Editing Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (section)

===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" />