BERGEN BELSEN DP CAMP Yizkor JEWISH BOOK Holocaust PHOTOS MAPS DOCUMENTS Refugee

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BERGEN BELSEN DP CAMP Yizkor JEWISH BOOK Holocaust PHOTOS MAPS DOCUMENTS Refugee:
$75.00

DESCRIPTION : Herefor sale is a documentary YIZKOR BOOK ( A MEMORIAL BOOK - YISKOR BIKHER -YIZKOR BUCH ) regarding the BERGEN BELSEN DP CAMP in the British occupation zone right after the WW2 . The book\"BELSEN\" ( Or BELZEN ) waspublished in Tel Aviv Israel in 1958 by the ORGANIZATION of SHERIT HAPLETA in the BRITISH OCCUPATION ZONE . ( SHERIT HAPLETA - The Holocaust survivors ) .Originalywritten in Hebrew . A book of SURVIVORS TESTIMONIES. Many name lists and index. Includes quite many PHOTOS, MAPS and DOCUMENTS . Thebook SIZE isa bit less than6.5\"x 8.5\" . Around 190 chromo pp. Original black cloth HC. Leather immitation .Artistic guilt headings. Very goodcondition. Clean .Nicely preserved copy . Stamped by the \"Organization of the Nazi prisoners - Central Branch\" ( Please look atscan for actual AS IS images )Book will be sent in a special protectiverigid sealed package.

PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : Shipp worldwide via registered airmail is $ 14 . Book will be sent inside a protective envelope . Handling within 3-5 days after payment. Estimated Int\'l duration around 14 days.

Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp was a displaced persons (DP) camp for refugees after World War II, in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. It was in operation from the summer of 1945 until September 1950. For a time, Belsen DP camp was the largest Jewish DP camp in Germany and the only one in the British occupation zone with an exclusively Jewish population.[1][2]:34Location and establishment On 15 April 1945 the British Army liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was handed over by the SS guards without a fight. Diseases and the terrible hygienic state of the concentration camp buildings caused the British Army to relocate the former inmates and eventually to burn the prisoner huts.[1] The survivors of the concentration camp became the first residents of the future DP camp, which was around 2 kilometres from the main concentration camp area, in a former German Army barracks.[1][2]:60 Initially, the British medical staff used buildings in the former Panzertruppenschule (school for Panzer troops) as an emergency hospital to treat the former inmates away from the disastrous conditions of the concentration camp.[3] On April 21 the first patients were moved to the new location, disinfected and issued with new clothing.[3] This movement of people was completed by May 18 and at that point the former barracks had around 12,000 hospital beds.[3] The British also moved the wounded German soldiers from the Wehrmacht Reservelazarett (reserve hospital, in a nearby spruce forest) to civilian hospitals and added the Reservelazarett to their hospital space.[3] This raised the number of available beds by a further 1,600.[3] Within the first four weeks almost 29,000 survivors from Belsen concentration camp were moved to the emergency hospital.[2]:28 Around 14,000 former inmates died after liberation despite the best efforts of the British Army, the British Red Cross and many others of various nationalities.[2]:29 By June 1945, around 11,000 of the former inmates still required emergency treatment.[4]:305 The DP camp was established in July 1945 [1] by turning the hospital wards into living quarters.[5] After summer 1945, only the former Wehrmacht hospital, around a kilometre from the barracks, was still used as a hospital. [6] In January 1948, the British turned this into the central Jewish hospital for their occupation zone.[6] It was run by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, supported by aid organisations.[6] The survivors named it the Glyn Hughes Hospital after British Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes, the medical officer of the 11th Armoured Division.[6] Later still this became part of the Glyn Hughes Barracks, in what is now Hohne-Camp.[7] The British authorities tried to rename the camp Hohne to avoid the association with Nazi genocide at the concentration camp nearby, but the Holocaust survivors who were residents (Sh\'erit ha-Pletah) in the camp refused to accept the name change and persisted in calling the DP camp Bergen-Belsen.[1] The name change only stuck after the DP camp was dissolved and the area was returned to military use. Today, the location of the former DP camp remains off-limits to the public. Even though many of the buildings are not in use anymore, they are in a restricted military area.[2]:60–65 Camp culture and politics Conditions in the camp were initially quite poor, as the dire situation of the British economy prevented the Army from providing more than the bare necessities at first.[4]:326 There was not enough food, clothing and living space. In October 1945, there was a hunger strike and demonstration against conditions in the camp.[4]:326 Things started to improve only by the summer of 1946, when the population had decreased.