Misplaced Pages

#677322

135-475: Bergen-Belsen ( pronounced [ˈbɛʁɡn̩ˌbɛlsn̩] ), or Belsen , was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany , southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle . Originally established as a prisoner of war camp , in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an "exchange camp", where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp

270-477: 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. 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

405-532: A "House of Silence" for reflection. In addition to the Jewish, Polish and Dutch national memorials, a memorial to eight Turkish citizens who were killed at Belsen was dedicated in December 2012. Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I've tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won't come. To me Belsen

540-495: A "dual strategy of publicity and secrecy", the regime directed terror both at the direct victim as well as the entire society in order to eliminate its opponents and deter resistance. Beginning in March 1933, detailed reports on camp conditions were published in the press. Nazi propaganda demonized the prisoners as race traitors, sexual degenerates, and criminals and presented the camps as sites of re-education. After 1933, reports in

675-527: 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. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had three satellite camps. 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. Außenlager Bomlitz-Benefeld at Bomlitz near Fallingbostel

810-514: A consequence of these death marches . Many prisoners died after liberation due to their poor physical condition. The liberation of the camps – documented by the Western Allies in 1945 – has played a prominent part in perception of the camp system as a whole. Since their liberation, the Nazi concentration camp system has come to symbolize violence and terror in the modern world. After

945-624: A cumulative figure that counts all the subcamps that existed at one point; historian Karin Orth estimates the number of subcamps to have been 186 at the end of 1943, 341 or more in June 1944, and at least 662 in January 1945. The camps were concentrated in prewar Germany and to a lesser extent territory annexed to Germany. No camps were built on the territory of Germany's allies that enjoyed even nominal independence. Each camp housed either men, women, or

1080-399: A fixed daily cost. This decision paved the way for the establishment of many subcamps located near workplaces. More workers were obtained through transfers from prisons and forced labor programs, causing the prisoner population to double twice by mid-1944. Subcamps where prisoners did construction work had significantly higher death rates than those that worked in munitions manufacture. By

1215-614: A group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable." Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s, the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentration camps (Spanish: reconcentrados ) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878). The label

1350-462: A high mortality rate during the first half of the war. In contrast, Reich Germans enjoyed favorable treatment compared to other nationalities. A minority of prisoners obtained substantially better treatment than the rest because they were prisoner functionaries (mostly Germans) or skilled laborers. Prisoner functionaries served at the whim of the SS and could be dismissed for insufficient strictness. As

1485-400: A large memorial event on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the camp's liberation, which had been attended by German president Richard von Weizsäcker and chancellor Helmut Kohl . In the aftermath of these events, the parliament of Lower Saxony decided to expand the exhibition centre and to hire permanent scientific staff. In 1990, the permanent exhibition was replaced by a new version and

SECTION 10

#1732772004678

1620-531: A larger document building was opened. Only in 2000 did the Federal Government of Germany begin to financially support the memorial. Co-financed by the state of Lower Saxony, a complete redesign was planned which was intended to be more in line with contemporary thought on exhibition design. On April 15, 2005, there was a ceremony, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation and many ex-prisoners and ex-liberating troops attended. In October 2007,

1755-513: A long time, however, remembering Bergen-Belsen was not a political priority. Periods of attention were followed by long phases of official neglect. For much of the 1950s, Belsen "was increasingly forgotten as a place of remembrance". Only after 1957 did large groups of young people visit the place where Anne Frank had died. After anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the Cologne synagogue over Christmas 1959, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer followed

1890-478: A million died during their imprisonment. Historian Adam Tooze counts the number of survivors at no more than 475,000, calculating that at least 1.1 million of the registered prisoners must have died. According to his estimate, at least 800,000 of the murdered prisoners were not Jewish. In addition to the registered prisoners who died, a million Jews were gassed upon arriving in Auschwitz; including these victims,

2025-489: A mixed population. Women's camps were mostly for armaments production and located primarily in northern Germany, Thuringia , or the Sudetenland , while men's camps had a wider geographical distribution. Sex segregation decreased over the course of the war and mixed camps predominated outside of Germany's prewar borders. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in the camps, of whom, according to Wagner, nearly

2160-567: A neutral zone. Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to "uphold order inside the camp". The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops who were returned to the German front lines by the British shortly afterwards. Due to heavy fighting near Winsen and Walle , the British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp

