Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Research Paper

The Buchenwald concentration camp opened on July 15, 1937. Women were not apart of the Buchenwald camp system until 1943 or early 1944. Most of early inmates at Buchenwald became political prisoners.Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established within German borders. German SS officers and police sent almost

The prisoner population expanded rapidly, reaching 110,000 by the end of 1945.” (Jewish Virtual Library, pg. #1) To explain, Buchenwald was liberated the year of 1945 which was also when the Holocaust ended. Forced labor was one of the things that the Jews had to deal with, meaning they were either sent into factories and work for the SS or they were sent to go build sub-camps. All the prisoners that were forced to labor were all young and strong men. The living conditions of the camp were terrible. The prisoners lived in places called barracks, which were beds made out of wood. The barracks never had mattresses or anything to lie on besides the wood. There were about 3 prisoners that stayed on one barrack. Most of the time there were no room for prisoners to sleep so you would have to sleep on top of people in the

“…Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same

In the beginning the concentration camps they were not even planned, to be mainly for Jews, in the beginning they had started with criminals and political prisoners. Later on Adolf Hitler wanted to have a “better” future, so who ever interfered in his plan was a threat so he had sent them to jail. People who

Bergen-Belsen was a German prisoner-of-war (POW) camp established in 1940 near Celle. In April of 1943 the SS Economic-Administration Main Office converted part of the camp into a civilian residence camp. The Bergen-Belsen camp complex had five different satellite locations that housed many different groups of prisoners. The three main camps were: the POW camp, the “residence camp” (Aufenthaltslager) and the “prisoners’ camp” (Haftlingslager). The “residence camp” had four sub-camps: the “special camp” (Sonderlager), the “neutrals camp” (Neurtalenlager), the “star camp” (Sternlager) which received its name because prisoners had to wear yellow stars of David instead of uniforms, and the “Hungarian camp” (Ungarnlager).

After hour upon hours of a train ride trapped in a dark, confined room, packed with people, only being to eat tiny rations and no toilet, what awaited the Jews was an even worse fate. Death Camps. Chelmno , Belzec,

Male and female genders lived in separate barracks, however family members were allowed to meet. Most of the inmates in this camp were Jewish people that were from the Netherlands. In the period from January to September 1944, eight different transports from the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands arrived in Bergen- Belsen. These transports were made up of 3,670 people who were all

Bergen-Belsen had a unique way their camp was set up. They didn’t just have one big camp like most of the other camps, they had their camp split up five ways in eight different sections: a detention camp, a special camp for Jews with South American papers, a star camp for Jews wearing The Star of David, a camp for Jews with papers from neutral countries, two women’s camps, a Hungarian camp, and a tent camp. Even though the camp was intended for 10,000 people, the camp held 60,000.

As the Soviet Union made their way for the camp, the camp began to evacuate its three main camps and 44 subcamps. “SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.). Prisoners were transported to Germany concentration camps. The travels to these camps were unbearable, and many prisoners lost their lives during the travel or were killed if they could not keep up during the marches. These marches are often referred to as “The Death Marches.” “On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered [Auschwitz-Birkenau camps] and liberated around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.).

There were more than 40,000 concentration camps during the Holocaust. One of the worst and most destructive camp was Auschwitz, which was located in southern Poland (“Gilbert” 1). It contained three camps that were all known as Auschwitz. Auschwitz was a death camp and a concentration camp that claimed the lives of thousands. Survivors say that when the doors first open on the boxcar at Auschwitz there was an orchestra playing, this was to trick the prisoners into thinking there were somewhere better (“The Death Camps” 21). Physician Gisella Perl described the overall picture of Auschwitz she received when she first arrived as “Like big, black clouds, the smoke of the crematory hung over the camp. Sharp red tongues of flame licked the sky,

There really is no possible way to determine the exact number of people who suffered and lost their lives in the camps because not all people who arrived were registered as inmates. Instead, they were immediately sent to the Zyklon B gas chambers or killed (Auschwitz). These torture sites were established in the late 1940s and did not end until 1944-1945 (Auschwitz-Birkenau- “The).

Auschwitz I the principal camp, was the primary camp built up close Oswiecim. Development started in April 1940 in an abandoned Polish army barracks in a suburb of the city. Like most German concentration imprisonments, Auschwitz I was developed for three purposes: to detain genuine and perceived enemies of the Nazi administration and the German occupation experts in Poland for an uncertain timeframe. To give a supply of constrained workers for organization in SS-possessed development related ventures (and, later, armaments and other war-related creation). To fill in as a site to murder little, directed gatherings of the populace whose demise was dictated by the SS and police experts to be basic to the security of Nazi Germany. At Auschwitz

In June, 1940, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp opened; this camp would later be the home and death place of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Jews, Poles, and Gypsies made up the large majority of prisoners in the camp. Life in Auschwitz included living in undesirable conditions, and being kept on a very strict schedule day in, day out.

     When they arrived at the camps, most of the families who were shipped out together, ended up being separated. Often, the transports were a sampling of what went on in the camps: cruelty by the officers, near starvation of those being transported, as well as fetid and unsanitary conditions. For the people who survived the trip, it was just the beginning of the living nightmare that they would face inside the walls of Auschwitz.

Bergen-Belsen was one of the many concentration camps in Germany. It was built between the cities of Bergen and Belsen hence the name. it was originally a prisoners of war (POW) camp. The original commander of the camp was Adolf Haas in the spring of 1943. Then, on December 1944 he was replaced by Josef Kramer. He was nicknamed The Beast of Belsen. Kramer was given the nickname due to all the atrocities