[4]:326 Many of those DPs who were not in need of medical attention were speedily repatriated. In general, this was done voluntarily only, with the notable exception of Soviet citizens — as the Soviet Union had obtained consent from its Allies that its citizens would be sent back even against their own will.[2]:29 In early September 1945 there were still more than 25,000 people in the DP camp. This population consisted mainly of two groups: (gentile) Poles (around 15,000) and Jews (almost 11,000), most of them also from Poland.[2]:29 DPs of other nationalities were largely repatriated by the fall of 1945.[4]:308 The Polish camp From June 1945 Poles and Jews had separate sections in the camp.[8] In the Polish section, a lively social and cultural life developed.[9] The Poles had established a Camp Committee on the day after liberation — initially its meetings were also attended by Polish Jews.[4]:314 A school opened in the summer of 1945, attended by up to 600 children, and two kindergartens cared for 100 children. Many Polish DPs were young adults and they started new families in the camp — there were almost 400 weddings and 200 births in the Polish camp.[4]:316–317 The Committee published newspapers. A choir, a brass band, an \"International Cabaret\" and a sports club (\"Polonia\") were established.[4]:316–317 On November 2, 1945 the Polish DPs had a service in which a wooden cross on the former concentration camp site was dedicated as a memorial.[4]:313 The Polish camp was disbanded in September 1946.[8] The remaining 4,500 Polish DPs were transferred to other camps in the British zone, as many still hesitated to return to (now communist) Poland or to Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland.[2]:34[9] Eventually, around two thirds of Polish DPs in the British zone returned to Poland, others went to the US and Canada.[4]:318 The Jewish camp With the closure of the Polish section, Belsen became the only exclusively Jewish facility in the British sector, something for which the Jewish survivors had struggled with the British.[1] The camp was for a while the largest Jewish DP camp in Germany.[1][2]:34 Although some had left, in late 1945 thousands of Jews who had survived the Holocaust in Poland or Hungary emigrated westward and many of them came to Belsen, although the British initially refused to give them DP status.[2]:30 In August 1946, the DP camp still housed more than 11,000 Jews.[4]:325 From then on, the British Army tried to prevent any more Jews from joining the DP camp.[1] A first Jewish camp committee was formed on 18 April 1945.[1] Democratic elections were held in September 1945.[10] The leader of the Jewish survivors, Josef Rosensaft became president of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone which represented not just the Belsen DPs but all Jewish DPs in the British zone.[4]:336–337 In September 1945 and July 1947 the first and second Congress of Liberated Jews in the British Zone took place in the former Wehrmacht officers\' mess at Belsen — in the building later known as The Roundhouse.[11] Under the stewardship of Rosensaft and Norbert Wollheim and Rafael Olewski, the Central Committee grew into an organization that lobbied the British on behalf of the DPs\' political, social, and cultural aims, including the right to emigrate to British-controlled Palestine.[1][4]:348 Many survivors supported a self-determined Jewish presence in Palestine, even though they had not been Zionists before the war.[10] Having lost their families, houses and possessions, they saw no future for themselves in Europe.[10] DPs demonstrated against the British policy and sent protest notes. International contacts were established, e.g. to the Zionist Congress at Basel or the United Jewish Appeal to gain support abroad.[4]:358–359 In October 1945, David Ben Gurion, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, visited the DP camp. The refugees maintained active opposition to British restrictions on Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine, and until early 1949 (i.e. well after the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948), British authorities did not allow free passage in or out of the camp.[1] Nevertheless, the Haganah managed to send in agents who held secret military training programmes on the camp grounds in December 1947.[1] Both sections of the camp, Polish and Jewish, were largely self-administrating. External security was provided by the British Army. In March 1946, the British transferred administration of the camp to the United Nations Relief and Rehalibitation Agency (UNRRA)[1] but remained responsible for security. The British (and later the UNRRA), supported by other organisations like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) or Jewish Relief Unit (JRU), supplied food, clothing and medicines.[4]:340 But the camp inhabitants otherwise ran their own affairs.[2]:32 The Jewish Committee established its own court and police force, whose tasks included maintaining public order and to fight black market activities.