2295-447: A result, sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky emphasizes that "They took over the role of the SS in order to prevent SS encroachment" and other prisoners remembered them for their brutality. Hard labor was a fundamental component of the concentration camp system and an aspect in the daily life of prisoners. However, the forced labor deployment was largely determined by external political and economic factors that drove demand for labor. During

2430-577: A result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an " extermination camp " and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment. Also during World War II, concentration camps were established by Italian , Japanese , US , and Canadian forces. The former label continues to see expanded use for cases post- World War II , for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during

2565-715: A suggestion by Nahum Goldmann , president of the World Jewish Congress , and visited the site of a former concentration camp for the first time. In a speech at the Bergen-Belsen memorial, Adenauer assured the Jews still living in Germany that they would have the same respect and security as everyone else. Afterwards, the German public saw the Belsen memorial as primarily a Jewish place of remembrance. Nevertheless,

2700-602: A thousand concentration camps ( German : Konzentrationslager ), including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe . The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany . Following the 1934 purge of the SA , the concentration camps were run exclusively by the SS via the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and later

2835-714: Is difficult to determine; historian Jane Caplan estimated it at 50,000, with arrests perhaps exceeding 100,000. Eighty per cent of prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany and ten per cent members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany . Many prisoners were released in late 1933, and after a Christmas amnesty , there were only a few dozen camps left. About 70 camps were established in 1933, in any convenient structure that could hold prisoners, including vacant factories, prisons, country estates, schools, workhouses , and castles. There

SECTION 20

#1732772004678

2970-406: Is that inmates are held outside the rule of law . Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to as "concentration camps". The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in

3105-564: 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. 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

3240-627: The Einsatzgruppen death squads and massacred Polish Jews as well as Soviet prisoners of war. Older general SS personnel, and those wounded or disabled, replaced those assigned to combat duties. As the war progressed, a more diverse group was recruited to guard the expanding camp system, including female guards (who were not part of the SS). During the second half of the war, army and air force personnel were recruited, making up as many as 52 per cent of guards by January 1945. The manpower shortage

3375-725: The Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire , Ottoman Armenians were held in camps during their deportation into the Syrian Desert . In postwar Germany , "unwanted foreigners" – mainly Eastern European Jews – were confined at Cottbus-Sielow and Stargard . On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany after striking a backroom deal with the previous chancellor, Franz von Papen . The Nazis had no plan for concentration camps prior to their seizure of power. The concentration camp system arose in

3510-651: The Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp . Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved to the displaced persons (DP) camp . Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp's administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence. The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves. The personnel were given starvation rations, not allowed to use gloves or other protective clothing, and were continuously shouted at and threatened to make sure that they did not stop working. Some of

3645-634: The Cheka . These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had a distinctly political purpose. These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1 . In 1929, the distinction between criminal and political prisoners was eliminated, administration of the camps was turned over to the Joint State Political Directorate , and

3780-429: The Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany , in 1933, detaining tens of thousands of prisoners. Many camps were closed following releases of prisoners at the end of the year, and the camp population would continue to dwindle through 1936; this trend would reverse in 1937, with the Nazi regime arresting tens of thousands of " anti-socials ", a category that included Romani people as well as

3915-537: The Disciplinary and Penal Code , a manual which specified draconian punishments for disobedient prisoners. He also created a system of prisoner functionaries , which later developed into the camp elders, block elders, and kapo of later camps. In May 1934, Lichtenburg was taken over by the SS from the Prussian bureaucracy, marking the beginning of a transition set in motion by Heinrich Himmler , then chief of

4050-569: The Gestapo ( secret police ). Following the purge of the SA on 30 June 1934, in which Eicke took a leading role, the remaining SA-run camps were taken over by the SS. In December 1934, Eicke was appointed the first inspector of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate (IKL); only camps managed by the IKL were designated "concentration camps". In early 1934, the number of prisoners was still falling and it

4185-748: The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China 's internment camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps . The camps were established in

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - Misplaced Pages Continue

4320-498: The Männerlager (the male section of the "recovery camp"), inmates suffered even more from lack of care, malnourishment, disease and mistreatment by the 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 . There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, since the mass-murders took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, current estimates put

4455-632: The SS Main Command Office and the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) took on the responsibility of detaining and releasing concentration camp prisoners. In 1942, the IKL was subordinated to the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA) to improve the camps' integration into the war economy. Despite changes in the structure, the IKL remained directly responsible to Himmler. The camps under

4590-410: The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office . Initially, most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany , but as time went on different groups were arrested, including "habitual criminals", " asocials ", and Jews . After the beginning of World War II , people from German-occupied Europe were imprisoned in the concentration camps. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in

