Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

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Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp (Germany)
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany

The concentration camp Bergen-Belsen was a National Socialist concentration camp in the district of Belsen of the municipality of Bergen in the district of Celle in the then province of Hanover , today the state of Lower Saxony .

Memorial stone at the entrance to the cemetery on the historic camp site
Cemetery on the historical camp site - overview with (from left) a Polish wooden cross, mass grave with the inscription “800 dead rest April 1945”, inscription wall and obelisk
Location of the former concentration camp

history

The camp was built from barracks that until 1939 served as accommodation for workers who had set up the training area in Bergen. After the start of the war, the barracks were converted by the Wehrmacht into a camp for Belgian and French prisoners of war , then also for Soviet prisoners of war .

In 1943 the SS took over part of the camp and used it as a “residence camp ” for “ exchange Jews ”, Jewish prisoners who were to be exchanged for German civil internees abroad. Later, a men's and a women's camp for sick and disabled prisoners from other concentration camps were added. From March 1944, tens of thousands more prisoners were transferred from concentration camps close to the front to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Until the liberation of the camp by British troops on April 15, 1945, at least 52,000 prisoners died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp due to the prison conditions. For thousands it was a transit station in extermination camps .

POW camp and cemetery

Mass graves in the Soviet prisoner of war cemetery with blooming heather
Soviet memorial at the prisoner-of-war cemetery ("The Mourners" [copy] by M. Muchin )

A barrack camp (“Heeresneubaulager Bergen-Belsen”) built in the forest for construction workers in 1935 when the Bergen military training area was being built was used by the Wehrmacht in 1940 to accommodate 600 French and Belgian prisoners of war . In May / June 1941, the place was expanded into a team main camp and hospital for Soviet prisoners of war and was given the designation (POWs team main camp) Stalag XI C (311) . By autumn 1941, more than 21,000 Soviet prisoners of war had been admitted there. There were hardly any accommodation barracks, so the prisoners had to stay in the open air, in caves in the ground and in huts. By the spring of 1942 around 14,000 of the prisoners died of hunger, cold and disease. They were buried in a cemetery about 600 meters from the camp, the Soviet war cemetery in Bergen-Lohheide , mostly in mass graves. Between 1941 and 1945, 19,580 Soviet prisoners of war and 142 Italian military internees were buried here. In addition, members of the army from other countries were buried in ten other individual graves. So far, three of them have been identified as Polish prisoners of war.

In April 1943 the Wehrmacht ceded the southern part of the camp grounds to the SS, which set up the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp there. The Wehrmacht used the part of the camp that remained under their command under the name Stalag XI B Fallingbostel branch camp Bergen-Belsen until mid-January 1945 as a military hospital for Soviet prisoners of war ; between July 1944 and mid-January 1945, around 800 Italian military internees were also treated there. In addition, around 1,000 members of the Polish Home Army Armia Krajowa were housed there between October / November 1944 and mid-January 1945 . In mid-January 1945 the hospital was closed and the area was taken over by the SS.

Residence camp Bergen-Belsen

The part of the camp that was now assigned to Office Group D of the SS-Wirtschaft-Verwaltungshauptamt WVHA between the end of June 1943 and December 1944 was called the residence camp . This camp was initially founded as the “Bergen-Belsen civil internment camp” and was primarily intended to be reserved for those Jews who could serve as “ exchange Jews ” against German civilians interned in hostile countries . The WVHA soon changed the original name, however, "since civil internment camps had to be accessible to international commissions for inspection according to the Geneva Convention" and this was to be avoided.

During the Second World War , the warring states repeatedly exchanged some of the civilian internees they had held for their own nationals who had been interned in the respective enemy state. It is noteworthy in this case that the National Socialists also made certain Jews available for exchange in the Bergen-Belsen residence camp at a time when Jews were massacred in the extermination camps .

planning

General plan of the Soviet prisoner-of-war cemetery and the concentration camp memorial

As early as December 1941 and again in November 1942, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had German civilian internees who originally came from Palestine and had been interned by the British in Australia exchanged for Jews with British passports. The Foreign Office and the Reich Security Main Office intended to initially exclude 30,000 Jews with passports or citizenship papers from "enemy states" or those with family, political and commercial connections there from deportation to the East and to concentrate them in a camp, where they will be used for some time Exchange with interned Germans should be “available”. Himmler took up this plan and ordered the construction of a camp for about 10,000 Jews in the spring of 1943, who should be put on hold as exchange persons or as a means of pressure in the procurement of foreign currency and raw materials because of their relations with foreign countries. Other internees there were citizens of neutral or allied states and were supposed to serve as a bargaining chip for good conduct.

