Over the course of five years, 50,000 prisoners died at Bergen-Belsen. Even after the British liberated it in 1945, another 13,000 former inmates died as they were simply too ill to recover.
These bodies were killed just before the Nazis left the camp. They were Jews, Roma, and common law prisoners who opposed the Nazis. 1945. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images Alongside the inmate are the female barracks at Bergen-Belsen. 1945. Keystone-FranceGamma-Rapho/Getty Images Many of those pictured in this mass grave were women and children. 1945. Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images 31-year-old Margit Schwartz survived her internment and had to rebuild enough muscle to properly walk. 1945.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images One of the 60,000 starving inmates in Bergen-Belsen. 1945.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Rows of executed inmates dumped in Bergen-Belsen's forested outskirts.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Many inmates at Bergen-Belsen died of typhus, starvation, and tuberculosis. Disease was rampant in the overcrowded and unhygienic camp.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images SS guards load exterminated prisoners onto burial trucks. 13,000 prisoners who managed to survive until the camp's liberation soon afterwards died of illnesses. Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images British forces liberated the camp on April 15, 1945.Bettmann/Getty Images SS doctor Klein was accused of aiding in the deaths of thousands of men, women and children. He's seen here speaking to a British film crew beside a mass grave soon after the camp's liberation. A former prisoner confronts him as the cameras roll.Corbis/Getty Images 13-year-old Vera Berger caught typhus and tuberculosis in Bergen-Belsen and suffered starvation, but the young Czechoslovakian survived to the liberation. Ravensburgh Camp Hospital. 1945. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis/Getty Images Bergen-Belsen was originally a P.O.W. camp for French and Belgian prisoners until 1943 when it was converted into a concentration camp for Jews with foreign passports who could be exchanged for imprisoned Germans abroad.Roger Viollet/Getty Images A snapshot of daily life in Bergen-Belsen's men's barracks. Prisoners were locked up, purposefully weakened, and starved. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images Approximately 50,000 people died at Bergen-Belsen, 28,000 of them from disease.LAPI/Roger Viollet/Getty Images The "Large Women's Camp" had to be constructed in January 1945 to accommodate an influx of female prisoners. By March of 1945, there were 30,387 women held there.Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images Anne Frank and her sister Margot were interned at this camp. Both died here soon before the liberation, Anne just a month before.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Thousands of emaciated corpses were simply piled onto a truck and buried in a common grave after the camp's liberation. 1945.U.S. Army/Getty Images The Allies handed out as much food as they could upon liberating the camp. 1945.Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images Prisoners relied on any scraps of food they could find. Thousands died of starvation. Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Nazi leader and war criminal, Adolf Eichmann (second from the right), smiles as German officers cut a Jewish prisoner's hair. Eichmann was eventually captured while hiding in Argentina and brought to Israel by a team of Mossad agents. He was tried and sentenced to death. AFP/Getty Images The crematorium at Bergen-Belsen which turned thousands of innocents into ash. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images A gypsy woman suffering from typhus awaits medical treatment.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Liberated women prepare for DDT dusting, a chlorine-containing pesticide used to protect against vermin.George Rodger/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images When the Allies liberated the camp, they forced SS guards to transport the dead to a mass grave in order to face what they had wrought. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images It was discovered that the huts capable of housing about 30 people in many cases were holding as many as 500.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Starving prisoners stand in line at the camp's cook house desperate for their daily ration of potato soup.Keystone/Getty Images Ukranian prisoners look for abandoned valuables amongst the rubbish one month post-liberation. 1945. George Rodger/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Forty-eight camp staffers were tried and 11 of them, including SS commandant Josef Kramer, the "Beast of Belsen," were sentenced to death by a British military court. LAPI/Roger Viollet/Getty Images Officers of the British 2nd Army and two officers of the Wehrmacht negotiate an agreement of the transfer of the neutral territory, which Bergen-Belsen became upon liberation. The 11th Armoured Division subsequently occupied the camp. April 12, 1945. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images A British soldier reads the sign at Bergen-Belsen's entrance. The camp was burnt to the ground once liberated and evacuated to combat the spread of typhus.Hulton Archive/Getty Images Female German guards move the dead into a mass grave while British troops supervise them. Liberation day at the camp, April 15, 1945.George Rodger/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images An injured prisoner who survived the camp shortly after the Allies' 21st Army Group took control.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Starving inmates drag a diseased body in a blanket after the camp's liberation.