Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp

[Lucky13]

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!

 

[BombTaxi]

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.

 

[rochie]

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

 

[Seawitch]

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.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

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.

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

 

[Torch]

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..

 

[RabidAlien]

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.

 

[parsifal]

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.

 

[parsifal]

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

Sandakan

 

[syscom3]

Thanks Parsifal.

 

[RabidAlien]

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

 

[Njaco]

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..

 

[B-25G]

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.

 

[timshatz]

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.

 

[Ferdinand Foch]

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.

 

[Glider]

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.

 

[Thorlifter]

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

 

[Njaco]

Ferdinand, I went there too. Very grey feeling.

 

[Messy1]

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?

 

[Junkers88A1]

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..