[4]:336–337 For their part, like the Poles, the Jewish refugees organised a vibrant community within the camp.[1] Schools were established within months of the liberation.[1] The DPs founded an elementary school as early as July 1945, and by 1948, 340 pupils attended the school.[1] A high school, which was staffed partly by soldiers from the Jewish Brigade (the Palestinian Jewish unit of the British Army) was established in December 1945.[1] There was a kindergarten, an orphanage, and a yeshiva (a religious school).[1] The Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT) vocational training schools organized occupational education.[1] By mid-1947 ORT had instructed around 1,500 people in training courses that mostly lasted six months.[4]:354–355 In 1947, a kibbutz had 2,760 members.[4]:328 Also like the Poles, many of the Jewish survivors were young adults and in the first two years after liberation there were almost 1,000 Jewish weddings. By the time the camp was dissolved, over 1,000 children had been born in it.[4]:328 A Yiddish theatre called Kazet had been founded in July 1945 by Sami Feder. It staged plays on the fate of the Jews in ghettos and concentration camps, written by himself, as well as older Yiddish plays from Eastern Europe.[4]:350–351 Kazet was in operation until the summer of 1947. In 1946, Abraham Sandman founded the Socialist-Zionist Jiddische Arbeiterbühne.[4]:350–351 A Zionist newspaper known as Unzer Sztyme (Yiddish for \"Our Voice\") was published by the DPs of Belsen and became the main Jewish newspaper in the British sector.[1] It was edited by Paul Trepman, David Rosenthal, and Rafael Olewski and had been published initially by the Jewish Committee in Celle and then by the Culture & History Committee of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone (headed by Olewski, Trepman, & Rosenthal).[4]:346–348 Dissolution of the DP camp Large numbers of DPs began leaving the camp in 1947 as opportunities for emigration improved.[10] Beginning in the spring of 1947, the British government allocated 300 certificates a month to Jews in the British occupation zone — these allowed legal emigration to Palestine.[2]:35 Between April 1947 and the founding of the State of Israel in May 1948 around 4,200 Jews from the British zone, most of them from Belsen, emigrated there legally.[4]:361 By March 1949, the population was down to 4,500.[4]:325 The DP camp at Belsen was closed in September 1950 [8] and the remaining 1,000 people transferred to Upjever near Wilhelmshaven.[2]:35 This camp in turn was closed in August 1951.[4]:364 The majority of former Belsen DPs emigrated to the State of Israel.[1] Many others went to the US (over 2,000) or Canada (close to 800), a minority decided to stay in Germany and helped to rebuild the Jewish communities there.[2]:35 - Bergen-Belsen (or Belsen) was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp,[1] in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an \"exchange camp\", where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas.[2] The camp was later expanded to accommodate Jews from other concentration camps. After 1945, the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945, almost 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there,[3] with up to 35,000 of them dying of typhus in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation.[4] The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division.[5] The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill,[4] and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied.[5] The horrors of the camp, documented on film and in pictures, made the name \"Belsen\" emblematic of Nazi crimes in general for public opinion in many countries in the immediate post-1945 period. Today, there is a memorial with an exhibition hall at the site.Operation Prisoner of war camp In 1935, the Wehrmacht began to build a large military complex close to the village of Belsen, a part of the town of Bergen, in what was then the Province of Hanover.[1] This became the largest military training area in Germany of the time and was used for armoured vehicle training.[1] The barracks were finished in 1937. The camp has been in continuous operation since then and is today known as Bergen-Hohne Training Area. It is used by the NATO armed forces. The workers who constructed the original buildings were housed in camps near Fallingbostel and Bergen, the latter being the so-called Bergen-Belsen Army Construction Camp.[1] Once the military complex was completed in 1938/39, the workers\' camp fell into disuse. However, after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Wehrmacht began using the huts as a prisoner of war (POW) camp. The camp of huts near Fallingbostel became known as Stalag XI-B and was to become one of the Wehrmacht \'s largest POW camps, holding up to 95,000 prisoners from various countries.