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60 Years Since the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Discussion in 'WWII Today' started by Greenjacket, Apr 15, 2005.

  1. Greenjacket

    Greenjacket Member

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    Liberation of Belsen commemorated
    Holocaust survivors and their liberators are marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
    The Nazi death camp, near Hanover in Germany, was the first to be liberated by British troops, on 15 April 1945. An estimated 70,000 people died at Belsen.

    A low-key ceremony is taking place on the site of the camp, which burned down shortly after it was liberated.

    London's Hyde Park also hosted an official ceremony.

    Correspondents say ceremonies marking the anniversary are low-key in Germany because there are so many sites to be remembered this year.

    Several busloads of survivors, many with family members, made their way to the camp on Friday.

    There were strong emotions in the car park as they arrived, the BBC's Ray Furlong reports from the site.

    One woman told our correspondent she was there to show the world that she was still alive. "The British soldiers seemed to me like angels from heaven," she said.

    German surrender

    Bergen-Belsen was originally created as a transit centre, but later became a fully-fledged concentration camp in all but name.

    By 1945, it housed thousands of prisoners who had become too weak to work, left to die of starvation and disease.

    There was no running water in the camp and there were epidemics of typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis.

    One of the reasons the Germans agreed to surrender Belsen was because so many of the inmates were diseased.

    The first British soldiers who entered Bergen-Belsen described seeing a huge pile of dead, naked women within full view of several hundred children held at the camp.

    The gutters, too, were filled with bodies.

    In the weeks that followed, British troops buried 10,000 bodies in mass graves.

    The UK's Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks and Gen Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, spoke in Hyde Park, alongside Belsen survivors and liberators.

    A one-day seminar is being held at London's Imperial War Museum.

    Auschwitz and Belsen survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and camp liberator Maj Dick Williams are among the speakers.

    Other speakers include Dr Alan MacAuslan, a former medical student who worked on the relief effort at Belsen, and Esther Brunstein, survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and Belsen.
    --
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4445529.stm
    --
     
    Greenjacket, Apr 15, 2005
    #1
  2. stanchev

    stanchev Member

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    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Concentration camp

    Camp in the concentration camp system of Nazi Germany, located in Lower Saxony near the city of Celle and officially established in April 1943, for persons who were designated for exchange with German nationals in Allied countries. Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald and Natzweiler worked building the camp. Bergen - Belsen came under the SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic - Administrative Main Office; WVHA). It first commandant Adolf Haas, was succeeded by Josef Kramer on December 2, 1944.

    Satellite Camps

    By the autumn of 1944, five satellite camps were set up, as follows:
    1. A "prisoners' camp" for the 500 inmates who had been brought in for construction work. Conditions were terrible and mortality high. The camp was closed on February 23, 1944 and the prisoners were sent to Sachsenhausen.

    2. The "special camp, " for two transports of Jews from Poland, some 2,400 people, in possession of various documents, mostly South American. In October 1943, 1,700 of these inmates were deported to their deaths to Auschwitz; 350 more were deported early in 1944. The remaining Jews were not assigned to work teams and had no contact with other sections of the camp.

    3. The "neutral camp, " in which 350 Jews were housed from July 1944 until liberation. The inmates, nationals of neutral countries, were treated better than others prisoners.

    4. The "star camp", for some 4,000 Jewish prisoners who ostensibly were designated for exchange. Mostly Dutch, these inmates did not wear uniforms, but did wear a yellow badge in the form of a star of David - hence the camp's name.

    5. The "Hungarian camp, " in which 1,685 Jews from Hungary, the transport organized by Rezso Kasztner, were housed.


    Exchange

    Only a few of the Jews who were brought to Bergen - Belsen were set free: on July 10, 1944, 222 Jews reached Palestine; in two parts, in August and December, the Kasztner transport was sent to Switzerland; and on January 25, 1945, 136 Jews with South American passports also reached Switzerland.