This special camp was set up on a separate area of ​​the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag XI C / 311, which only served as a hospital for Soviet prisoners of war in the region and which retained this function until 1945.

The establishment of the "Bergen-Belsen Civil Internment Camp" was announced by the WVHA on May 10, 1943. In mid-July 1943, the first Polish Jews arrived in what is now the so-called “Residence Camp Bergen-Belsen”, most of whom had passports or citizenship papers from Latin American countries or entry certificates for Palestine. Germans had been interned in both regions since the beginning of the war; there were hardly any “non-Jewish” people from these regions in the German sphere of influence.

Camp division of the residence camp

A construction team of 600 prisoners was housed in a separate "prisoner camp" that existed until the beginning of February 1944. The "residence camp" was divided into four sections, which were separated by fences. The groups detained there were isolated from each other and treated differently. SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas was the head of the camp until December 1944 .

Star bearing

Jewish memorial stone from April 15, 1946

At the end of July 1944, around 4,100 “exchange Jews” were imprisoned in the “Sternlager”, including Jews from Saloniki , seven transports from Westerbork , North African Jews, small groups of French Jews, Yugoslav and Albanian Jews from Zagreb . Here - as in other parts of the camp - families with children were also accommodated. The internees wore civilian clothes with a Jewish star sewn on , hence the name “Star Camp”. Their diet was inadequate. There was an obligation to work, often with the “Schuh-Kommando”. Here the prisoners had to separate old shoes.

Only a small number of these exchange Jews were released through exchange. At the end of April 1944, 222 people emigrated on a Palestine exchange. 136 people with passports from Latin American countries were allowed to leave Switzerland via Switzerland in January 1945; others were detained in the Biberach internment camp ( Lindele camp ) because too few German internees were available for exchange.

Neutral camp

250 to 360 people lived in the “neutral camp” for Jews from neutral countries; besides Portuguese and Argentines mainly Spaniards and Turks. The living conditions were much better than in the "star camp". On March 4, 1945, 105 Jews of Turkish nationality were able to leave the country via Sweden.

Special warehouse

Around 350 Jews of various nationalities deported from Poland were housed in the “special camp”, apparently segregated from the inmates of the “star camp” in order to avoid contact between the Polish and Western European Jews, as there were not many of them via the extermination camps in the east of Poland Possessed knowledge. For this reason they were not assigned to the work details.

Hungary camp

Since July 8, 1944, a total of 1683 Hungarian Jews had been imprisoned in the “Hungarian camp” . This " Kasztner Group " was released to Switzerland on August 20, 1944 and January 25, 1945 in exchange for foreign currency and goods such as green coffee. On December 7, 1944, 2,200 Hungarian Jews arrived from the Strasshof labor camp near Vienna, who were not to be transported to Auschwitz because of their “preferred position” .

Fate of the Jewish exchange prisoners

A total of approximately 14,700 Jewish prisoners were brought to the Bergen-Belsen residence camp in 1943/1944. Around 2,560 of them were released through exchange. For a group of roughly the same size, the residence camp was only a stopover on the way to the extermination camps: Their citizenship certificates or entry certificates were not recognized. Most of the Jews interned in the residence camp were held in the camp as valuable “negotiating assets” until the last days of the war. In the last months of the war, however, there was no longer any question of preferential treatment.

For the fate of a group of 72 “exchangeable” Jewish prisoners from November 1944, see also Bad Wurzach Castle , then an internment camp in Bad Wurzach .