[6] In June 1940, Belgian and French POWs were housed in the former Bergen-Belsen construction workers’ camp. This installation was significantly expanded from June 1941, once Germany prepared to invade the Soviet Union, becoming an independent camp known as Stalag XI-C (311). It was intended to hold up to 20,000 Soviet POWs and was one of three such camps in the area. The others were at Oerbke (Stalag XI-D (321)) and Wietzendorf (Stalag X-D (310)). By the end of March 1942, some 41,000 Soviet POWs had died in these three camps of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. By the end of the war, the total number of dead had increased to 50,000.[6] When the POW camp in Bergen ceased operation in early 1945, as the Wehrmacht handed it over to the SS, the cemetery contained over 19,500 dead Soviet prisoners. In the summer of 1943, Stalag XI-C (311) was dissolved and Bergen-Belsen became a branch camp of Stalag XI-B. It served as the hospital for all Soviet POWs in the region until January 1945. Other inmates/patients were Italian military internees from August 1944 and, following the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in October 1944, around 1,000 members of the Polish Home Army were imprisoned in a separate section of the POW camp.[6] Concentration camp In April 1943, a part of the Bergen-Belsen camp was taken over by the SS Economic-Administration Main Office (SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA). It thus became part of the concentration camp system, run by the SS Schutzstaffel but it was a special case.[7] Having initially been designated a Zivilinterniertenlager (\"civilian internment camp\"), in June 1943 it was redesignated Aufenthaltslager (\"holding camp\"), since the Geneva Conventions stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees.[8] This \"holding camp\" or \"exchange camp\" was for Jews who were intended to be exchanged for German civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency.[9] The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the \"Hungarian camp\", the \"special camp\" for Polish Jews, the \"neutrals camp\" for citizens of neutral countries and the \"Star camp\" for Dutch Jews). Between the summer of 1943 and December 1944 at least 14,600 Jews, including 2,750 children and minors were transported to the Bergen-Belsen \"holding\" or exchange camp.[10]:160 Inmates were made to work, many of them in the \"shoe commando\" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to the camp from all over Germany and occupied Europe. In general the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of Bergen-Belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value.[9] However, only around 2,560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany.[9] In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an Erholungslager (\"recovery camp\"),[11] where prisoners too sick to work were brought from other concentration camps. Supposedly, they were in Belsen to recover and then to return to their original camps, and to resume work. However, a large number of them actually died of disease, starvation, exhaustion and lack of medical attention.[12] In August 1944 a new section was created and this became the so-called \"women\'s camp\". By November 1944 this camp received around 9,000 women and young girls. Most of those who were able to work stayed only for a short while and were then sent on to other concentration camps or slave-labour camps. The first women interned there were Poles, arrested after the failed Warsaw Uprising. Others were Jewish women from Poland or Hungary, transferred from Auschwitz. Among those who never left Bergen-Belsen were Margot and Anne Frank, who died there in March 1945.[12] In December 1944 SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer, previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, became the new camp commandant, replacing SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas (de), who had been in post since the spring of 1943.[7] In January 1945, the SS took over the POW hospital and increased the size of Bergen-Belsen. As Eastern concentration camps were evacuated before the advance of the Red Army, at least 85,000 people were transported in cattle cars or marched to Bergen-Belsen.[13] Before that the number of prisoners at Belsen had been much smaller. In July 1944 there were just 7,300, by December 1944 the number had increased to 15,000 and by February 1945 it had risen to 22,000. However, it then soared to around 60,000 by April 15, 1945.[7] This overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease: particularly typhus, as well as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, dysentery and malnutrition in a camp originally designed to hold about 10,000 inmates. At this point also, the special status of the exchange prisoners no longer applied. All inmates were subject to starvation and epidemics.[13] Außenlager (satellite camps) Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had three satellite camps. These were located at regional armament works. Around 2,000 female concentration camp prisoners were forced to work there. Those who were too weak or sick to continue with their work were brought to Bergen-Belsen.