4725-479: The Wehrmacht were targeted and detained in concentration camps. In Western Europe, arrests focused on resistance fighters and saboteurs, but in Eastern Europe arrests included mass roundups aimed at the implementation of Nazi population policy and the forced recruitment of workers. This led to a predominance of Eastern Europeans, especially Poles, who made up the majority of the population of some camps. By

4860-419: The "criminal" prisoners at concentration camps needed to be isolated from society because they had committed offenses of a sexual or violent nature. In fact, most of the criminal prisoners were working-class men who had resorted to petty theft to support their families. Nazi raids of perceived asocials, including the arrest of 10,000 people in June 1938, targeted homeless people and the mentally ill, as well as

4995-423: The "special camp" for Polish Jews, the "neutrals camp" for citizens of neutral countries and the "Star camp" for 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. Inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to

5130-490: The Belsen personnel were tried by later military tribunals in 1946 and 1948, with five of them being executed. 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

5265-860: The Great Depression lowered the unemployment rate, so " work-shy " elements would be arrested to keep others working harder. At the same time, Himmler was also focusing on exploiting prisoners' labor within the camp system. Hitler's architect, Albert Speer , had grand plans for creating monumental Nazi architecture . The SS company German Earth and Stone Works (DEST) was set up with funds from Speer's agency for exploiting prisoner labour to extract building materials. Flossenbürg and Mauthausen had been built adjacent to quarries, and DEST also set up brickworks at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Political prisoners were also arrested in larger numbers, including Jehovah's Witnesses and German émigrés who returned home. Czech and Austrian anti-Nazis were arrested after

5400-577: The IKL were guarded by members of the SS-Totenkopfverbande ("death's head"). The guards were housed in barracks adjacent to the camp and their duties were to guard the perimeter of the camp as well as work details. They were officially forbidden from entering the camps, although this rule was not followed. Towards the end of the 1930s, the SS-Totenkopfverbande expanded its operations and set up military units, which followed

5535-684: 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. 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. Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death. They included Kramer, Volkenrath and Klein. The executions by hanging took place on December 13, 1945, in Hamelin. Fourteen defendants were acquitted (one

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - Misplaced Pages Continue

5670-782: The Nazi camps than any other site of detention and terror in history". Stone argues that the Nazi concentration camp system inspired similar atrocities by other regimes, including the Argentine military junta during the Dirty War , the Pinochet regime in Chile, the Brazilian military dictatorship and Pitești Prison in the Romanian People's Republic . Concentration camp The term concentration camp originates from

5805-441: The SS for the labour supplied. Wage taxes were also levied by local authorities. 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. As mentioned above, treatment of prisoners by the SS varied between individual sections of

5940-513: The SS to exert absolute power. Prisoners, who previously wore civilian clothes, were forced to wear uniforms with Nazi concentration camp badges . The number of prisoners began to rise again, from 4,761 on 1 November 1936 to 7,750 by the end of 1937. By the end of June 1938, the prisoner population had expanded threefold in the previous six months, to 24,000 prisoners. The increase was fueled by arrests of those considered habitual criminals or asocials . According to SS chief Heinrich Himmler ,

6075-462: The SS used Zyklon B to kill Soviet prisoners in improvised gas chambers . In 1942, the emphasis of the camps shifted to the war effort; by 1943, two-thirds of prisoners were employed by war industries. The death rate skyrocketed with an estimated half of the 180,000 prisoners admitted between July and November 1942 dying by the end of that interval. Orders to reduce deaths in order to spare inmate productivity had little effect in practice. During

6210-570: The SS. 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. 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. No German soldier

6345-462: The Soviet Union, becoming an independent camp known as Stalag XI-C (311). It was intended to hold up to 20,000 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,

6480-742: The Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps. The term "concentration camp" and "internment camp" are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic

6615-558: The annexation of their countries in 1938 and 1939. Jews were also increasingly targeted, with 2,000 Viennese Jews arrested after the Nazi annexation. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, 26,000 Jewish men were deported to concentration camps following mass arrests , overwhelming the capacity of the system. These prisoners were subject to unprecedented abuse leading to hundreds of deaths – more people died at Dachau in

6750-526: The bodies were so rotten that arms and legs tore away from the torso. Within two months, 17 staff members had died of typhus due to being forced to handle the bodies with no protection. Another committed suicide, and three others were shot and killed by British soldiers after trying to escape. Some civil servants from Celle and Landkreis Celle were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep. Military photographers and cameramen of No. 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit documented

