Editing Celle (section)

===Nazi era===
[[File:CelleTriftanlagenDenkmal.jpg|thumb|Memorial of [[Celler Hasenjagd]]]]
[[File:CelleTriftanlagenInfoTafel.jpg|thumb|Information board at the memorial]]
During [[Kristallnacht]], the anti-Jewish [[pogrom]] in [[Nazi Germany]] on 9/10 November 1938, the synagogue in Celle was saved from complete destruction only because it was in a very narrow lane and there would have been a risk to the adjacent leather factory and other parts of the historical city centre with its old wooden houses.

On 1 April 1939 Altenhäusen, Klein Hehlen, Neuenhäusen, Vorwerk and Wietzenbruch were incorporated into Celle. When [[World War II]] broke out, two serious Allied bombings occurred during the [[bombing of Celle]]: one on 22 February when the Celle railway station was attacked as a part of [[Operation Clarion]]{{cn|date=December 2024}} and on 8 April 1945, when 2.2% of the town was destroyed, especially the industrial areas and railway freight terminal. A train in which about 4,000 prisoners were being transported to the nearby [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp]] was hit. The attack claimed hundreds of casualties, but some of the prisoners managed to escape into the nearby woods. [[SS]] guards and Celle citizens participated in the so-called 'Celle hare hunt' (''[[Celler Hasenjagd]]'').<ref>{{cite book|last=Celinscak|first=Mark|title=Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp|year=2015|publisher=University of Toronto Press|location=Toronto|isbn=9781442615700}}</ref> The 'hunt' claimed several hundred dead and went on until 10 April 1945 and represented the darkest chapter in Celle's history.<ref>''"Shifting Memories. The Nazi Past in the New Germany"'' K. Neumann. University of Michigan Press, 2000</ref> The exact number of victims has not been determined. Several of the perpetrators were later tried and convicted of this [[war crime]]. A memorial with an information board and a copper-beech tree was inaugurated in Triftanlagen park on 8 April 1992. The German word for copper-beech is Blutbuche, meaning blood beech.

About 2.2% of Celle (67 houses) was destroyed in the Second World War. 550 houses were heavily damaged and 614 were slightly damaged. Celle was spared from further destruction by surrendering without a fight to advancing allied troops on 12 April 1945, so that the historical city centre and the castle survived the war completely unscathed.