    Transition to a "Regular" Concentration Camp

    Beginning in March 1944, Bergen - Belsen gradually became a "regular" concentration camp, the Germans transferring to it prisoners who were classified as "unfit to work, " from other camps. The first group of 1,000 that arrived from Dora, were housed in terrible conditions in a new part of the camp; nearly all died quickly and at liberation only 57 were alive. More transports arrived and most of the prisoners were housed in the former "prisoners' camp." German convicts were also transferred from Dora, to serve as "block elders" and Kapos; they treated the other inmates very brutally.

    The Women's Camp

    In August 1944 a women's camp was added. From Buchenwald, 4,000 women prisoners were transferred to the camp and then dispatched to Flossenburg. Most of them returned to Bergen - Belsen, sick or exhausted. Women from Plaszow and Auschwitz also were sent to Bergen - Belsen in October 1944, among them Anne Frank and her sister Margot.

    Sharp Decline in Living Conditions

    At the end of 1944 and early in 1945, a complete deterioration of living conditions set in when thousands of survivors of Death Marches began to reach the camp. The administration did not even try to house them and a raging typhus epidemic broke out. From January to mid - April 1945, 35,000 prisoners perished.

    Liberation and After

    On April 15, 1945 the camp was liberated by the British, who were appalled to find most of the sixty thousand inmates in critical condition and who were totally unprepared to deal with the situation. During the next five days fourteen thousand died, and in the following weeks another fourteen thousand succumbed. Bergen - Belsen became the site of a Displaced Persons' camp, which remained in existence until 1951. Forty eight former members of the camp staff were tried by the British. Eleven were sentenced to death, including Josef Kramer; they were executed on December 12, 1945.
    Courtesy of:
    "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"
    ©1990 Macmillan Publishing Company
    New York, NY 10022
     
    stanchev, Apr 15, 2005
    #2
  3. sonofacameron

    sonofacameron Member

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    Couldn't post this anywhere else, Holocaust section seems to have disappeared. Some video of my visit to Bergen Belsen in May of this year.
    [​IMG]
     
    sonofacameron, Sep 27, 2011
    #3
  4. thecanadianfool

    thecanadianfool Member

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    I have full sympathy for the dead and their families along with the survivors. What was the point of this mass murder? Did the prison gaurds not have any sympathy for the inmates at all? Did they not even stop to think why they were there in the first place?
     
    thecanadianfool, Apr 19, 2012
    #4
  5. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Sympathy? I think that at the least was missing. B......S is the only comment I will make.
     
    urqh, Apr 20, 2012
    #5
  6. Biak

    Biak Boy from Illinois Staff Member

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    This was on the USAF website and one thing caught my eye:

    "You're the last generation that will hear from us, ........ "

    4/23/2012 - U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFNS) -- To this day, 77-year-old Marion Blumenthal Lazan feels a strong sense of fear when she sees a German shephard.

    It takes her back to that cold, rainy night in 1944 when she arrived at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a 9-year-old, and was threatened along with thousands of other Jewish families by Nazi guards with vicious police dogs.

    Although it's difficult for Lazan to revisit that dark period, she shared her story with 90 cadets at a luncheon April 17 in the Mitchell Hall Formal Dining Room for Holocaust Remembrance Week.

    "Although I've spoken to upward of 1 million students and adults over the past 20 years, it still hasn't become easy," Lazan said. "I do recognize the importance of sharing that period of history because in a few short years, Holocaust survivors will no longer be able to give a first-hand account of it."

    "You're the last generation that will hear from us, so I ask you to share my story, or any of the Holocaust stories that you have read and heard about," she added.

    Lazan spoke about her experiences during World War II from Nazi concentration camps to liberation, and how she started her life anew in the United States.

    "Mine is a story that Anne Frank might have told had she survived," Lazan said. "This is a story that could bring a message of preservance, determination, faith and above all, hope."

    Lazan said she will never forget the night of Nov. 9, 1938. Often referred to as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, Nazis and their followers destroyed Jewish stores, synagogues and books, and Lazan's father was sent to a concentration camp.