Between April 6 and April 11, 1945, the remaining 7,000 or so “exchange Jews” were sent on three transport trains to Theresienstadt to be used in any negotiations with the British and Americans. Only one of the trains reached its destination. After a two-week odyssey through Germany, the last of the three transports stopped near the Brandenburg municipality of Tröbitz and was liberated on April 23, 1945 by advancing Red Army troops. 550 occupants of this " lost train " did not survive the journey.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

Memorial stone for Anne and Margot Frank in the cemetery of the historic camp site

From March 1944 onwards, prisoners were admitted who had been singled out in other camps as “no longer fit for work”; the “exchange Jews” were redistributed to other barracks. The steadily expanding part of the former “prisoner camp” has now become a “recreation camp” (that's the euphemistic name in SS jargon). In fact, however, there was a lack of adequate medical help and adequate food to restore the health of the sick. On the contrary, numerous prisoners were murdered by injecting lethal substances (“hosing down”) or fell victim to the tolerated terror of criminal prison functionaries .

From August 1944 on, the camp was assigned a third function as a "briefing camp" or " transit camp ". Arms companies should select suitable female forced laborers at a central point . Several thousand “Aryan” Polish women, some with children, were housed in tents in an open space. Shortly afterwards, a thousand women from Auschwitz arrived. In autumn the tents were destroyed in a storm; Until additional barracks were built, the prisoners had to huddle together in the existing accommodations and stores. Up to the liberation, 12,500 women passed through this transit camp, of which around 10,000 were transported to subcamps for forced labor. Anne Frank , Hannah Pick-Goslar and the Auschwitz Girls' Orchestra also came to this part of the camp .

When evacuation transports from concentration camps near the front arrived in December 1944, the Bergen-Belsen camp was expanded to include the part of the prisoner-of-war hospital previously administered by the Wehrmacht, and in January 1945 it was used as a “large women's camp”.

Between December 1944 and March 1945, 6,000 to 7,000 sick and exhausted male prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , 5,000 to 6,000 from the Buchenwald concentration camps and others from the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps and the Natzweiler and Flossenbürg concentration camps arrived at the camp. Individual barracks in "prisoner camp II" were occupied by 1,500 people; neither drinking water pipes nor washing facilities were available.

In December 1944, the camp, now headed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer , had 15,257 inmates and was officially run by the WVHA as the "Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp". Further "evacuation trains" from camps near the front arrived in quick succession. Accommodation, sanitary facilities and food were in no way sufficient. Epidemics broke out; at last there was no more food.

The development of the document size can only be roughly reconstructed. On January 1, 1945, 18,465 prisoners were in the camp, on January 15, 22,286, on March 1, 41,520, on March 15, 45,117. In March 1945 alone, 18,168 deaths were counted in Bergen-Belsen. Around 35,000 people were killed by mid-April. The mass extinction continued even after the liberation.

Until the 1990s, English-language publications circulated far excessive figures for prisoners and the deceased in Bergen-Belsen. On the other hand, Hellmut Diwald polemicized against alleged “deliberate misleadings, deceptions and exaggerations” and unproven number of 7,000 deaths up to liberation. Thorough research has resulted in solid figures. The British troops found around 60,000 prisoners. Around 14,000 of them died after the liberation. The total death toll in Bergen-Belsen (including this 14,000) is calculated at 50,000. The total number of all Bergen-Belsen prisoners is estimated at 110,000 to 120,000; this also includes those for whom the camp was only a transit station.

Subcamp

The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp temporarily had three satellite camps. In the satellite camp Benefeld about 600 Polish Jews were in the explosives factory between early September to October 1944 Eibia used. In the Hambühren subcamp (also known as "Hambühren-Ovelgönne" or "Waldeslust") around 400 Jewish women worked from August 1944 to February 4, 1945, mining a salt dome underground, building tracks and building barracks. In the central warehouse in Unterlüß (also "Tannenberg" called) were accommodated at the end of August 1944 to 13 April 1945 and to 900 women who worked mostly for road and railway construction, and partly in a munitions factory.

liberation

Mass grave, the former concentration camp doctor Fritz Klein has to help bury the dead
Liberated prisoners carried the dead out of the barracks on April 17, 1945

Evacuation of the prisoners as the British troops approach

When British and Canadian troops approached the camp, four transport trains with a total of around 6,800 Jewish prisoners who had been held back as " exchange prisoners" were put together between April 6 and 11, 1945 . The destination was the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Only the second train reached it. The last of these three transports is known as the Lost Train .

