Bergen-Belsen
In February 1943, the German Foreign Office decided that some thirty thousand Jews who had contacts to "enemy states" not be shipped to death camps for the time being. Instead, these Jews should be detained in hopes that they might be exchanged for Germans who had been captured by the Allies. In April 1943, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS ordered that ten thousand "exchange Jews" (Austauschjuden) be moved to a central camp. (The prisoner of war camp was established in 1940 for six hundred French and Belgian soldiers. In May of 1941, the camp was given the named Stalag 311 (XI C) . From July 1941 a group of 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive and were kept in the open under extremely difficult conditions.) For this purpose the SS had requisitioned from the army a portion of the prisoner of war camp, Bergen-Belsen, thus the "detention camp Bergen-Belsen" came into existence. By the fall of 1944, approximately six thousand of the Jews who were assigned to the camp had been transported.
Initially, the inmates escaped the cruelty that occurred in most camps because if they were to be exchanged, they should not have such cruelty so fresh on their minds. Nevertheless, Bergen-Belsen was quickly incorporated into the overall concentration camp network, and prisoners, other than the "exchange Jews," were sent there. The camp was thus divided into sections to accommodate the different types of inmates, and prisoners received different treatment depending on their classification.
Section 1 of the camp was the Prison Camp (Häftlingslager). At first this portion of the camp was designated to house a group of construction workers who had be transported from other camps (Buchenwald, Wewelsburg and Natzweiler). Beginning in March 1944 sick or invalid prisoners from other camps were placed in this section of Bergen-Belsen. The treatment of those who lived in the Häftlingslager were treated very badly by the SS and the Kapos (inmates who were given special treatment for assisting the SS). These prisoners were worked to the point of exhaustion and received little or no medical attention; the result was a very high death rate.
Section 2 of the camp was the Neutral Camp (Neutralenlager). Here Jews who held passports from neutral countries (Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Turkey) lived. The conditions in this section were tolerable until March 1945. The prisoners were not assigned to work details.
Section 3 of the camp was the Special Camp (Sonderlager). In the middle of 1943, several thousand Poles had been shipped into this section. The majority of this group held temporary passports from South American countries. These inmates were not assigned to the work details and were kept in isolation as they had full knowledge of the cruelty that had been and was being carried out in Poland. By the middle of 1944, only 350 or the group remained in Bergen-Belsen because most had been transported to Auschwitz and had been exterminated.
Section 4 of the camp was the Hungarian Camp (Ungarnlager). The Ungarnlager was established in July of 1944 to house 1683 Jews from Hungary. Himmler used these Jews as bargaining chips. He negotiated with other countries and tried to trade them for money and goods. These prisoners did not have to wear uniforms; instead they wore civilian clothing with the Star of David. This group was also not forced to work.
Section 5 of the camp was the Star Camp (Sternlager) . Here only exchange Jews, about four thousand, lived, and most of them were from the Netherlands. It was called the Sternlager because the inmates wore regular clothing with the Star of David. Men and women were segregated, but families were allowed to meet during the day. Everyone, even the very aged, was required to work.
Section 6 of the camp was known as the Camp of Tents (Zeitlager). At the beginning of 1944, the SS constructed a camp of tents that was first used as a transit camp for women begin transported from Poland. In late October and early November of 1944 some eight thousand women who had been evacuated from Auschwitz ere imprisoned her. After a storm had torn down the tents, the prisoners were herded into other huts that were already vastly overcrowded.
Section 7 of the camp was known as the Small Women’s Camp (kleines Frauenlager). Here women who had mostly been transported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen were housed from August 1944 on.
Section 8 of the camp was known as the Large Women’s Camp. As the Allies pressed their attack closer and closer to the German homeland, more and more prisoners were moved to Bergen-Belsen as the other camps were too near the front. In January 1945 the former hospital for prisoners of war was incorporated into the camp, and it was here that the Large Women’s Camp was established.
The Commandants
The first commandant in Bergen-Belsen was SS Captain (Hauptsturmführer) Adolf Haas. His previous assignment had been the concentration camp known as Niederhagen/Wewelsburg near Paderborn.
In early 1944, Haas was replaced SS Captain Josef Kramer who had been working in concentration camps since 1934. His most recent assignment had been at the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Kramer completed the transformation of Bergen-Belsen from a detention camp into a regular concentration camp.
Terror and Death
The desperate conditions in the Hlftlingslager stemmed from the decision of the SS to select prisoners who were sick, unable to work and completely exhausted and to transport them to Bergen-Belsen. The SS called Bergen-Belsen a recreation camp. The first transport of one thousand was largely infected with tuberculosis, and this group arrived from the Dora-Mittelbau camp in the spring of 1944. There was not a single doctor with the group, and when the camp was liberated, only fifty-seven of the original one thousand were still alive.
