and was used for armoured vehicle training.<ref name="Memorial website"/> The barracks were finished in 1937. The camp has been in continuous operation since then and is today known as [[Bergen-Hohne Training Area]]. It is used by the [[NATO]] armed forces.

The workers who constructed the original buildings were housed in camps near [[Fallingbostel]] and Bergen, the latter being the so-called Bergen-Belsen Army Construction Camp.<ref name="Memorial website"/> Once the military complex was completed in 1938–39, the workers' camp fell into disuse. However, after the [[German invasion of Poland]] in September 1939, the ''Wehrmacht'' began using the huts as a [[prisoner of war]] (POW) camp.

The camp of huts near Fallingbostel became known as [[Stalag XI-B]] and was to become one of the ''Wehrmacht''{{'}}s largest POW camps, holding up to 95,000 prisoners from various countries.<ref name="Memorial website2">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/POW_Camps.html|title=POW Camps|access-date=April 3, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131016093251/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/POW_Camps.html|archive-date=October 16, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> In June 1940, Belgian and French POWs were housed in the former Bergen-Belsen construction workers' camp. This installation was significantly expanded from June 1941, once Germany prepared to invade the Soviet Union, becoming an independent camp known as [[Stalag XI-C]] (311). It was intended to hold up to 20,000 [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] POWs and was one of three such camps in the area. The others were at [[Oerbke]] (Stalag XI-D (321)) and [[Wietzendorf]] (Stalag X-D (310)). By the end of March 1942, some 41,000 Soviet POWs had died in these three camps of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. By the end of the war, the total number of dead had increased to 50,000.<ref name="Memorial website2"/> When the POW camp in Bergen ceased operation in early 1945, as the ''Wehrmacht'' handed it over to the [[SS]], the cemetery contained over 19,500 dead Soviet prisoners.

In the summer of 1943, Stalag XI-C (311) was dissolved and Bergen-Belsen became a branch camp of Stalag XI-B. It served as the hospital for all Soviet POWs in the region until January 1945. Other inmates/patients were Italian military internees from August 1944 and, following the suppression of the [[Warsaw Uprising]] in October 1944, around 1,000 members of the [[Polish Home Army]] were imprisoned in a separate section of the POW camp.<ref name="Memorial website2"/>

===Concentration camp===
In April 1943, a part of the Bergen-Belsen camp was taken over by the SS Economic-Administration Main Office (''SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA''). It thus became part of the [[concentration camp]] system, run by the ''SS [[Schutzstaffel]]'', but it was a special case.<ref name="USHMM website">{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224|title=Bergen-Belsen|access-date=April 3, 2012}}</ref> Having initially been designated a ''Zivilinterniertenlager'' ("civilian internment camp"), in June 1943 it was redesignated ''Aufenthaltslager'' ("holding camp"), since the [[Geneva Conventions]] stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees.<ref name="Exhibition guide">{{cite book|editor-last=Godeke|editor-first=Monika |title=Bergen-Belsen Memorial 2007: Guide to the Exhibition|publisher=Scherrer|year=2007|isbn=978-3-9811617-3-1}}</ref> This "holding camp" or "exchange camp" was for Jews who were intended to be exchanged for German civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency.<ref name="Memorial website3">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/exchange-camp.html|title=The Exchange Camp|access-date=April 3, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130421052736/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/exchange-camp.html|archive-date=April 21, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the "Hungarian camp", the "special camp" for Polish Jews, the "neutrals camp" for citizens of neutral countries and the "Star camp" for [[History of the Jews in the Netherlands|Dutch]] Jews). Between the summer of 1943 and December 1944 at least 14,600 Jews, including 2,750 minors, were transported to the Bergen-Belsen "holding" or exchange camp.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|160}} Inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to the camp from all over Germany and occupied Europe. In general, the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of Bergen-Belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value.<ref name="Memorial website3" /> However, only around 2,560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany.<ref name="Memorial website3"/>

In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an ''Erholungslager'' ("recovery camp"),{{citation needed|date=April 2023}} where prisoners too sick to work were brought from other concentration camps. They were in Belsen supposedly to recover and then return to their original camps and resume work, but many of them died in Belsen of disease, starvation, exhaustion and lack of medical attention.<ref name="Memorial website4">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/mens-and-womens-camps.html|title=Men's and Women's Camps|access-date=April 3, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130421052948/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/mens-and-womens-camps.html|archive-date=April 21, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

