# Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 5, 2009)

On my way up to the North Sea last weekend, me and my wife made a stop at the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp. 

*All I can say is it was a very somber experience. I have been to Dachau, but Dachau does not put the same lasting impression that Bergen Belsen does. 

It is such a tragedy to mankind what happened here and in all the other camps.
*
Some history of the camp.

The camp was first set up in 1940 as a POW camp Stalag XI-C. 600 French and Belgian POW's were the first to be sent here. With the start of Operation Barbarossa, Russian POW's were also sent to the camp.

Between 1940 and 1942, 18,000 Russian POW's died at Bergen Belsen from hunger and disease. 

In 1942 it officially became a concentration camp and Jews as well Homosexuals, Gypsies and Political Prisoners were sent to Bergen Belsen. The number of prisoners held at the camp increased from 15,257 in December 1944 to 60,000 in April 1945.

There were no gas chambers in Bergen-Belsen, since the mass executions took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, an estimated 50,000 Jews, Czechs, Poles, anti-Nazi Christians, homosexuals, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) died in the camp. Among them were Czech painter and writer Josef Čapek (est. April 1945), as well as Amsterdam residents Anne Frank (who died of typhus) and her sister Margot, who died there in March 1945. The average life expectancy of an inmate was nine months.

The camp was liberated by British and Canadian forces on April 15, 1945.

*Between 1940 and 1945, aprox 100,000 inmates died here. An estimated 50,000 of them were Russian POW's and the other half were Jews, Gypsies, Anti Nazis. 35,000 of them are estimated to have died from Typhus.*

The British forces put the SS staff on trial after the war. The Belsen Trial was one of several trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II.

Of those that were found guilty:

* Josef Kramer (SS Commander of Camp), Fritz Klein, Peter Weingartner, Franz Hössler, Juana Bormann, Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Karl Francioh, Anchor Pichen, Franz Stofel, and Wilhelm Dorr were sentenced to death by hanging.
* Erich Zoddel was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment.
* Deputy wardress Herta Ehlert, Otto Calesson, Heinrich Schreirer, kapo Helena Kopper, and Vladislaw Ostrovski were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
* Kapo Hildegard Lobauer, and guards Ilse Forster, Herta Bothe, Irene Haschke, Gertrud Sauer, Johanne Roth, Anna Hempel, Stanislawa Starotska, and Antoni Aurdzieg were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
* Gertrude Fiest, and Medislaw Burgraf were sentenced to 5 years, Frieda Walter to 3 years, and Hilde Lisiewitz to one year.

The executions took place on December 13, 1945.

Some pictures that I took:

The entrance to the documentation center.






The entrance to the memorial.





A view of the camp grounds, including mass graves. Some of them containing as many as 5000 bodies.





A mass grave site with 2000 bodies.





A mass grave site with 1000 bodies.





The main memorial.










This cross was erected by Polish survivors in 16 April 1945 just one day after the liberation. It is the original cross from 16 April 1945 and is made of birchwood.





More mass graves.





The symbolic grave for Anne Frank and Margot Frank.





A Jewish Monument.


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## pbfoot (Mar 5, 2009)

must be sobering to say the least


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## SoD Stitch (Mar 5, 2009)

It looks like the weather was appropriately gloomy when you visited . . . . .


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## Torch (Mar 5, 2009)

Been to Majdanek near Lublin Poland twice, very somber, drizzled both times. Ovens and gas chamber are all still there as are the buildings filled with displays of baby shoes,glasses, personal affects of the victims,very very sad indeed.


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## Bill G. (Mar 5, 2009)

I have been to Dachau. I know the overwhelming feeling of sadness that exists.

Very Sad!

And we must never forget either!

Bill G.


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## Hesekiel (Mar 5, 2009)

At least for me as a german it´s very depressing to visit those locations..
These are things which NEVER happen again... NEVER !!!


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## Bill G. (Mar 5, 2009)

Hesekiel said:


> At least for me as a german it´s very depressing to visit those locations..
> These are things which NEVER happen again... NEVER !!!



I couldn't agree more!

Bill G.


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## evangilder (Mar 5, 2009)

May we never forget what happened.


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## mudpuppy (Mar 5, 2009)

Thanks for the posting...and I pray that we heed these lessons from the past and leave our children a kinder world to raise a family.

Derek


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## Marcel (Mar 5, 2009)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> *All I can say is it was a very somber experience. I have been to Dachau, but Dachau does not put the same lasting impression that Bergen Belsen does.
> *


*
I agree. I was there 10 years ago. Those stones with the death counts were chilling.*


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## Venganza (Mar 5, 2009)

SoD Stitch said:


> It looks like the weather was appropriately gloomy when you visited . . . . .



Just what I was thinking. A bright sunny day would have seemed incongrous with what went on there. It seems like there should always be a cloud above such places.