Local armistice and surrender to the British

In a hitherto unique event, a local armistice agreement was reached on the night of April 12th to 13th, 1945, which was negotiated between the Wehrmacht and the advancing British troops. The typhus epidemic in the camp did not allow an evacuation, and Himmler had agreed to the surrender of the camp without a fight. The members of the Wehrmacht, who were supposed to secure the camp and the barracks of the military training area until the handover, were promised free retreat; this assurance was not clearly formulated for the SS guards.

View of a barracks in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, taken in April 1945

On April 15, 1945, the 11th Panzer Division of the British Army occupied the concentration camp. The neutralized area was handed over. Colonel Taylor, the Commander of the British 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment, was given the post of camp commandant. There were still around 60,000 emaciated prisoners on the site. The liberators found numerous unburied corpses and deadly sick people emaciated to the skeleton. Bergen-Belsen therefore became “a symbol of the worst atrocities and inhuman barbarism of the National Socialist concentration camp system”, especially in Great Britain, whose troops liberated it and initiated rescue operations for the survivors.

British military doctor Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes , later head of rescue and rehabilitation operations, wrote:

"No report and no photograph can adequately reproduce the horrific sight of the camp area ... In numerous places the corpses were piled up in stacks of different heights ... Everywhere in the camp lay decaying human bodies ... [The barracks] were overcrowded with prisoners in all stages of emaciation illness."

Captive SS officers, including Hildegard Kanbach (1st from left), Irene Haschke (center, 3rd from right), Elisabeth Volkenrath (2nd from right, partially covered), Hertha Bothe (1st from right), on April 19, 1945 on the way to the burial of the victims

Immediately after the handover, incidents occurred in which starving prisoners tried to plunder the storage facilities and were shot at by Hungarian members of the Wehrmacht. On the other hand hated were functionary prisoners beaten and killed. A larger medical unit arrived at the camp on April 17th. Also on April 17, 1945, the SS camp personnel were arrested and housed in tents near the concentration camp. The SS men and women members of the SS retainer had to help bury the thousands of corpses lying around the camp grounds in mass graves. The contaminated barracks were gradually evacuated and burned down by mid-May.

Commemoration, emergency hospital, displaced person camp for the survivors

Emergency hospital in the barracks area

As part of an ecumenical service, survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp erected a simple birch cross on April 16, 1945, one day after their liberation, commemorating the children, women and men who had died.

At the same place as in April, on November 2, 1945, Polish survivors who now lived in the former barracks of Bergen-Hohne replaced the birch cross with a larger wooden cross. This has been renewed several times over the years, but has always been preserved in the same shape and size to this day.

The survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were housed in nearby former Wehrmacht barracks that had been set up as emergency hospitals. Here they received medical care. This later became a regular hospital for the former prisoners / displaced persons (DP). Despite all efforts, around 14,000 of the weakened and sick former prisoners died. The Polish camp was disbanded in the summer of 1946. After the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the Jews were allowed to leave in small contingents. The Jewish camp was closed in 1951.

Picture gallery

  • Cemetery on the historic camp site, with obelisk and inscription wall, Jewish memorial, mass graves and symbolic gravestones

  • Polish wooden cross, the oldest memorial, erected by residents of the Polish DP camp

  • Remains of the former barracks 9 of the prisoner camp

  • One of the mass graves

  • Shortly before this stone at the entrance to the historic Bergen-Belsen camp site, the camp boundary runs.

Bergen-Belsen trial

From September 17 to November 17, 1945, the so-called Bergen-Belsen trial was tried against 45 members of the former camp team in Lüneburg before a British military court . In addition to 11 death sentences, there was a life sentence, 18 prison sentences and 15 acquittals.

Known inmates

Hans-Jürgen Meyer and Klaus Brinker in 1986 at the memorial service for the homosexual victims of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

The most famous prisoners include Anne Frank and her sister Margot , the former Prime Minister of Brunswick Heinrich Jasper , the writers Jean Améry , Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Josef Čapek , Leopold Szondi , the Reichstag member Julius Adler , the SPD member of the state parliament Hermann Albertz and Israel Shahak , the lawyer Paul Tuesday and the resistance fighter Ernst Grube . The director's father Roberto Benigni was also imprisoned in the camp for some time; The film Life is beautiful is based on these experiences, among other things. Only five days before the liberation, Hélène Berr died , who became known for her notes from the time of the German occupation in Paris, which recall the diaries of Anne Frank.