6885-409: The burning of the buildings and the closure of the nearby displaced persons' camp in the summer of 1950. The area reverted to heath; few traces of the camp remained. However, as early as May 1945, the British had erected large signs at the former camp site. Ex-prisoners began to set up monuments. A first wooden memorial was built by Jewish DPs in September 1945, followed by one made in stone, dedicated on

SECTION 50

#1732772004678

7020-402: 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. However, only around 2,560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany. In March 1944, part of

7155-452: The camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, Wehrmacht representatives approached the British, D Squadron of the Inns of Court Regiment , at the bridge at Winsen and were brought to VIII Corps . At around 1 a.m. on April 13, an agreement was signed, designating an area of 48 square kilometers (19 square miles) around the camp as

7290-593: The camp on its liberation and the last to leave, after a stay of five months. The author and two of his N.C.O.'s between them spoke five languages, so they had unrivalled opportunities for discovering what the inmates, men, women and children, experienced and felt. The evil which produced the concentration camps is fully exposed, and here too will be found a record of how the psychological and medical problems were tackled, as well as such complicated matters as supplies, welfare and rehabilitation. Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than

7425-410: The camp system, and aspects such as forced labor. As late as the 1990s, German local and economic history omitted mention of the camps or presented them as exclusively the responsibility of the SS. Two scholarly encyclopedias of the concentration camps have been published: Der Ort des Terrors and Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos . According to Caplan and Wachsmann, "more books have been published on

7560-402: The camp was redesignated as an Erholungslager ("recovery camp"), 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. In August 1944, a new section was created and this became

7695-575: 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

7830-400: The camps because Germans saw the prisoners rather than the guards as criminals. She writes that demand for SS construction brigades "points to general acceptance of the concentration camps". In Cologne some construction brigade prisoners were shot in broad daylight. There were 27 main camps and, according to historian Nikolaus Wachsmann 's estimate, more than 1,100 satellite camps. This is

7965-445: The camps has often been depicted as a Darwinian struggle for survival, although some mutual aid existed. Individual efforts to survive, sometimes at others' expense, could hamper the aggregate survival rate. The influx of non-German prisoners from 1939 changed the previous hierarchy based on triangle to one based on nationality. Jews, Slavic prisoners, and Spanish Republicans were targeted for especially harsh treatment which led to

8100-522: The camps to be murdered in euthanasia centers . By April 1942, when the operation finished, at least 6,000 and as many as 20,000 people had been killed – the first act of systematic killing in the camp system. Beginning in August 1941, selected Soviet prisoners of war were killed within the concentration camps, usually within a few days of their arrival. By mid-1942, when the operation finished, at least 34,000 Soviet prisoners had been murdered. At Auschwitz,

8235-691: The camps were greatly expanded to the point that they comprised a significant portion of the Soviet economy. This Gulag system consisted of several hundred camps for most of its existence and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953. As part of a series of reforms during the Khrushchev Thaw , the Gulag shrank to a quarter of its former size and receded in its significance in Soviet society. The Nazis first established concentration camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners, primarily members of

SECTION 60

#1732772004678

8370-407: The camps where they worked, often engaging prisoners for domestic labor. Perpetration by this leadership was based on their tight social bonds, a perceived common sense that the aims of the system were good, as well as the opportunity for material gain. Before World War II, most prisoners in the concentration camps were Germans. After the expansion of Nazi Germany, people from countries occupied by

8505-424: The camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. Most of the fatalities occurred during the second half of World War II, including at least a third of the 700,000 prisoners who were registered as of January 1945. Following Allied military victories, the camps were gradually liberated in 1944 and 1945, although hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the death marches . Museums commemorating

8640-529: The camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time. In addition to the concentration camps, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps , specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing . As

8775-576: The camps. These subcamps, often established in town centers in such locations as schools, restaurants, barracks, factory buildings, or military camps, were joint ventures between industry and the SS. An increasing number of German civilians interacted with the camps: entrepreneurs and landowners provided land or services, doctors decided which prisoners were healthy enough to continue working, foremen oversaw labor deployments, and administrators helped with logistics. SS construction brigades were in demand by municipalities to clear bomb debris and rebuild. For

8910-425: The concentration camp system after being deported to Auschwitz. Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the camp system. Conditions worsened after the outbreak of war due to reduction in food, worsening housing, and increase in work. Deaths from disease and malnutrition increased, outpacing other causes of death. However, the food provided was usually sufficient to sustain life. Life in

