DP camp Belsen
Coordinates: 52 ° 46 ′ 46 ″ N , 9 ° 55 ′ 2 ″ E
The DP Camp Belsen and DP Camp Bergen-Belsen comprised two British DP camps for displaced persons (DP) on the Wehrmacht area to the east of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .
DP camp Belsen
The concentration camp was burned down shortly after the liberation by the Allies for hygienic reasons in order to prevent the possible spread of epidemics. Displaced Persons were civilians who were initially without a known place of residence due to the turmoil of World War II and who were looked after by the Allied troops.
The camp with the two camps was set up in a former Wehrmacht tank barracks . This happened after most of the survivors of the concentration camp returned to their homeland in the summer of 1945. However, mainly Poles and Jews of different nationalities remained behind. Up to 10,000 people lived in the Polish DP camp in Bergen-Belsen. It was disbanded in the summer of 1946. Up to 12,000 people lived in the Jewish DP camp in Bergen-Belsen. They had insisted on maintaining a separately administered camp and founded a “Jewish Central Committee of Liberated Jews” there, headed by Josef Rosensaft, later President of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Survivors . The survivors campaigned for opportunities to emigrate to the British Mandate and the young state of Israel .
In addition to schools and supply facilities, the former emergency hospital was an important hospital for the medical care of Jewish concentration camp survivors throughout Germany. It was named Glynn-Hughes Hospital after the British chief physician Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes , who directed the first rescue operations in the concentration camp . Around 2,000 children of surviving mothers were delivered there over the next few years.
In 1946 the British handed over the management of the camp to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) / International Refugee Organization (IRO). The camp was largely closed after the emigration of most of the Jewish displaced persons in the summer of 1950; the last DPs left it in August 1951.
Camp newspaper
The Unzer Shtimme / Unzer Sztyme newspaper and its successor the Wochnblatt were published in the camp . The newspaper, written in Yiddish with Hebrew letters , was also the official organ of the Jewish Central Committee in Belsen . Unzer Sztyme was initiated by Rafael Olewski , who also worked on it with his colleagues Paul Trepman and David Rosenthal. The camp newspaper was published by the Committee on Culture and History of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews and was the main Jewish newspaper in the British Zone.
Cemeteries at the DP camp
In the area of the former DP camp there are two cemeteries on the barracks grounds. The larger cemetery is dedicated to the victims from the time of the DP camp. In a nearby smaller cemetery ( "Kapofriedhof" ) people are buried who died in the nearby barracks of a "prisoner camp II" and the later DP camp. There was a large tent on the barracks site, in which theatrical events were held for soldiers. The large cemetery was located near this tent, right next to the DP camp - that is why it was called the “ tent theater cemetery ”.
“After the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the British army evacuated around 29,000 survivors to the nearby barracks complex within four weeks and set up emergency hospitals in various buildings with the help of civil aid organizations. Thousands of people died there as a result of their imprisonment in the concentration camp. A separate cemetery was created for them on the edge of the barracks complex. There was a large tent for theatrical performances nearby, which is why it was called the "tent theater cemetery". By the end of 1945, around 4,500 Jewish and non-Jewish dead of many nationalities were buried there. The deceased residents of the Jewish DP camp were also buried in this cemetery until 1950. "
The tent theater cemetery (see map) is located on the barracks grounds, so it is not open to the public. The cemetery can only be visited through the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation .
Pictures from the cemeteries
- Tent theater and Kapo cemetery
Overview of the tent theater cemetery
Central monument in the tent theater cemetery
German inscription on the central monument of the tent theater cemetery
Three tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions in the "Kapo Cemetery"
Rows of graves in the tent theater cemetery
Russian Orthodox grave in the tent theater cemetery
Symbolic single grave in the tent theater cemetery (The bottom line says "She rests in this cemetery".)
Many graves have a reference to the "unknown dead" - even more grave sites have no stone.
Gravestone for Felicja Stendigowa (within 200 other dead)
literature
- State Center for Political Education Schleswig-Holstein, Institute for the History of the German Jews (Ed.): Unzer Sztyme. Yiddish sources on the history of the Jewish communities in the British Zone 1945-1947. Translated and edited by Hildegard Harck. Kiel 2004, ISBN 3-00-015145-1 .
- Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation (publisher): Bergen-Belsen: POW camp 1940-1945, concentration camp 1943-1945, Displaced Persons Camp 1945-1950 . Catalog of the permanent exhibition. Wallstein, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0612-7 .
- Nicola Schlichting: "Open the gates of Erez Israel" - The Jewish DP Camp Belsen 1945–1948. Antogo, Nuremberg 2005, ISBN 978-3-9806636-9-4 .
- Hetty E. Verolme: We children from Bergen-Belsen. Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2005, ISBN 3-407-85785-3 .
- Paul Weindling : “Belsenitis”: Liberating Belsen, Its Hospitals, UNRRA, and Selection for Re-emigration, 1945-1948. In: Cambridge Journals, Science in Context 2006: 19: 401-418, Cambridge University Press. ( English abstract online )
- Ha-Dimah (The Tear), by Rafael Olewski , published by Irgun She'erit Hapleta Bergen-Belsen Be-Israel , Tel-Aviv 1983, ISBN 978-965-91217-0-0 .
Web links
- Displaced Persons Camp Bergen-Belsen on the website of the Bergen-Belsen Foundation
- Florian C. Knab: Displaced Persons in occupied post-war Germany (at shoa.de)
- Bergen-Belsen, the largest DP camp in Germany, was the center of Jewish DP political and social activity in the British zone of occupation. ( Memento of December 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Martina Trojanowski: How Jewish life came back to life in the camp for displaced persons. In: Jüdische Allgemeine dated April 15, 2010 (see birth register of the Glyn Hughes Hospital)
- Displaced Persons in Germany 1945-1950
- Displaced Persons Camps (international)
- Belsen in 1945 (English; On the health situation after liberation)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bergen-Belsen Memorial
- ^ "Former DP camp" on the Bergen-Belsen memorial site. ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In the "Roundhouse", the former Wehrmacht casino, patients from the emergency hospital were initially cared for. In 1945 and 1947 the first and second congresses of liberated Jews in the British zone met here, and the "Central Committee of Liberated Jewish Survivors" had its offices here. The Central Committee was one of the roots of the later Central Council of Jews.
- ↑ Irving Spiegel: "Josef Rosensaft, Fled Nazi Camps" , obituary in the New York Times of September 13, 1975 (Eng.)
- ↑ "Glynn-Hughes-Hospital" on the website of the British Army of the Rhine (link no longer available)
- ↑ Brief flowering of Jewish journalism in the post-war period in FAZ of September 10, 2014, page N3
- ^ "Former DP camp" on the Bergen-Belsen memorial site. ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. see also above individual proof!
- ↑ Julius H. Schoeps on "Unzer Sztyme", 2005
- ↑ taz article on the exhibition on the Jewish press, 2012 in the Celle synagogue
