Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. About 120,000 people were held in the concentration camp.[1] At least 52,000 people died in the concentration camp or soon after because of how they were treated there.[2] There was also a prisoner of war camp at Bergen-Belsen where at least 19,700 more people died.[2]
Liberation
[change | change source]The camp was liberated on 15 April 1945 by British soldiers.[3] There were around 55,000 people in the concentration camp.[3] They also found more than 13,000 unburied dead bodies.[4]
The scenes were horrific. They were described by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, who was with the British soldiers:
| “ | Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British [soldier] to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny [baby] into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.[5] | ” |
—Richard Dimbleby | ||
Notable inmates
[change | change source]Photo gallery
[change | change source]
British Army soldiers free the camp on April 15, 1945
Women survivors in Bergen-Belsen, April 1945
Former camp guards are forced to load the bodies of dead prisoners onto a truck for burial, April 17–18, 1945
Nazi Dr. Fritz Klein stands amongst corpses in Mass Grave 3
A crowd watches the last camp hut be destroyed
Related pages
[change | change source]Other websites
[change | change source]- Investigating Bergen-Belsen | Imperial War Museums on iwm.org.uk
References
[change | change source]- ↑ "List of Names". bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
About 120,000 people are estimated to have been imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
- 1 2 "History". bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de. Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen. Archived from the original on 2025-09-13. Retrieved 8 October 2025.
From 1943 to 1945, at least 52,000 women, men and children died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp or of the immediate effects of their imprisonment. At least 19,700 people died in the Bergen-Belsen POW camp from 1940 to 1945.
- 1 2 "Bergen-Belsen | Holocaust Encyclopedia". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 October 2025.
On April 15, 1945, British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen. The British found around 55,000 prisoners in the camp, many of them seriously ill.
- ↑ "The 11th Armoured Division (Great Britain)". www.ushmm.org. Archived from the original on 2017-09-09. Retrieved 8 October 2025.
More than 13,000 corpses in various stages of decomposition lay littered around the camp.
- ↑ "Richard Dimbleby, "Liberation of Belsen", BBC News, April 15, 1945". BBC News. April 15, 2005. Retrieved May 3, 2013.