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images A mass grave of exterminated Jews, gypsies, women and children at the Bergen-Belsen camp.George Rodger/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen and so the majority of prisoners died from starvation, overwork, disease, and, a typhus epidemic instead.George Rodger/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images SS women move the dead prisoners from trucks into a common mass grave under the surveillance of the Allies to eradicate the spread of typhus. LAPI/Roger Viollet/Getty Images 13,000 prisoners died after liberation from the camp due to illness and starvation. Those not buried in mass graves to combat the spread of disease were placed in primitive coffins such as this.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Hygienic services were nonexistent and there was a fatal lack of clean water. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images The camp's only crematoria oven. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images One of the many overcrowded barracks in the camp which lowered immune systems and increased the spread of disease. This barrack was called "the infirmary."Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Two dying children witness the arrival of the Allied 21st Army Group. April 15, 1945.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Women wash and assist each other as the Brits have taken over control of the camp.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images A survivor is treated for starvation and potential infection. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images A survivor suffers from typhus at camp's the sick station.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images
44 Tragic Photos Taken Inside The Nazis’ Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp View GalleryThe Bergen-Belsen concentration camp complex outside of Celle, Germany was the last place 50,000 people ever saw. it was where Anne Frank died along with her sister Margot Frank. Even after the camp's liberation by Allied forces on April 15, 1945, 13,000 former prisoners were still too sick to recover and consequently died.
According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German military established the site in 1940 and was so named for the two towns of Bergen and Belsen, of which the camp was south.
Bergen-Belsen camp operated as a constant work-in-progress throughout its five-year existence. It began as a POW camp until 1943 when the SS Economic-Administration Main Office, or SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), took control of a portion of the space and turned it into a "Residence Camp" or a camp for civilians. It then added the "Prisoner's Camp" or Häftlingslager.
PixabayA memorial site for the estimated 50,000 killed at Bergen-Belsen between 1940 and 1945.
Overall, the WVHA, which was in charge of managing Nazi Germany's concentration camp system, established eight separate sections within the Bergen-Belsen camp to organize its prisoners. Though the camp never had gas chambers, it was still a site of gruesome mortality rates through disease, overcrowding, and starvation. Indeed, it quickly turned into a traditional concentration camp where thousands of men, women, and children died of typhus, tuberculosis, starvation, and torture.
The Organized Layout Of Bergen-Belsen
Both the "Residence Camp" and "Prisoners' Camp" were in operation from April 1943 until April 1945 when the compound was liberated. The "Residence Camp" was comprised of various subcamps including the "Special Camp" (Sonderlager), the "Neutrals Camp" (Neutralenlager), the "star camp" (Sternlager), and the "Hungarian Camp" (Ungarnlager). The camps were divided by ethnicities or nationalities, isolated from one another, and surrounded by a fortress of barbed wire.
The "Prisoners' Camp," meanwhile, contained the "Recuperation Camp" (Erholungslager) that was used to house prisoners from other concentration camps or those who were unwell, which earned it the name Krankenlager or Sick Camp. The mortality rates here were especially high.
There was the "Tent Camp" (Zeltlager), which acted as a temporary placement space as prisoners were shepherded in, and where Anne Frank and her sister Margot were interned. There were also the "Small and Large Women's Camps" (Kleines Frauenlager and Grosses Frauenlager), the latter of which was added when an influx of female prisoners arrived in 1945.
United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumThe major concentration camps in Nazi Germany in 1944.
According to Britannica, prisoners in the "Star Camp" were forced to wear yellow stars of David, but no prison uniforms. Prisoners which the Nazis intended to exchange with the West were held in the "Starp Camp" as well, including Jews that had citizenship from a neutral country. 1,684 Jews deported from Hungary were held here, too. Prisoners in the "Tent Camp" were new transfers from other camps and often too sick to work.
Bergen-Belsen's Interned Population
The population of Bergen-Belsen was largely comprised of Jews. The remaining groups included Jehova's Witnesses and homosexuals, political prisoners, prisoners of war, Roma, and "asocials." The last category was essentially an umbrella for anyone deemed unfit for Nazi German society.
The advancement of both Soviet forces from the east and Allied forces from the west saw a sharp increase in Bergen-Belsen's number of prisoners. With camps near both fronts being evacuated in late 1944 and early 1945, the Nazis had few places left to house the people they didn't kill and so they were often sent to Bergen-Belsen. For instance, the Frank sisters were moved from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in 1944, where Anne Frank died soon after.