[10]:204-205 Außenlager Bomlitz-Benefeld at Bomlitz near Fallingbostel was in use from 3 September to 15 October 1944. It was located at the facility of Eibia GmbH, a gunpowder works. Around 600 female Polish Jews were used for construction and production work.[10]:204 Außenlager Hambühren-Ovelgönne (Lager III, Waldeslust) at Hambühren south of Winsen was in use from 23 August 1944 to 4 February 1945. It was an abandoned potash mine, now intended as a underground production site for Bremen plane manufacturer Focke-Wulf. Around 400 prisoners, mostly female Polish or Hungarian Jews, were forced to prepare the facility and to help lay train tracks to it. This was done for the company Hochtief.[10]:204 Außenlager Unterlüß-Altensothrieth (Tannenberglager) east of Bergen was in use from late August 1944 to 13 April 1945. It was located at Unterlüß, where the Rheinmetall-Borsig AG had a large test site. Up to 900 female Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yugoslavian and Czech Jews had to clear forest, do construction work or work in munitions production.[10]:204 Prisoners were guarded by SS staff and received no wages for their work. The companies instead reimbursed the SS for the labour supplied. Wage taxes were also levied by local authorities.[10]:204-205 Treatment of prisoners and deaths in the camp Current estimates put the number of prisoners who passed through the concentration camp during its period of operation from 1943 to 1945 at around 120,000. Due to the destruction of the camp\'s files by the SS, not even half of them, around 55,000, are known by name.[10]:269 As mentioned above, treatment of prisoners by the SS varied between individual sections of the camp, with the inmates of the exchange camp generally being better treated than other prisoners, at least initially. However, in October 1943 the SS selected 1,800 men and women from the Sonderlager (\"special camp\"), Jews from Poland who held passports from Latin American countries. Since the governments of these nations mostly refused to honour the passports, these people had lost their value to the regime. Under the pretext of sending them to a fictitious \"Lager Bergau\", the SS had them transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were sent directly to the gas chambers and killed. In February and May 1944 another 350 prisoners from the \"special camp\" were sent to Auschwitz. Thus, out of the total of 14,600 prisoners in the exchange camp, at least 3,550 died: over 1,400 of them at Belsen, and around 2,150 at Auschwitz.[10]:187 In the Männerlager (the male section of the \"recovery camp\"), inmates suffered even more from lack of care, malnourishment, disease and mistreatment by the guards. Thousands of them died. In the summer of 1944, at least 200 men were killed by orders of the SS by being injected with phenol.[10]:196 There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, since the mass killings took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, current estimates put the number of deaths at Belsen at more than 50,000 Jews, Czechs, Poles, anti-Nazi Christians, homosexuals, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies).[7] Among them was Czech painter and writer Josef Čapek (estimated to be in April 1945). The rate with which inmates died at Belsen accelerated notably after the mass transport of prisoners from other camps began in December 1944. From 1943 to the end of 1944 around 3,100 died. From January to mid-April 1945 this rose to around 35,000. Another 14,000 died after liberation between April 15 and the end of June 1945 (see below).[10]:233 After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it), was \"of a privileged nature\", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in Thessaloniki against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen \"as a special favor\" granted by the Germans.[14] Liberation When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus. On April 11, 1945 Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsführer SS) agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, Wehrmacht representatives approached the British and were brought to VIII Corps. At around 1 a.m. on April 13, an agreement was signed, designating an area of 48 square kilometers (19 square miles) around the camp as a neutral zone. Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to \"uphold order inside the camp\". The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops. Due to heavy fighting near Winsen and Walle, the British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945.[10]:253 The first two to reach the camp were a British Special Air Service officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance.[15] When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and (including the satellite camps) around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival partially due to the allied bombing. In the period immediately preceding and following liberation, prisoners were dying at a rate of around 500 per day mostly from Typhus.