Venganza


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## Airframes (Mar 6, 2009)

I was there in 1973, with a party from my Regiment whilst on exercise on the Soltau Training Area. Although it was October, the weather was fair and sunny. In the forest surrounding Bergen Belsen, birds sang, and wildlife skittered about. But not within the boundaries of the former camp. The whole place was still and quiet, and we all felt the sombre, cold feeling that seemed to surround the place. It's something I have never forgotten, and never will.


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## seesul (Mar 6, 2009)

Hesekiel said:


> At least for me as a german it´s very depressing to visit those locations..
> These are things which NEVER happen again... NEVER !!!



100% agree!

Chris, before you leave Europe,you should visit Auschwitz...I couldn´t speak all the way back home, although I was there also 20 years ago for a first time...
Check this http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ww...sary-liberation-auschwitz-birkenau-11649.html


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## RabidAlien (Mar 6, 2009)

As a kid, I visited the Andersonville POW camp in Georgia (Civil War era)...just lookin at these pictures brings back the same goosebumps I had then. War is hell, as they say....but this, this was an atrocity.


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## ToughOmbre (Mar 6, 2009)

evangilder said:


> May we never forget what happened.



Amen to that!

TO


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## Gnomey (Mar 6, 2009)

Good pics Chris, very sobering.

May we never forget.


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## Captain Dunsel (Mar 6, 2009)

We visited (although that is too pleasant a word for such sobering places) Dachau and Auschwitz when we were assigned to Germany in 89-92. 

What hit me and has stayed in my mind since then is that so many of the dead were turned in by their fellow citizens. Friends, neighbors, countrymen who turned them over to the government. It makes me wonder how hard it would be to do something like that here. 

CD


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## Wayne Little (Mar 8, 2009)

Mmmm....thanks for sharing Chris....


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## syscom3 (Mar 8, 2009)

Huh?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 8, 2009)

Stirling01 I deleted your post.

Why?

Because I did not start this thread to get into an off topic discussion about the Palestinian and Israel conflict today! This was a thread that I started about the camps in WW2!

Your post is completely off topic to the subject and would only start a flame war. 

*Frankly I believe that was the reason you made your post. You had no other reason but to start a flame war.

My thread was not started for that purpose! Do you understand?!*

You get off with warning here. You wanna discuss that ****, do it in your own thread!



syscom3 said:


> Huh?



Syscom, sorry that I edited your post. I only wished to completely remove stirling's post.


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## Lucky13 (Mar 8, 2009)

To be completely honest with you guys.....I don't think that my nerves and psyche could handle a visit to these camps. I'd would only get as far as to the gates and no further, the whole thing would be to much for me to bear. I'm sorry!


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## BombTaxi (Mar 8, 2009)

I have often wondered how I would face a visit to one of these places. I have visited the Somme, the Ypres salient, Verdun and the Petersburg battlefields in the US, and the Somme and Verdun in particular were almost overwhelming. But IMHO there is something fundamentally different in the kind of loss that took place in the camps that would, for me, set them entirely apart from the battlefields. Honestly, I'm not sure I could go either.


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## rochie (Mar 8, 2009)

my 11year old daughter has just read the boy in the striped pyjamas at school and we also saw the movie of the book at the cinema and i must say it was one of the best i've seen in recent times almost like schindlers list for younger people.

it was hard trying to answer some of her questions about the holocaust and the nazi's and she now understands the difference between them and the normal german armed forces of the time

in some ways i wish i could take her to see some of the camps sites but i'm also glad i can't as i think i may have trouble getting past the gates as others have said


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## Seawitch (Mar 8, 2009)

I've been here many times, my Father was a Tankie on nearby Hohne Garrison and my Sister married a local and stayed on.
She got a job as a clerk on the garrison and took residence at a cottage in Belson village for some years, about five farms, a Pub and her place is the village.
But between Bergen (a small town) and Belson village and concentration camp is a derelict railway siding,overgrown with foliage on it's own with no railway anymore but with a cobbled road leading to it.
A wildlife enclave it was and very attractive to me, the kind of nine year old boy who would vanish all day into the countryside.
Later in life I would discover this is the railway siding that the people would be removed from train carriages, as if I need to tell anybody that they will have been like cattle waggons where some would already have died.
They would then begin the march of a couple of kilometres to the concentration camp.
Never did I think the place I spent so many hours utterly alone in could have such a past.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 8, 2009)

Seawitch said:


> I've been here many times, my Father was a Tankie on nearby Hohne Garrison and my Sister married a local and stayed on.
> She got a job as a clerk on the garrison and took residence at a cottage in Belson village for some years, about five farms, a Pub and her place is the village.
> But between Bergen (a small town) and Belson village and concentration camp is a derelict railway siding,overgrown with foliage on it's own with no railway anymore but with a cobbled road leading to it.
> A wildlife enclave it was and very attractive to me, the kind of nine year old boy who would vanish all day into the countryside.
> ...



The railway and siding is still there, overgrown with foliage and all.


