About Bergen-Belsen

The brutality and horror of the concentration camps and death camps that existed during World War II are hard for most people to fully comprehend. Bergen-Belsen, in Lower Saxony just outside the German towns of Bergen and Celle, began as a prison camp at the beginning of the war and ended up as one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. All told, Bergen-Belsen is believed to have been the site of more than 50,000 inmate deaths.

Time Frame

Bergen-Belsen began operation under the name Stalag XI-C. It became active and began housing prisoners of war in early 1940. The camp ran---partly as a POW camp and partly as a concentration camp---until near the end of the war, in 1945.

Evolution

As time went on, Stalag XI-C slowly began to develop into something very different than a traditional prisoner of war camp. It became extremely overcrowded early on but was primarily used to house prisoners of war until 1942. In that year the camp was reassigned and became the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The SS command was placed in charge of running the camp. "SS" was short for "Schutzstaffel," a notoriously cruel and sadistic branch of the German military that reported directly to Hitler's closest advisers. Although Stalag XI-C had been a terrible place, the horrors really began when it evolved into a true concentration camp.

Size

Originally, the Bergen-Belsen camp was supposed to house roughly 10,000 prisoners of war. During its time as a POW camp, there were many more prisoners than that housed there at any given time. As a concentration camp, though, the crowding became epic in scale. At one point Bergen-Belsen was housing more than 60,000 prisoners, or more than six times its optimistically expected capacity.

Function

The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp operated differently than its more infamous counterparts, such as Auschwitz, which was a death camp. Concentration camps were responsible for housing a large population of prisoners and keeping the healthiest prisoners around to work. The more sickly, weaker inmates could then be shipped via train to a death camp for extermination. Although thousands of people did perish at Bergen-Belsen, most of the deaths were caused by naturally occurring diseases such as typhus or from malnutrition. In other words, the prisoners at death camps were murdered directly, en masse, whereas the inmates at concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen were allowed to perish slowly.

Significance

The significance of Bergen-Belsen, and of the Holocaust as a whole, has yet to be fully seen. The whole second half of the 20th century was tinged with the horrible fact that a modern Western society could commit such egregious crimes against humanity. The true significance of the Bergen-Belsen camp will probably continue to evolve and to be felt for generations to come.

Expert Insight

Regarding the British liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, Richard Dimbleby, a reporter for the BBC who accompanied the British troops, said:

"Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which 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 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."

Resources

• The Bergen-Belsen Memorial
• Liberation broadcast by Richard Dimbleby on the BBC