Editing Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (section)

===Legal prosecution===
{{main|Belsen trial}}
Many of the former SS staff who survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British military at the [[Belsen trial]]. Over the period in which Bergen-Belsen operated as a concentration camp, at least 480 people had worked as guards or members of the commandant's staff, including around 45 women.<ref name="Memorial website7">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/prosecution-of-perpetrators.html|title=The Prosecution of the Perpetrators|access-date=December 20, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130421052828/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/prosecution-of-perpetrators.html|archive-date=April 21, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> From September 17 to November 17, 1945, 45 of those were tried by a military tribunal in Lüneburg. They included former commandant Josef Kramer, 16 other SS male members, 16 female SS guards and 12 former kapos (one of whom became ill during the trial).<ref name="Memorial website8">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/prosecution-of-perpetrators/belsen-trial.html|title=Belsen Trial|access-date=December 20, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130329050106/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/prosecution-of-perpetrators/belsen-trial.html|archive-date=March 29, 2013|df=mdy-all|website=bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de}}</ref> Among them were [[Irma Grese]], [[Elisabeth Volkenrath]], [[Herta Ehlert|Hertha Ehlert]], {{Interlanguage link|Ilse Lothe|de}}, [[Juana Bormann|Johanna Bormann]] and [[Fritz Klein]]. Many of the defendants were not just charged with crimes committed at Belsen but also earlier ones at Auschwitz. Their activities at other concentration camps such as [[Mittelbau-Dora]], [[Ravensbrück]], [[Neuengamme concentration camp|Neuengamme]], the [[Gross Rosen]] subcamps at [[Neusalz]] and [[Langenleuba]], and the Mittelbau-Dora subcamp at [[Gross Werther]] were not subject of the trial. It was based on British military law and the charges were thus limited to war crimes.<ref name="Memorial website8"/> Substantial media coverage of the trial provided the German and international public with detailed information on the mass killings at Belsen as well as on the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.<ref name="Memorial website8"/>

Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death.<ref name="Memorial website8" /> They included Kramer, Volkenrath and Klein. The executions by hanging took place on December 13, 1945, in Hamelin.<ref name="Memorial website8"/> Fourteen defendants were acquitted (one was excluded from the trial due to illness). Of the remaining 19, one was sentenced to life in prison but he was executed for another crime. Eighteen were sentenced to prison for periods of one to 15 years; however, most of these sentences were subsequently reduced significantly on appeals or pleas for clemency.<ref name="Memorial website8"/> By June 1955, the last of those sentenced in the Belsen trial had been released.<ref name="Memorial Guide"/>{{rp|37}} Ten other members of the Belsen personnel were tried by later military tribunals in 1946 and 1948, with five of them being executed.<ref name="Memorial website8"/>

[[Denazification]] courts were created by the Allies to try members of the SS and other Nazi organisations. Between 1947 and 1949 these courts initiated proceedings against at least 46 former SS staff at Belsen. Around half of these were discontinued, mostly because the defendants were considered to have been forced to join the SS.<ref name="Memorial Guide"/>{{rp|39}} Those who were sentenced received prison terms of between four and 36 months or were fined. As the judges decided to count the time the defendants had spent in Allied internment towards the sentence, the terms were considered to have already been fully served.<ref name="Memorial website9"/>

Only one trial was ever held by a German court for crimes committed at Belsen, at Jena in 1949; the defendant was acquitted. More than 200 other SS members who were at Belsen have been known by name but never had to stand trial.<ref name="Memorial website9">{{cite web|url=http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/prosecution-of-perpetrators/german-proceedings.html|title=German proceedings|access-date=December 20, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131016091715/http://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/prosecution-of-perpetrators/german-proceedings.html|archive-date=October 16, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> No German soldier was ever put on trial for crimes committed against the inmates of the POW camps at Bergen-Belsen, although some were tried for participating in death marches headed towards Bergen-Belsen and in the region around it,<ref name="Memorial website7"/> despite the fact that the [[International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg]] had found in 1946 that the treatment of Soviet POWs by the ''Wehrmacht'' constituted a war crime.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Prosecution of the Perpetrators |url=https://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/theprosecutionoftheperpetrators/ |access-date=2022-10-12 |website=bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Memorial Guide"/>{{rp|39}}