9045-542: The conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945, were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the Imperial War Museum . These documents had a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day. According to Habbo Knoch, head of

9180-515: The construction of a permanent memorial in September 1945 after having been lambasted by the press for the desolate state of the camp. In the summer of 1946, a commission presented the design plan, which included the obelisk and memorial walls. The memorial was finally inaugurated in a large ceremony in November 1952, with the participation of Germany's president Theodor Heuss , who called on the Germans never to forget what had happened at Belsen. For

9315-414: The death rate of these camps was 45 per cent, twice that of the British camps. The Russian Empire used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga , a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment. According to historian Anne Applebaum , katorga

9450-472: The deaths of more than 35,000 people in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation. The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division . The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied. A memorial with an exhibition hall currently stands at

9585-569: The end of the war, main camps were functioning more and more as transfer stations from which prisoners were redirected to subcamps. At their peak in 1945, concentration camp prisoners made up 3 per cent of workers in Germany. Historian Marc Buggeln estimates that no more than 1 per cent of the labor for Germany's arms production came from concentration camp prisoners. Arrests of Germans in 1933 were often accompanied by public humiliation or beatings. If released, prisoners might return home with visible marks of abuse or psychological breakdown. Using

9720-693: The end of the war, only 5 to 10 per cent of the camp population was "Reich Germans" from Germany or Austria. More than 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war and smaller groups from other nationalities were transferred to the concentration camps in direct violation of the Geneva Convention . Most Jews who were persecuted and killed during the Holocaust were never prisoners in concentration camps. Significant numbers of Jews were imprisoned beginning in November 1938 because of Kristallnacht , after which they were always overrepresented as prisoners. During

9855-629: The facility and to help lay train tracks to it. This was done for the company Hochtief . 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-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. Prisoners were guarded by SS staff and received no wages for their work. The companies instead reimbursed

9990-499: The feeding problem. The first, led by A. P. Meiklejohn , included 96 medical student volunteers from London teaching hospitals who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners. A research team led by Janet Vaughan was dispatched by the Medical Research Council to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes. The British troops and medical staff tried these diets to feed

10125-574: The first anniversary of the liberation in 1946. On November 2, 1945, a large wooden cross was dedicated as a memorial to the murdered Polish prisoners. Also by the end of 1945 the Soviets had built a memorial at the entrance to the POW cemetery. A memorial to the Italian POWs followed in 1950, but was removed when the bodies were reinterred in a Hamburg cemetery. The British military authorities ordered

10260-519: The first years of the camps, unemployment was high and prisoners were forced to perform economically valueless but strenuous tasks, such as farming on moorland (such as at Esterwegen ). Other prisoners had to work on constructing and expanding the camps. In the years before World War II, quarrying and bricklaying for the SS company DEST played a central role in prisoner labor. Despite prisoners' increasing economic importance, conditions declined; prisoners were seen as expendable so each influx of prisoners

10395-573: The following months due to the desire to suppress tens of thousands of Nazi opponents in Germany. The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was the pretext for mass arrests. The Reichstag Fire Decree eliminated the right to personal freedom enshrined in the Weimar Constitution and provided a legal basis for detention without trial . The first camp was Nohra , established on 3 March 1933 in a school. The number of prisoners in 1933–1934

10530-427: The four months after Kristallnacht than in the previous five years. Most of the Jewish prisoners were soon released, often after promising to emigrate. At the end of August 1939, prisoners of Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, and other concentration camps were murdered as part of false flag attacks staged by Germany to justify the invasion of Poland . During the war, the camps became increasingly brutal and lethal due to

10665-491: The height of the Holocaust from 1941 to 1943, the Jewish population of the concentration camps was low. Extermination camps for the mass murder of Jews— Kulmhof , Belzec , Sobibor , and Treblinka —were set up outside the concentration camp system. The existing IKL camps Auschwitz and Majdanek gained additional function as extermination camps. After mid-1943, some forced-labor camps for Jews and some Nazi ghettos were converted into concentration camps. Other Jews entered

10800-440: The homeless, mentally ill, and social non-conformists. Jews were increasingly targeted beginning in 1938. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, the camps were massively expanded and became increasingly deadly. At its peak, the Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in

10935-406: The institution that runs the memorial today: "Bergen-Belsen [...] became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule." Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrowing "Bren gun" carriers and Churchill Crocodile tanks because of the typhus epidemic and louse infestation. As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point,