    "This was the beginning of a massive physical and verbal assault against Jews in Germany," Lazan said. "In reality, this was the beginning of the Holocaust."

    The Blumenthal family, Marion, her mother, Ruth, father, Walter and brother, Albert, had filed papers to immigrate to America but were trapped by the Germans in the Netherlands. Eventually the family was shipped to a concentration camp.

    "When we saw the cattle cars we were to travel in, our fears began to mount," Lazan said. "Adults suspected and they somehow knew what was in store for us."

    Lazan said while at Bergen-Belsen, 600 people were crammed into crude, wooden barracks with two people per bunk.

    "There was no privacy, no toilet paper, no soap and hardly any water to wash with," Lazan said. "In the almost year and a half we were there, never once were we able to brush our teeth."

    Lazan said she never knew if she'd survive while being marched to the showers once a month.

    "Watchful eyes of the guards ordered us to undress and because people had heard about exterminations and gas chambers, we were never quite sure what would come out when the faucets were turned on: Water or gas."

    Lazan said death was an everyday occurrence often caused by malnutrition and dysentery. The dark living quarters would cause people to trip and fall over the dead, she said.

    "We as children saw things that no one, no matter the age, should ever have to see," Lazan said. "I know that you've probably heard and seen movies and documentaries about the Holocaust, but the constant foul odor, filth and continuous horror and fear surrounded by death is indescribable. There is no way that this can actually be put into words or pictures."

    Lazan said she would play make-believe games in her pastime, one in which became very important to her, and eventually became the title of her book, "Four Perfect Pebbles."

    "I decided that if I was to find four pebbles of about the same size and shape, that it would mean my four family members would all survive," Lazan said. "I always found my four pebbles, and this game gave me some distant hope."

    Lazon said her meager diet caused her stomach to shrink, and hunger was no longer painful.

    "By liberation, at age 10-and-a-half, I weighed 35 pounds and my mother, a mere 60," Lazan said. "There is no doubt in my mind that it was my mother's inner strength and fortitude that finally saw us through."

    In April 1945, the Russian army liberated the Nazi train one which Lazan and her family were aboard. The train was headed to the extermination camp and gas chambers.

    "It's truly remarkable how any of us were able to survive in such horrendous conditions," she said. "Five hundred people died on the route or shortly after."

    Among the dead was Lazan's father, who succumbed to typhus six weeks after liberation.

    Two years later, at age 13, Marion, alongside her mother and brother, immigrated to the United States.

    "It's a wonderful story of how we gradually recuperated and started our lives anew," Lazan said.

    Lazan graduated from high school on time, after a delayed education, and married her husband Nathaniel Lazan, who later became a B-25 Mitchell Bomber pilot in the Air Force.

    "My relationship with the Air Force goes back to the 1950s," Lazan said. "It was a proud moment when I pinned the silver wings on my husband in 1955 at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas."

    Lazan said despite all of the terrible things that happened to her as a child, her life today is full and rewarding.

    "I'm very grateful that I survived body, mind and spirit, and was able to perpetuate my heritage with my husband and family," Lazan said.

    Holocaust Remembrance Day was April 19.

    "You're the last generation that will hear from us," I hope we're listening.
     
    Biak, Apr 27, 2012
    #6
    rkline56 likes this.
  7. rkline56

    rkline56 USS Oklahoma City CG5

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    Good to know that most of the survivors healed, for the most part, and were, I hope, able to lead productive lives. Truly strong human beings to have survived any of the camps. It is difficult to find words to express the kindness and happiness I wish for them after their struggles to survive and get out of the camps alive. Terribly sorry for the loss of their loved ones. A tragedy of unparalleled dimensions and scope.
     
    rkline56, Apr 27, 2012
    #7
  8. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    Moving story Rk, thanks for posting this , it summerizes the feeling, even if those who were not there will never be able to know exactly what an it ordeal was. It gives future generations a testimony of the hell these brave people went through. :poppy:
     
    Skipper, Apr 28, 2012
    #8

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