[16] The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the BBC\'s Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied them: Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of the starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from the store houses.[10] The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of the others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these \"Kapos\" were killed on April 15, 1945.[18]:62 On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies.[10]:261 Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German Panzer army camp, which became the Bergen-Belsen DP (displaced persons) camp. Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved there. Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp\'s administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence.[13] The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves.[13] Some civil servants from Celle and Landkreis Celle were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep.[10]:262 Military photographers and cameramen of \"No. 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit\" documented the conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945 were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the Imperial War Museum. These documents had a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day.[13][10]:243 According to Habbo Knoch, head of the institution that runs the memorial today: \"Bergen-Belsen [...] became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule.\"[10]:9 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrowing \"Bren gun\" carriers and Churchill Crocodile tanks because of the typhus epidemic and louse infestation.[19] As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point, the name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp.[10]:265 In spite of massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier Glyn Hughes, Deputy Director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had succumbed (after liberation a total of 13,994 people died).[10]:305 Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with the feeding problem. The first, led by Dr A. P. Meiklejohn, included 96 medical student volunteers from London teaching hospitals[20] who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners.[21] A research team led by Dr Janet Vaughan was dispatched by the Medical Research Council to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes. The British troops and medical staff tried these diets to feed the prisoners, in this order:[22] Bully beef from Army rations. Most of the prisoners\' digestive systems were in too weak a state from long-term starvation to handle such food. Skimmed milk. The result was a bit better, but still far from acceptable. Bengal Famine Mixture. This is a rice-and-sugar-based mixture which had achieved good results after the Bengal famine of 1943, but it proved less suitable to Europeans than to Bengalis because of the differences in the food to which they were accustomed.[23] Adding the common ingredient paprika to the mixture made it more palatable to these people and recovery started. Some were too weak to even consume the Bengal Famine Mixture. Intravenous feeding was attempted but abandoned – SS Doctors had previously used injections to murder prisoners so some became hysterical at the sight of the intraveneous feeding equipment.[23] Aftermath Legal prosecution Main article: Belsen Trial Many of the former SS staff who survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British at the Belsen Trial. Over the period in which Bergen-Belsen operated as a concentration camp, at least 480 people had worked as guards or members of the commandant\'s staff, including around 45 women.[24] From September 17 to November 17, 1945, 45 of those were tried by a military tribunal in Lüneburg. They included former commandant Josef Kramer, 16 other SS male members, 16 female SS guards and 12 former kapos (one of whom became ill during the trial).[25] Among them were Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Hertha Ehlert, Ilse Lothe (de), Johanna Bormann and Fritz Klein. Many of the defendants were not just charged with crimes committed at Belsen but also earlier ones at Auschwitz. Their activities at other concentration camps such as Mittelbau Dora, Ravensbrück, Neuengamme, the Gross Rosen subcamps at Neusalz and Langenleuba, and the Mittelbau-Dora subcamp at Gross Werther were not subject of the trial. It was based on British military law and the charges were thus limited to war crimes.[25] Substantial media coverage of the trial provided the German and international public with detailed information on the mass killings at Belsen as well as on the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.[25] Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death.[25] They included Kramer, Volkenrath and Klein. The executions by hanging took place on December 13, 1945 in Hamelin.