For homosexuals who were imprisoned or died under the injustice regime in the men's camp and in the Bergen-Belsen detention and death camp , a memorial plaque was only installed at the foot of the memorial wall in 1999, which also reminds of the fate of the homosexual victims. A permanent exhibition that deepens the topic provides information on site for more details. In addition, the historian Rainer Hoffschildt published a selection of 33 biographies of victims of homosexual persecution with reference to Bergen-Belsen in July 2019.

The Sintiza Hilde Rosenberg was deported to the Bergen-Belsen at the age of fourteen from Poland. She had to do forced labor in an ammunition factory. She survived, but large parts of her family and that of her future husband did not.

Hetty Werkendam , who survived with her two brothers Jacky and Max in the children's home in Bergen Belsen with the help of sister Luba Frederick, later wrote the book We Children of Bergen-Belsen about her experiences . Sister Luba saved the lives of over 40 children in the children's home in Bergen-Belsen, she went down in history as the "Angel of Bergen-Belsen" and on April 15, 1995 she received the silver medal for humanitarian service to humanity from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands .

Other survivors were Rudi Oppenheimer and Stefan Hertz.

Warehouse staff

The last camp commandant Josef Kramer in British custody, photo from August 1945

The SS camp personnel included:

Memorials

Loading ramp

Memorial to the loading ramp
Transport wagon and part of the loading ramp in the background

On the road (L 298) from Bergen to Belsen there is a road bridge about halfway across the railway line to Belsen. Immediately behind this bridge there is a memorial on the left in the parking lot, which was inaugurated on January 26, 2008. It is intended to commemorate the nearby railway ramp on which the prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates arrived. They were transported here on the Reichsbahn and had to walk 5 to 6 kilometers to the camp from here. From the parking lot, a signposted, approx. 550 meter long footpath leads along the railway line to the loading ramp. The AG Bergen-Belsen has set up a freight car there, as it was used to transport prisoners. It stands there as a memorial and symbol for the kidnapping . Part of the ramp and track was placed under monument protection in 2000.

“Not far from the Bergen-Belsen memorial (Celle district), an initiative of the Bergen-Belsen e. V. next to the ramp on the edge of today's military training area, a covered freight wagon of the old design was set up, which had last come from the museum railway in Weyhe - Leeste (Lower Saxony). Its iron skeleton was provided with new boards by soldiers of the Bundeswehr in Bergen-Hohne. The year before, during construction work at the Bergen train station, the military mistakenly tore down part of the loading ramp, which has been listed as a historical monument since September 2000, and had to be restored. "

- Alfred Gottwaldt

House of silence

The "House of Silence", a "walk-in sculpture", is located on the edge of the historic camp site. Created according to the plans of Ingema Reuter and Gerd Winner , it was inaugurated on April 16, 2000.

It is a house made of chrome-nickel steel, glass and granite that is reminiscent of a chapel: muted yet bright light falls on a table in the front part. A denominational symbol was deliberately avoided. “There were no structural remains of the former concentration camp on the site that could have been used. The inscription wall with the obelisk , the Polish wooden cross and the Jewish memorial stone date from the immediate post-war period. That is why it seemed necessary to create a place for contemplation that is appropriate for today's world. ”On the table in front of stools are many stones (some with painting or engraving), notes, candles and other objects of reflection.

"Nobody knows what the appropriate forms are in which the necessary memory of the nameless horror of this camp can find expression in the next few decades." In the past, visitors had repeatedly pointed out that there was an opportunity for meditation after walking over the terrain must give. That is why this "walk-in sculpture" (8.4 × 12.1 × 26.2 meters) was created between 1997 and 2000.

Documentation center

Documentation center, exterior view (2008)

On October 28, 2007, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp documentation center was opened with an exhibition area of ​​1,500 m². It is on the road between Bergen , Belsen and Winsen / Aller . The Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Lower Saxony each contributed half of the costs of 13 million euros . The memorial is visited by around 250,000 people annually.