11070-468: The left hand was doing, so we were sent to an adjoining Wehrmacht compound. As the soldiers of the Wehrmacht marched out, we moved in. The confusion was unbelievable; this time it was disorder with German perfection. We were moved into clean barracks, equipped for human beings with excellent bathrooms and clean beds stacked three on top of each other. After all we had experienced in the preceding year, this

11205-568: The main camps. The number of prisoners tripled from 21,000 in August 1939 to about 70,000 to 80,000 in early 1942. This expansion was driven by the demand for forced labor and later the invasion of the Soviet Union ; new camps were sent up near quarries (Natzweiler and Gross-Rosen) or brickworks (Neuengamme). In April 1941, the high command of the SS ordered the murder of ill and exhausted prisoners who could no longer work (especially those deemed racially inferior). Victims were selected by camp personnel or traveling doctors, and were removed from

11340-415: 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. After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it),

11475-400: The memorial was redesigned in 1960–61. In 1966, a document centre was opened which offered a permanent exhibition on the persecution of the Jews, with a focus on events in the nearby Netherlands – where Anne Frank and her family had been arrested in 1944. This was complemented by an overview of the history of the Bergen-Belsen camp. This was the first ever permanent exhibit anywhere in Germany on

11610-701: The name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. There were massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier Glyn Hughes , deputy director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, and James Johnston , the Senior Medical Officer. Despite their efforts, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had died. (After liberation 13,994 people died.) Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with

11745-465: The new camp commandant, replacing SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas  [ de ] , who had been in post since the spring of 1943. 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. Before that

11880-413: The new main camps, many satellite camps were set up to more effectively leverage prisoner labor for the war effort. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the camps were organized according to the following structure: commandant / adjutant , political department , protective custody camp , administration  [ de ] , camp doctor , and guard command. In November 1940, the IKL came under the control of

12015-498: The number of deaths at Belsen at more than 50,000 Jews , Czechs , Poles , anti-Nazi Christians , homosexuals , and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies). Among them were French Resistance member Jean Maurice Paul Jules de Noailles , the 6th Duke of Ayen (on April 14, 1945), 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 . The rate at which inmates died at Belsen accelerated notably after

12150-407: 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. This overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease: particularly typhus , as well as tuberculosis , typhoid fever , dysentery and malnutrition in

12285-500: The number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity. The twentieth century has so far produced no more terrifying example of collective human wickedness than the Belsen Concentration Camp, a black spot which it fell to the lot of the British Army to occupy. This book is the personal story of the first British officer to enter

12420-399: The others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these " Kapos " were killed on April 15, 1945. On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies. Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German Panzer army camp, which became

12555-471: 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. 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

12690-568: The plans of the Nazi leadership: most victims died in the second half of the war. Five new camps were opened between the start of the war and the end of 1941: Neuengamme (early 1940), outside of Hamburg ; Auschwitz (June 1940), which initially operated as a concentration camp for Polish resistance activists; Gross-Rosen (May 1941) in Silesia ; and Natzweiler (May 1941) in territory annexed from France . The first satellite camps were also established, administratively subordinated to one of

12825-428: The press were scarce but larger numbers of people were arrested and people who interacted with the camps, such as those who registered deaths, could make conclusions about the camp conditions and discuss with acquaintances. The visibility of the camps heightened during the war due to increasing prisoner numbers, the establishment of many subcamps in proximity to German civilians, and the use of labor deployments outside

12960-799: The prisoners, chances of survival rarely improved despite the contact with the outside world, although those few Germans who tried to help did not encounter punishment. Germans were often shocked to see the reality of the concentration camps up close, but reluctant to aid the prisoners because of fear that they would be imprisoned as well. Others found the poor state of the prisoners to confirm Nazi propaganda about them. Historian Robert Gellately argues that "the Germans generally turned out to be proud and pleased that Hitler and his henchmen were putting away certain kinds of people who did not fit in, or who were regarded as 'outsiders', 'asocials', 'useless eaters', or 'criminals ' ". According to historian Karola Fings , fear of arrest did not undermine public support for

13095-526: The prisoners, in this order: Some were too weak to even consume the Bengal Famine Mixture. Intravenous feeding was attempted but abandoned. SS doctors had previously used injections to murder prisoners, so some panicked at the sight of the intravenous feeding equipment. Many of the former SS staff who survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British military at the Belsen trial . Over