In August 1944, a new section was created, and this became the so-called "women's camp". By November 1944 this camp received around 9,000 women and young girls. Most of those who were able to work stayed only for a short while and were then sent on to other concentration camps or slave-labour camps. The first women interned there were Poles, arrested after the failed Warsaw Uprising. Others were Jewish women from Poland or Hungary, transferred from Auschwitz.<ref name="Memorial website4" /> [[Margot Frank|Margot]] and [[Anne Frank]] died there in February or March 1945.<ref name="DeathResearch">{{cite web |title=Anne Frank’s last months |url=https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/news-and-press/news/2015/3/31/anne-franks-last-months/ |website=AnneFrank.org |publisher=Anne Frank House |access-date=29 April 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923172629/https://www.annefrank.org/en/News/News/2015/Maart/Anne-Franks-last-months/ |archive-date=23 September 2015 |date=31 March 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===More prisoners===
In December 1944, ''SS-[[Hauptsturmführer]]'' [[Josef Kramer]], previously at [[Auschwitz-Birkenau]], became the new camp commandant, replacing ''SS-Hauptsturmführer'' {{Interlanguage link|Adolf Haas|de|3=Adolf Haas (KZ-Kommandant)}}, who had been in post since the spring of 1943.<ref name="USHMM website"/> In January 1945, the SS took over the POW hospital and increased the size of Bergen-Belsen. As eastern concentration camps were evacuated before the advance of the Red Army, at least 85,000 people were transported in cattle cars or marched to Bergen-Belsen.<ref name="Memorial website5a">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/reception-and-dying-camp.html|title="Reception" and dying camps|access-date=April 3, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130421052240/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/concentration-camp/reception-and-dying-camp.html|archive-date=April 21, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Before that, the number of prisoners at Belsen had been much smaller. In July 1944, there were 7,300; by December 1944, the number had increased to 15,000; and by February 1945, it had risen to 22,000. Numbers then soared to around 60,000 by April 15, 1945.<ref name="USHMM website"/> This overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease: particularly [[typhus]], as well as [[tuberculosis]], [[typhoid fever]], [[dysentery]] and [[malnutrition]] in a camp originally designed to hold about 10,000 inmates. At this point also, the special status of the exchange prisoners no longer applied. All inmates were subject to starvation and epidemics.<ref name="Memorial website5a" />

===''Außenlager'' (satellite camps)===
{{main|List of subcamps of Bergen-Belsen}}
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had three satellite camps.<ref>[http://www.deutschland-ein-denkmal.de/ded/database/category;jsessionid=F525331306A130FBD111E2D0ED447E2D?cat=kz.beb List of places: Concentration camps and outlying camps Concentration camp Bergen-Belsen] in 'List of national socialist camps and detention sites 1933 - 1945 Germany - A Memorial', www.deutschland-ein-denkmal.de, accessed 15 October 2023</ref> These were at regional armament works. Around 2,000 female concentration camp prisoners were forced to work there. Those who were too weak or sick to continue with their work were brought to Bergen-Belsen.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|204–205}}

''Außenlager Bomlitz-Benefeld'' at [[Bomlitz]] near [[Fallingbostel]] was in use from September 3 to October 15, 1944. It was located at the facility of Eibia GmbH, a gunpowder works. Around 600 female Polish Jews were used for construction and production work.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|204}}

''Außenlager Hambühren-Ovelgönne'' (Lager III, Waldeslust) at [[Hambühren]] south of [[Winsen an der Aller|Winsen]] was in use from August 23, 1944, to February 4, 1945. It was an abandoned [[potash]] mine, now intended as an underground production site for Bremen plane manufacturer [[Focke-Wulf]]. Around 400 prisoners, mostly female Polish or Hungarian Jews, were forced to prepare the facility and to help lay train tracks to it. This was done for the company [[Hochtief]].<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|204}}

''Außenlager Unterlüß-Altensothrieth'' (Tannenberglager) east of Bergen was in use from late August 1944 to April 13, 1945. It was located at [[Unterlüß]], where the [[Rheinmetall|Rheinmetall-Borsig AG]] had a large test site. Up to 900 female Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yugoslavian and Czech Jews had to clear forest, do construction work or work in munitions production.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|204}}

Prisoners were guarded by SS staff and received no wages for their work. The companies instead reimbursed the SS for the labour supplied. Wage taxes were also levied by local authorities.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|204–205}}