See also

literature

Publications of the memorial about the concentration camp

  • Bergen-Belsen. Historical place and memorial. Ed .: Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation / Bergen-Belsen Memorial, Celle 2009, ISBN 978-3-9811617-8-6 .
  • Bergen-Belsen: POW camp 1940–1945, concentration camp 1943–1945, Displaced Persons Camp 1945–1950. Catalog of the permanent exhibition. Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0612-7 .
  • The topography of the Bergen-Belsen camp: six maps. Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation, Bergen-Belsen Memorial, 2008, ISBN 978-3-9811617-5-5 .
  • Memorial book: inmates of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation, Bergen-Belsen Memorial 2005.
  • Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Reports and documents. Selected and commented on by Rolf Keller , Wolfgang Marienfeld, Herbert Obenaus , Thomas Rahe , Hans-Dieter Schmid, Wilhelm Sommer, Wilfried Wiedemann. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1995, ISBN 3-525-35488-6 .

Other publications

sorted alphabetically by author

  • Hans-Dieter Arntz : The last Jewish elder from Bergen-Belsen. Josef Weiss - worthy in an unworthy environment. Helios, Aachen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86933-082-2 .
  • Susanne Bardgett, David Cesarani : Belsen 1945. New Historical Perspectives. Vallentine Mitchell, Middlesex 2006, ISBN 0-85303-716-7 and, ISBN 0-85303-717-5 (English).
  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 .
  • Rainer Hoffschildt : Homosexual prisoners and §175 victims who came to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Selection of 33 biographies, Hannover 2019; Digitized as a PDF document
  • Juliane Hummel: Immobile Remembrance: The construction and structural remains of the Bergen-Belsen prisoner of war and concentration camp. In: Wilfried Wiedemann, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.): Landscape and memory: Bergen-Belsen, Esterwegen, Falstad, Majdanek. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-89975-268-7 , pp. 103-124.
  • Eberhard Kolb : Bergen-Belsen. From “residence camp” to concentration camp 1943–1945.
  • Jakob Saß: violence, greed and grace. The concentration camp commandant Adolf Haas and his way to Wewelsburg and Bergen-Belsen , Past Publishers , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86408-246-7 , pp. 126–178.
  • Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution”. The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 .