13230-507: The redesigned memorial site was opened, including a large new Documentation Centre and permanent exhibition on the edge of the newly redefined camp, whose structure and layout can now be traced. Since 2009, the memorial has been receiving funding from the Federal government on an ongoing basis. The site is open to the public and includes monuments to the dead, including a successor to the wooden cross of 1945, some individual memorial stones and

13365-444: 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. In

13500-537: The satellite camps) around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival, partially due to Allied bombing. Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus. The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the BBC 's Richard Dimbleby , who accompanied them: ...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which

13635-905: The second half of the war, Auschwitz swelled in size – fueled by the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews – and became the center of the camp system. It was the deadliest concentration camp and Jews sent there faced a virtual death sentence even if they were not immediately killed, as most were. In August 1943, 74,000 of the 224,000 registered prisoners in all SS concentration camps were in Auschwitz. In 1943 and early 1944, additional concentration camps – Riga in Latvia, Kovno in Lithuania, Vaivara in Estonia, and Kraków-Plaszów in Poland – were converted from ghettos or labor camps; these camps were populated almost entirely by Jewish prisoners. Along with

13770-497: The site. In 1935, the Wehrmacht began to build a large military complex close to the village of Belsen , a part of the town of Bergen, in what was then the Province of Hanover . This became the largest military training area in Germany of the time and was used for armoured vehicle training. 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

13905-470: The sites of Nazi camps, such as Theresienstadt and Mauthausen . Many prisoners held by Germany died as a result of intentional withholding of food and dangerous working conditions in violation of the 1907 Hague Convention . In countries such as France , Belgium , Italy , Austria-Hungary , and Germany, civilians deemed to be of "enemy origin" were denaturalized . Hundreds of thousands were interned and subject to forced labor in harsh conditions. During

14040-570: 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. Margot and Anne Frank died there in February or March 1945. In December 1944 SS- Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer , previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau , became

14175-416: The store houses. The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of

14310-703: 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. 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

14445-513: The tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life. Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently, SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of the starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from

14580-504: The topic of Nazi crimes. However, there was still no scientific personnel at the site, with only a caretaker as permanent staff. Memorial events were only organized by the survivors themselves. In October 1979, the president of the European Parliament Simone Veil , herself a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, came to the memorial for a speech which focused on the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti. This

14715-552: The total death toll is estimated at 1.8 to more than two million. Most of the fatalities occurred during the second half of World War II, including at least a third of the 700,000 prisoners who were registered as of January 1945. Major evacuations of the camps occurred in mid-1944 from the Baltics and eastern Poland , January 1945 from western Poland and Silesia , and in March 1945 from concentration camps in Germany. Both Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners died in large numbers as

14850-546: The total number of dead had increased to 50,000. 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

14985-491: The trial). Among them were Irma Grese , Elisabeth Volkenrath , Hertha Ehlert , Ilse Lothe  [ de ] , 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 , the Gross Rosen subcamps at Neusalz and Langenleuba , and

15120-607: The unemployed. Although the Nazis had previously targeted social outsiders, the influx of new prisoners meant that political prisoners became a minority. To house the new prisoners, three new camps were established: Flossenbürg (May 1938) near the Czechoslovak border, Mauthausen (August 1938) in territory annexed from Austria , and Ravensbrück (May 1939) the first purpose-built camp for female prisoners. The mass arrests were partly motivated by economic factors. Recovery from

15255-477: The victims of the Nazi regime have been established at many of the former camps and the Nazi concentration camp system has become a universal symbol of violence and terror. Concentration camps are conventionally held to have been invented by the British during the Second Boer War , but historian Dan Stone argues that there were precedents in other countries and that camps were "the logical extension of phenomena that had long characterized colonial rule". Although

15390-634: The war, most Germans rejected the crimes associated with the concentration camps, while denying any knowledge or responsibility. Under the West German policy of Wiedergutmachung ( lit.   ' making good again ' ), some survivors of concentration camps received compensation for their imprisonment. A few perpetrators were put on trial after the war. Accounts of the concentration camps – both condemnatory and sympathetic – were publicized outside of Germany before World War II. Many survivors testified about their experiences or wrote memoirs after

15525-418: The war. Some of these accounts have become internationally famous, such as Primo Levi 's 1947 book, If This is a Man . The concentration camps have been the subject of historical writings since Eugen Kogon 's 1946 study, Der SS-Staat  [ de ] ("The SS State"). Substantial research did not begin until the 1980s. Scholarship has focused on the fate of groups of prisoners, the organization of