===Treatment of prisoners and deaths in the camp===
[[File:The Liberation of Bergen-belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945 BU4004.jpg|thumb|Bergen Belsen crematorium in April 1945]]
[[File:Bergen Belsen Liberation 03.jpg|thumb|A [[British Army]] [[bulldozer]] pushes dead bodies into a [[mass grave]] at Belsen, April 19, 1945]]
Current estimates put the number of prisoners who passed through the concentration camp during its period of operation from 1943 to 1945 at around 120,000. Due to the destruction of the camp's files by the SS, not even half of them, around 55,000, are known by name.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|269}} As mentioned above, treatment of prisoners by the SS varied between individual sections of the camp, with the inmates of the exchange camp generally being better treated than other prisoners, at least initially. However, in October 1943 the SS selected 1,800 men and women from the ''Sonderlager'' ("special camp"), Jews from Poland who held passports from Latin American countries. Since the governments of these nations mostly refused to honour the passports, these people had lost their value to the regime. Under the pretext of sending them to a fictitious "Lager Bergau", the SS had them transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were sent directly to the gas chambers and murdered. In February and May 1944 another 350 prisoners from the "special camp" were sent to Auschwitz. Thus, out of the total of 14,600 prisoners in the exchange camp, at least 3,550 died, more than 1,400 of them at Belsen, and around 2,150 at Auschwitz.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|187}}

In the ''Männerlager'' (the male section of the "recovery camp"), inmates suffered even more from lack of care, malnourishment, disease and mistreatment by the [[SS-Totenkopfverbände|guards]]. Thousands of them died. In the summer of 1944, at least 200 men were murdered by orders of the SS by being injected with [[phenol]].<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|196}}

There were no [[Gas chamber#Germany|gas chamber]]s at Bergen-Belsen, since the mass-murders took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, current estimates put the number of deaths at Belsen at more than 50,000 [[Jew]]s, [[Czech people|Czechs]], [[Polish people|Poles]], anti-Nazi [[Christians]], [[homosexual]]s, and [[Romani people|Roma]] and [[Sinti]] (Gypsies).<ref name="USHMM website" /> Among them were [[French Resistance]] member [[Jean Maurice Paul Jules de Noailles]], the [[Duke of Ayen|6th Duke of Ayen]] (on April 14, 1945),<ref>{{Cite book |last=Martin |first=Georges |title=Histoire et généalogie de la maison de Noailles |year=1993}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=18 November 1952 |title=Le tribunal militaire de Paris condamne à vingt ans de réclusion une collaboratrice de la Gestapo accusée d'avoir dénoncé le duc d'Ayen |trans-title=The Paris military court sentences a Gestapo collaborator accused of having denounced the Duke of Ayen to twenty years of imprisonment |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1952/11/18/le-tribunal-militaire-de-paris-condamne-a-vingt-ans-de-reclusion-une-collaboratrice-de-la-gestapo-accusee-d-avoir-denonce-le-duc-d-ayen_2000965_1819218.html |website=[[Le Monde]] |language=fr}}</ref> and Czech painter and writer [[Josef Čapek]] (estimated to be in April 1945), who had coined the word ''[[robot]]'', popularised by his brother [[Karel Čapek]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://kultura.zpravy.idnes.cz/autorska-prava-josefa-capka-dpc-/literatura.aspx?c=A160108_130210_literatura_ob |title=Pejsek a kočička mají ještě autorská práva chráněna, Mein Kampf je volný|work= [[iDNES.cz]]|date=8 January 2016|language=czech}}</ref>

The rate at which inmates died at Belsen accelerated notably after the mass transport of prisoners from other camps began in December 1944. From 1943 to the end of 1944 around 3,100 died. From January to mid-April 1945 this rose to around 35,000. Another 14,000 died after liberation between April 15 and the end of June 1945, in the [[Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp]] under British authority.<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|233}}

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="3"| '''Deaths at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp'''<br /> December 1944 to April 15, 1945<ref name="New Exhibition Guide"/>{{rp|232–233}}
|-----
| December 1944
| at least 360
|----
| January 1945
| around 1,200
|----
| February 1945
| around 6,400
|----
| March 1945
| at least 18,168
|----
| April 1945
| around 10,000
|}

After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it), was "of a privileged nature", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in [[Thessaloniki]] against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen "as a special favor" granted by the Germans.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/salonika-jews-sponsor-trial-of-collaborators|title=Jewish Virtual Library: Salonika Jews sponsor trial of collaborators |language=english}}</ref>