In the summer of 1944, some two hundred people in the Häftlingslager were murdered through injections of Phenol, administered by Karl Rothe, a prisoner whom the SS had appointed "Senior Nurse." Although these murders were committed at the behest of the SS, but also as acts of cruelty by Rothe himself. In September of 1944, the prisoners organized a trial and sentenced Rothe to death. At an opportune moment the sentence was executed.
Self-Administration
In the various sections of the camp, the Commandant appointed a prisoner to serve as a supervisor and ensure the execution of SS orders. The Senior Prisoner (Lagerälteste) in the Sternlager was a Greek name Jacques Albala, and the prisoners believed that he was engaged in corrupt practices. Albala’s assistant was Joseph Weiss, a German who had emigrated to Holland in 1933 but was subsequently arrested and sent to Westerbork and from there to Bergen-Belsen. Weiss was a courageous man and did everything that he could alleviate the plight of his fellow inmates. Eli Dasberg, a former camp prisoner made the following report:
Jupp Weiss was always open to listen to the sufferings of his fellow men (…) Sometimes he would run after a private or corporal with his notebook in his hand. Like a slave after his master – but he was no slave! Always with dignity never subservient! He was forced to follow his master like a dog, but he always walked nobly and with his head held high. He always ignored nasty comments, and he never laughed about spiteful remarks. He always kept his distance that was for him a normal thing to do. He pointed out to them the dreadful conditions and the lack of sanitary facilities. He was brave enough to ask for repairs that were long overdue, although his requests were turned down again and again. He was courageous. He did a lot without ever taking too high a risk.
Exchange For Only A Few
Many of the prisoners who were sent to Bergen-Belsen were suppose to be exchanged for other prisoners, but very few actually were used for this purpose. 222 Jews were allowed to go to Palestine in June of 1944, and 136 arrived in Switzerland in January 1945. Furthermore in December and August of 1944 1683 inmates from the Ungarnlager and several hundred Jews who held passports from neutral countries were allowed to cross the Swiss border. Nevertheless, most held onto the hope that they would be released from the Bergen-Belsen detention camp, but their hope was in vain. The following poem was written by an inmate who hoped to leave and was written in 1944 in Bergen-Belsen by a Polish Jewish woman.
Ich möchte einen Paß von Uruguay haben,
Das ist ja so ein schönes Land!
Wie schön es ist, Untertan im Land zu sein,
das Uruguary heißt.
Ich möchte einen Paß von Paraguay haben,
Das ist ein goldenes and freies Land
Es ist ja so angenehm, ein Untertan im Land zu
sein das Paraguay heißt.
Ich möchte den Paß von Uruguary
Von Costa Rica, Paraguay
Um in Warschau ruhig leben zu können
The three countries mentioned in the poem, Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica were three countries that would harbor refugees from Europe. If one made it to one of these countries, he/she had escaped the Nazis and might hope to return to his come country at some point in the future, perhaps Warsaw.
Daily Routine at Bergen-Belsen
The majority of the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen were assigned to work details. The workers were called work commando, and most of them were engaged in the recycling of used shoe parts. These shoe commandos received used shoes which were sent from all over the Reich. The workers had to unstick the shoes and cut away the usable bits of leather. This dirty and tedious labor was made even more unpleasant by the brutalities of the SS guards.
Other workers were required to excavate areas within the camp. Others were assigned to sewage work while others peeled potatoes or cleaned pots. The Stubbenkommando had to clear woodlands. Others were sent to armaments factories or to the transportation industry where they served as slave labor.
The roll calls were an additional burden that were held before and after work even in the coldest weather and which could last for hours. There were frequent arbitrary punishments such as withholding food from prisoners for one or more days. One inmate, Clare Asscher-Pinkhof wrote the following concerning the roll call:
The roll call served the purpose of organizing a daily head count of the many thousands of people who were kept in the camp. The Greens want to make sure that nobody has run away. As if that were possible with all the watchtowers and threatening rifles, the ten rows of electrically charged barbed wire and between them signs showing death heads.
The workers are counted in the morning at six o’clock. The commandos working in huts are counted on the central roll call square. The very old, mothers and children under three are counted inside the huts, and the sick are counted in their beds. The, the separate sets of numbers are added together; if the total is correct, the roll call is completed. But the total is hardly ever correct and roll call often lasts for several hours. Those who have died before the roll call began are no longer counted in the total; the dying are counted but somebody who is born during roll call does not count. All this makes it very difficult to arrive at accurate figures.
Deep down, everyone knows that the Greens turn a blind eye if they are in a good mood, and if they feel like hurting and torturing people they go mad. One day, they had everyone lining up for roll call on the central square for eight hours in the rain and mud.