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## Torch (Mar 8, 2009)

I've been to Verdun, the difference between a battlefield and a "camp" is that atleast on a battlefied there was a feeling that hey there's 2 groups slugging it out,there's a loser but at least you had a chance to defend yourself, At Majdanek you know they were just helpless victims with no chance to fend for them selves. I'm not taking anything away from the grusome scenes at Verdun but it's just different..


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## RabidAlien (Mar 8, 2009)

Exactly. On a battlefield, things are fairly equal, give or take. Each side has a chance to defend themselves and go on the offensive. There is a certain code of honor that both sides will (usually) adhere to (humane treatment of prisoners, wounded, medics, women/kids, clergy, etc). In a concentration camp, the guards, for the most part, unleash the darkest sides of humanity upon helpless victims who have effectively no ability to fight back or stand up for themselves without facing certain slaughter for not only themselves, but everyone else around them. There is a pall that hangs over a concentration camp unlike anything experienced anywhere else. 

These places should not be forgotten, lest humanity be tempted again to repeat the worst mistakes of our past.


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## parsifal (Mar 8, 2009)

The camps were not war, IMO they were3 something beyond that.

I have been to Sandakan, the scene of one of the worst Japanese war atrocities. I dont know how many Indonesians were killed here, but for th allies, 2600 went in, five survived. It is place that chills your spirit, just thinking about what happened.


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## parsifal (Mar 8, 2009)

A good link on the Sandaqkan tragedy, for anyone wanting to find out more

Sandakan


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## syscom3 (Mar 9, 2009)

Thanks Parsifal.


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## RabidAlien (Mar 9, 2009)

Thank you, Parsifal. I hadn't heard of this camp before.


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## Njaco (Mar 10, 2009)

I'm like Lucky and Bombtaxi. This is one area of the war or at least of that time that truely gets me sick to the stomache.

I just don't understand it. You can give me all the political reasons but it still baffles me.

Thanks Chris for the pics. The day seemed kinda perfect for the subject..


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## B-25G (Mar 11, 2009)

When I was stationed in Northern Germany I visited Bergen-Belsen on an MWR tour of all things. I don't remember seeing the symbolic grave of Anne Frank during our walk-through, so it's either a later addition or I simply missed it. IIRC, President Reagan visited this camp around that time, or earlier. Like another poster stated, it was very quiet, no wildlife sounds, very eerie. It was a very sober group of airmen that left that site that afternoon.


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## timshatz (Mar 12, 2009)

My mother just told me a story about her cousin who went to Bergen Belsen a month or so after the liberation (detached there to work with the Medical Staff to get the prisoners healthy). He was a doctor with the US Army. She said he went into the mess hall that the Allies had set up during lunch. There were several thousand inmates/inhabitants in there at the time, eating their noon meal. He said you didn't hear anything. We all these people in there, nobody was talking. The only sound you heard was the clink of the spoons in the bowls of soup.


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## Ferdinand Foch (Mar 16, 2009)

Looking at those pictures that Adler put up reminded me of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. two years ago. It really touches you to see to actually see some of the experiences (if that makes sense) that many people had to suffer through, not just something that you read from a textbook. The thing that got me the most at the museum were the thousands of shoes that were piled up in one room, shoes that were taken off the dead in the camps. I can't even imagine what it's like to walk through the camps themselves. 
I pray to God that humanity will never have to witness something like this on a huge scale ever again.


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## Glider (Mar 16, 2009)

My father was one of the medical people sent to the camp when it was liberated. It hit him hard, he only ever mentioned it once and never talked about it again.


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## Thorlifter (Mar 16, 2009)

What a scary time. It certainly puts things into perspective.


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## Njaco (Mar 16, 2009)

Ferdinand, I went there too. Very grey feeling.


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## Messy1 (Mar 19, 2009)

Just viewing the pics sends shivers down my spine, and out me in a very somber mood. I cannot imagine the feeling actually visiting this place. Thunderous Silence maybe?


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## Junkers88A1 (Mar 27, 2009)

some pics that might be be acceptet in this thread..shows just some of the things that happened.. the boy was burned alive by SS when they retreated from the KZ camp just before the allied took the camp..

the picture of the man and the burned corps was found on a SS man.. one of the prisonors took his own life on the eletrical fence as he couldent stand the pain in the camps anymore..


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 29, 2009)

The pics are fine, just downsize them next time. I will probably edit them to make them smaller tomorrow.


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## mkloby (Mar 29, 2009)

Very sobering pictures...


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## cliffnemo (Mar 30, 2009)

The laundry at Belsen was still in operation just after the war finished. It was excellent , and the armed forces delivered their laundry to Belsen weekly. This is a pic of me at the laundry with my dog Hassul. D.Ps (displaced persons) were still billeted there, and I often gave them a lift into Bergen.


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## Njaco (Mar 30, 2009)

and Ahmad!ckwad says it never happened................


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