Web links

Commons : Bergen-Belsen concentration camp  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Complete chronology of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and today's memorial site ( Memento of the original from January 18, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de
  2. ↑ M. Muchin created three memorials in 1945: In Oerbke the figure of a dying man, for the Maschsee cemetery in Hanover a grieving soldier and for the Soviet cemetery in Belsen-Hörsten “ Die Mourning ” (a crying girl). The figures are each made of marble. The figure in the Soviet prisoner of war cemetery was damaged several times. It is in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Documentation Center. A copy was placed in the cemetery. See also: Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge: History and commemorative plaque Hanover. A memorial for the cemetery of honor . (PDF file) with historical photos and texts.
  3. ↑ The empty barracks camp was used for prisoners of war. ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2012 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. www.bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de
  4. ↑ Stalag XI C. www.relikte.com.
  5. ↑ On the Stalag 311 / XI C in Bergen-Belsen (ak-regionalgeschichte.de; also a floor plan of the Stalag XI B Fallingbostel) ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ak-regionalgeschichte.de
  6. ↑ See also the basic works on the subject of prisoners of war by Rolf Keller et al. a .: Bibliography from the Bergen-Belsen Memorial ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de
  7. ^ Review of Rolf Keller, Soviet prisoners of war in the German Reich.
  8. ↑ Bergen - Lohheide (Hörsten), prisoner of war cemetery. Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, officially recorded 23,215 deaths → Information on the number of deaths is out of date. Here numbers according to: Bergen-Belsen. Historical place and memorial. Celle 2010, p. 54 and information board of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation at the parking lot of the cemetery, there information on 50,000 dead.
  9. ↑ Bergen-Belsen. Historical place and memorial. Celle 2010, Chronologie S. 8f, S. 12-19.
  10. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen 1943–1945. Document p. 131.
  11. ↑ Rainer Schulze: "Rescue efforts." Comments on a difficult topic in contemporary history. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Ed.): Help or Trade? Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-874-5 , p. 11.
  12. ↑ Figures in this section based on Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen 1943–1945….
  13. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the final solution ... Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , p. 335.
  14. ↑ Rainer Schulze: "Rescue efforts ...", ISBN 978-3-86108-874-5 , p. 14.
  15. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen 1943–1945… , p. 38.
  16. ↑ The murderers are still among us . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1988 ( online - based on the book Robert Jay Lifton: Doctors in the Third Reich . 1988).
  17. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen 1943–1945… , p. 37.
  18. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking ... , p. 343.
  19. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking ... , p. 346.
  20. ↑ Figures from Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen 1943–1945… , p. 43 f.
  21. ↑ Hellmut Diwald: History of the Germans. Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-549-05801-2 , p. 164.
  22. ^ Arnold Juergens, Thomas Rahe: On the statistics of the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen - source basis, methodological problems and new statistical data. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): The early post-war processes. Bremen 1997, ISBN 3-86108-322-1 , pp. 140 f.
  23. ^ The former Tannenberg satellite camp
  24. ↑ Thomas Rahe: Bergen-Belsen satellite camp. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel: The Place of Terror. Volume 7, Munich 2008, p. 219 f.
  25. ↑ Mark Celinscak: Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp, University of Toronto Press, 2015, pp. 43 ff.
  26. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen Belsen 1943–1945. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986, p. 72.
  27. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , p. 369.
  28. ↑ Under the keyword " Lost Train " you can find details of the route and the fate of the three trains.
  29. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen ... , p. 51.
  30. ^ Harries, Schmidt, Grosan, Taylor Balfour: Truce - Agreement Reference Number: 649 . In: Stalag XIC (311) and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, A History From 1935 . Retrieved December 14, 2011.
  31. ↑ "The 11th Panzer Division (Great Britain)", United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  32. ↑ Derrick Sington: The gates are opening. LIT Verlab, Dr. W. Hopf Berlin. ISBN 978-3-88660-622-1
  33. ↑ Eberhard Kolb : Bergen-Belsen 1943–1945. From 'residence camp' to concentration camp 1943–1945 . Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-36264-1 , p. 7.
  34. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen ... , p. 52.
  35. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen ... , p. 53.
  36. ↑ Karin Orth: The Concentration Camp SS. Munich 2004, p. 266 f.
  37. ^ Medical care for displaced persons took place in Glynn Hughes Hospital .
  38. ^ "Liberation of the concentration camp" - 1943–1945 on the website of the Lower Saxony Foundation
  39. ^ Belsen Trial. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  40. ↑ Christian Römmer: Homosexuelle ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2016 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. (PDF file) Leaflet, ed. from the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de
  41. ↑ Compare homosexual prisoners and §175 victims who came to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , PDF document by Rainer Hoffschildt, Hanover, from June 2019, published in July 2019.
  42. ↑ Introduction and quotations from the book We Children of Bergen-Belsen (see literature) .
  43. ↑ Christina Sticht: The Queen in Bergen-Belsen. In: Mainpost , June 27, 2015, p. 5.
  44. ↑ Not Prosecuted / Unknown. bergenbelsen.co.uk.
  45. ↑ Position of the loading ramp
  46. ↑ Report by the freelance journalist Stefan Drößler on the memorial to the loading ramp ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / merle-text.de
  47. ^ The German “cattle wagon” as a symbolic object in concentration camp memorials. In: Memorial Forum. Topography of Terror Foundation, accessed October 10, 2012 .
  48. ↑ House of Silence. Page from Gerd Winner.
  49. ↑ Ingema Reuter - Vita. Jochim Gallery.
  50. ↑ Ingema Reuter on the page Art in the Monastery  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.las-casas-haus.de  
  51. ↑ Gerd Winner on the Kunstkontor-Rampoldt page ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kunstkontor-rampoldt.de
  52. ↑ a b c House of Silence - Bergen Belsen Memorial, flyer of the memorial.
  53. ↑ The inscription wall and the obelisk were created in 1948 by order of the British garrison. Every year a memorial event for the anniversary of the liberation takes place at this point, which is largely organized by the Bergen-Belsen working group with survivors and young people from the international work camp .
  54. ↑ Your visit. Bergen-Belsen Memorial.
  55. ↑ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/rechtsradikalismus-kz-bergen-belsen-afd-zentrationslager-1.4790429!amp

Coordinates: 52 ° 45 ′ 28 "  N , 9 ° 54 ′ 28"  E