15660-702: The word "concentration camp" has acquired the connotation of murder because of the Nazi concentration camps, the British camps in South Africa did not involve systematic murder. The German Empire also established concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907); the death rate of these camps was 45 per cent, twice that of the British camps. During the First World War , eight to nine million prisoners of war were held in prisoner-of-war camps , some of them at locations which were later

15795-606: 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. When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus. On April 11, 1945 Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsführer SS ) agreed to have

15930-623: Was a special case. 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. 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. The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the "Hungarian camp",

16065-489: Was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902). And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during the same time period. The German Empire also established concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907);

16200-418: Was appointed Chief of German Police on 17 June 1936. Of the six SS camps operational as of mid-1936, only two (Dachau and Lichtenburg) still existed by 1938. In the place of the camps that closed down, Eicke opened new camps at Sachsenhausen (September 1936) and Buchenwald (July 1937). Unlike earlier camps, the newly opened camps were purpose-built, isolated from the population and the rule of law , enabling

16335-536: Was ever put on trial for crimes committed against the inmates of the POW camps at Bergen-Belsen, albeit some were tried for participating in death marches headed towards Bergen-Belsen and in the region around it, 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. The area of the former Bergen-Belsen camp fell into neglect after

16470-415: 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. By June 1955, the last of those sentenced in the Belsen trial had been released. Ten other members of

16605-529: Was followed by increasing death rate. Private sector cooperation remained marginal to the overall concentration camp system for the first half of the war. After the failure to take Moscow in late 1941, the demand for armaments increased. The WVHA sought out partnerships with private industry and Speer's Armaments Ministry . In September 1942, Himmler and Speer agreed to use prisoners in armaments production and to repair damage from Allied bombing . Local authorities and private companies could hire prisoners at

16740-548: 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. Außenlager Hambühren-Ovelgönne (Lager III, Waldeslust) at Hambühren south of 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

16875-464: Was later expanded to hold Jews from other concentration camps. After 1945, the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945, almost 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there. Overcrowding, lack of food, and poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of typhus , tuberculosis , typhoid fever , and dysentery ; leading to

17010-430: Was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945. The first two to reach the camp were a British Special Air Service officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance. American soldiers attached to the British forces also helped liberate the camp. When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and (including

17145-445: Was no national system; camps were operated by local police, SS, and SA , state interior ministries, or a combination of the above. The early camps in 1933–1934 were heterogeneous and fundamentally differed from the post-1935 camps in organization, conditions, and the groups imprisoned. On 26 June 1933, Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke the second commandant of Dachau , which became the model followed by other camps. Eicke drafted

17280-580: Was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. These camps served as a model for political imprisonment during the Soviet period. In the midst of the Russian Civil War , Lenin and the Bolsheviks established "special" prison camps and "special" gas chambers, separate from its traditional prison system and under the control of

17415-453: Was reduced by relying on guard dogs and delegating some duties to prisoners. Corruption was widespread. Most of the camp SS leadership was middle-class and came from the war youth generation  [ de ] , who were hard-hit by the economic crisis and feared decline in status. Most had joined the Nazi movement by September 1931 and were offered full-time employment in 1933. SS leaders typically lived with their wives and children near

17550-508: Was sheer luxury. There was no mention of the usual camp rituals, no roll calls and no work, but also no food. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it

17685-499: Was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely

17820-554: Was the first time that an official event in Germany acknowledged this aspect of the Nazi era. In 1985, international attention was focused on Bergen-Belsen. The camp was hastily included in Ronald Reagan 's itinerary when he visited West Germany after a controversy about a visit to a cemetery where the interred included members of the Waffen SS (see Bitburg controversy ). Shortly before Reagan's visit on May 5, there had been

17955-413: Was the ultimate blasphemy. I saw my father beaten by the SS, and I lost most of my family there... A ransom deal that the Americans attempted saved 2,000 Jews and I was one. I actually went into the gas chamber, but was reprieved. God knows why. After a day’s journey, we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. This concentration camp was hopelessly overcrowded and we were not accepted. The right hand no longer knew what

18090-511: Was uncertain if the system would continue to exist. By mid-1935, there were only five camps, holding 4,000 prisoners, and 13 employees at the central IKL office. At the same time, 100,000 people were imprisoned in German jails, a quarter of those for political offenses. Believing Nazi Germany to be imperiled by internal enemies , Himmler called for a war against the "organized elements of sub-humanity", including communists, socialists, Jews, Freemasons , and criminals. Himmler won Hitler's backing and

18225-442: Was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust

#677322