Wikimedia CommonsA headstone memorializes where Anne Frank died with her sister Margot.
Conditions at Bergen-Belsen were already challenging, demanding, and deadly even before the arrival of thousands of additional new prisoners. Of course, these conditions thoroughly worsened.
Originally, Bergen-Belsen was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners. It held six-fold by 1945. The new arrivals themselves had already endured the forced evacuations and grueling subsequent travel on foot to Bergen-Belsen. Now they had to survive an overpopulated new camp and fight for scraps in order to stay alive.
Harrowing Conditions
Many of the new inmates were female, and so the SS had to dissolve the northern part Bergen-Belsen — which was being used as a prisoner-of-war camp — and simply establish the "Large Women's Camp." This inhumane reorganization in January 1945 consolidated thousands of women from numerous evacuated concentration camps in Europe. The camp went from 8,700 women in 1944 to over 30,000 just a year later.
Countless thousands of female prisoners from Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Ravensbrück, Neuengamme, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald concentration camps, and various labor camps were now fighting for survival in the same, horrific place.
"Bergen-Belsen was hell on earth."
Alice Lok CahanaBy February 1945, 22,000 starving prisoners dwelled in the barracks and disease-infested subcamps. By April, there were more than 60,000 prisoners.
The peak of starvation at Bergen-Belsen hit in late 1944. By early 1945, people often didn't eat for days. Of course, when they did, they were given minuscule rations of potato soup, cooked in foul conditions and often using rotting ingredients. Freshwater was also lethally scarce during this time.
In terms of sanitary conditions, Bergen-Belsen had far too few latrines and not enough water faucets for its crowded state. All of these elements — population, food and water scarcity, horrific sanitation, and brazenly packed barracks — led to an outbreak of unmanageable diseases. Anne Frank died by one of these epidemics.
Wikimedia CommonsWomen and children are herded together in one of the camp huts post-liberation by British forces. A displaced persons camp was set up for 12,000 survivors nearby that functioned until 1951.
Inevitably, dysentery, typhoid fever, typhus, and tuberculosis spread across Bergen-Belsen's barracks. As such, the death rate saw a tragic incline. Tens of thousands of people died in the first few months of 1945. This was mere weeks before the Allies arrived to liberate them.
The Allied Liberation
British troops entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945. However, even liberation didn't save an exorbitant percentage of survivors. Over 13,000 former prisoners died thereafter. They were simply too ill to recover. Astoundingly, that figure is considered a conservative estimate. Some believe as many as 28,000 liberated prisoners died soon after.
Annie Frank died only a month before this liberation.
Upon arrival, the Allies found the campgrounds themselves littered with dead bodies. In a matter of two years, between May 1943 and April 15, 1945, somewhere between 36,400 and 37,600 prisoners died. In total, around 50,000 people perished at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.
Wikimedia CommonsThe British Allies made SS personnel confront their involvement by forcing them to load the dead onto trucks for burial. April 1945.
When the British concluded their evacuation of the unspeakably evil camp, they burned it all to the ground to stop the spread of typhus.
Now in charge of those who managed to survive the seemingly endless horrors of Bergen-Belsen, the British created a displaced persons camp for over 12,000 former prisoners. This was situated near the original campsite in a German military school barracks. It was operational until 1951.
Unfortunately, the Nazis were well-organized in destroying files, documents, and information regarding the camp's SS authorities and personnel. Only a few facts remained, which were explored in a postwar trial by a British Military Tribunal in Lüneburg.
Postwar Trials For Bergen-Belsen's Personnel
The very first commandant at Bergen-Belsen was SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas. He began his work there in the spring of 1943 and was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer in December 1944.
While the number and positions of Bergen-Belsen's SS authorities varied throughout the camp's existence, and much information was purposefully destroyed, the 1945 postwar trials nonetheless saw 48 members on trial.
Wikimedia CommonsSS Officer Hosler being forced by the British to admit his involvement on the radio. Behind him is evidence of his complicity.
The British Military Tribunal in charge tried 37 members of SS personnel and 11 prisoner functionaries. Nineteen were convicted and sentenced to various prison terms for their involvement.
The tribunal also acquitted 14 people. Kramer and 10 others, however, were executed by the British military on December 12, 1945.
After this harrowing look into the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Anne Frank died, read up on the Boer War genocide and history's first concentration camps. Then, learn how the Dachau concentration camp guards got their comeuppance.
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