Conditions in the Sternlager
From the middle of 1944, two things that dominated the lives of the prisoners in the Sternlager were hunger and illness; even the very old and very young suffered from the gross inadequacies. The primary reasons for the deplorable circumstances were overcrowding, poor hygiene, inadequate medical care, the presence of pests and illness.
On October 23, 1944, one inmate named Hanna L-Hass wrote, "Vielleicht war das alles erst der Anfang." The following is a description of the desperation prisoners at Bergen-Belsen felt because of the lack of food:
The fight for bread, a fierce fight over the tiniest crumb, the fear to lose it or have it stolen by thieves or by the Germans who from time to time amuse themselves by depriving us for several days of our basic ration. This fight for bread has now become the central problem, the most urgent problem to trouble every individual and all prisoners in general. The ration is getting smaller from week to week. Today, the daily bread ration is only 3.5cm long – measured with a tape measure (would you believe it). One treasures this tiny piece like apiece of gold. One cuts it carefully, with awe into pieces of one or maybe two millimeter thickness. It is something of a tragedy if one’s ration gets stolen or if one is punished for some reason – or without any reason whatsoever – by having one of two bread rations withheld.
The Will to Survive
Despite the hunger, cold, and fear, the prisoners in Bergen-Belsen tried to maintain cultural activities and used their sparse means to add sparkle to religious festivals and to continue to preserve their religious beliefs. The will to survive was apparent in the drawings, diaries, lectures, poems and songs that were produced in the camp. One inmate, Jozef Gitler-Barki wrote the following in 1943 and 1944:
December 12, 1943: A religious and learned young man, Rozenperi, talks at the occasion of the last candle of the Hanukkah on the topic: "Judaism and Hellenism against the background of the Hanukkah festival." The lawyer Roman tells Chanukkah memories from his childhood.
December 30, 1943: . . .A religious group of prisoners – 84 people – tries to organize a kosher kitchen in a separate section of the washroom -- virtually impossible venture.
March 3, 1944: A present –a surprise which Irusia prepared for my birthday, consisting of potatoes in the shape of mushrooms with something resembling jam in them and hand painted card with a very moving contents. . .
April 4, 1944: We have organized six language courses and a number of discussion sessions with young people. There are many takers.
May 25, 1944: In the evening, Zameczkowski reads the book of Job. I tell about the fate of the children from the Warsaw Ghetto . . .
Transport to Bergen-Belsen
From 1943 onwards most of those who were transported to Bergen-Belsen were Jews living in either Poland or the Netherlands. In 1944 Bergen-Belsen became a receiving camp for prisoners being moved from camps closer to the German frontier.
In 1944 as the Allies advanced on the German homeland, the prisoners were removed from those camps closer to the front and relocated in camps in the interior of the German Empire. The prisoners were on the move for days and days on end. Some were forced to walk; others traveled by train or open wagons. Often they were transported during freezing cold and were denied food and warm clothing. Tens of thousands froze to death; others died from starvation; still others were shot by the SS guards. The dying did not end with the conclusion of transport as the SS allowed the prisoners to die of neglect in the new camps to which they were relocated.
Prior to being relocated, many of these prisoners were sent to Bergen-Belsen. The evacuation transports poured more and more inmates into Bergen-Belsen each day. The camp had housed some fifteen thousand people at the end of November 1944, but by the end of April of 1945, Bergen-Belsen housed sixty thousand prisoners. In the months between November and April, tens of thousands died.
The huts in the camp became over-crowed, and many of the huts were not heated. There was a general lack of equipment and furniture; accordingly, people had to sit and lie on the floor. The camp officials deliberately avoided alleviating the deplorable conditions by refusing to draw on emergency food, clothing, and medical supplies that were stored in a nearby military training ground. The lack of water was so acute that many died of thirst. Others went mad for lack of food or drink, and others resorted to cannibalism.
The Last Days and Liberation
When Allies approached Bergen-Belsen, the SS attempted to remove the thousands of corpses from the camp compound. Between April 11 and 14, 1945, two thousand prisoners had to drag the dead to huge mass graves.
Shortly before that, the SS had taken the "exchange Jews" from the camp. Between April 6 and 11, 1945 some eight thousand Jewish captives were evacuated in three trains. For hundreds the trip led to their death. On of the trains reached Thereseinstadt; the other two went aimlessly back and forth for days and even weeks were caught in several air raids; their human cargoes were finally liberated by American soldiers near Magdeburg and by Russian soldiers near Tröbitz.
On April 15, 1945, British troops liberated the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. It was handed over without resistance due to a local cease fire agreement. Both sides wanted to prevent diseases from spreading. Most of the SS had fled beforehand; the commandant had remained in the camp with some eighty SS men and women.
The scenes that met the British soldiers who entered the camp were so terrible that the photographer who took the pictures was unable even forty years later to look at them again.