[25] Fourteen defendants were acquitted (one was excluded from the trial due to illness). Of the remaining 19, one was sentenced to life in prison but he was executed for another crime. Eighteen were sentenced to prison for periods of one to 15 years; however, most of these sentences were subsequently reduced significantly on appeals or pleas for clemency.[25] By June 1955, the last of those sentenced in the Belsen trial had been released.[18]:37 Nine other members of the Belsen personnel were tried by later military tribunals in 1946 and 1948.[25] Denazification courts were created by the Allies to try members of the SS and other Nazi organisations. Between 1947 and 1949 these courts initiated proceedings against at least 46 former SS staff at Belsen. Around half of these were discontinued, mostly because the defendants were considered to have been forced to join the SS.[18]:39 Those who were sentenced received prison terms of between four and 36 months or were fined. As the judges decided to count the time the defendants had spent in Allied internment towards the sentence, the terms were considered to have already been fully served.[26] Only one trial was ever held by a German court for crimes committed at Belsen, at Jena in 1949; the defendant was acquitted. More than 200 other SS members who were at Belsen have been known by name but never had to stand trial.[26] No Wehrmacht soldier was ever put on trial for crimes committed against the inmates of the POW camps at Bergen-Belsen and in the region around it,[24] despite the fact that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg had found in 1946 that the treatment of Soviet POWs by the Wehrmacht constituted a war crime.[18]:39 Memorial The area of the former Bergen-Belsen camp fell into neglect after the burning of the buildings and the closure of the nearby displaced persons\' camp in the summer of 1950. The area reverted to heath; few traces of the camp remained. However, as early as May 1945, the British had erected large signs at the former camp site. Ex-prisoners began to set up monuments.[27] A first wooden memorial was built by Jewish DPs in September 1945, followed by one made in stone, dedicated on the first anniversary of the liberation in 1946. On November 2, 1945, a large wooden cross was dedicated as a memorial to the murdered Polish prisoners. Also by the end of 1945 the Soviets had built a memorial at the entrance to the POW cemetery. A memorial to the Italian POWs followed in 1950, but was removed when the bodies were reinterred in a Hamburg cemetery The British military authorities ordered the construction of a permanent memorial in September 1945 after having been lambasted by the press for the desolate state of the camp.[18]:41 In the summer of 1946, a commission presented the design plan, which included the obelisk and memorial walls. The memorial was finally inaugurated in a large ceremony in November 1952, with the participation of Germany\'s president Theodor Heuss, who called on the Germans never to forget what had happened at Belsen.[18]:41 However, for a long time remembering Bergen-Belsen was not a political priority. Periods of attention were followed by long phases of official neglect. For much of the 1950s, Belsen \"was increasingly forgotten as a place of remembrance\".[27] Only after 1957, large groups of young people visited the place where Anne Frank had died. Then, after anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the Cologne synagogue over Christmas 1959, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer followed a suggestion by Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, and for the very first time visited the site of a former concentration camp. In a speech at the Bergen-Belsen memorial, Adenauer assured the Jews still living in Germany that they would have the same respect and security as everyone else.[18]:42 Afterwards, the German public saw the Belsen memorial as primarily a Jewish place of remembrance. Nevertheless, the memorial was redesigned in 1960–61. In 1966, a document centre was opened which offered a permanent exhibition on the persecution of the Jews, with a focus on events in the nearby Netherlands – where Anne Frank and her family had been arrested in 1944. This was complemented by an overview of the history of the Bergen-Belsen camp. This was the first ever permanent exhibit anywhere in Germany on the topic of Nazi crimes.[18]:42 However, there was still no scientific personnel at the site, with only a caretaker as permanent staff. Memorial events were only organized by the survivors themselves. In October 1979, the president of the European Parliament Simone Veil, herself a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, came to the memorial for a speech which focused on the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti. This was the first time that an official event in Germany acknowledged this aspect of the Nazi era.In 1985, international attention was focused on Bergen-Belsen when the camp was hastily included in Ronald Reagan\'s itinerary when he visited West Germany after a controversy about a visit to a cemetery where the interred included members of the Waffen SS (see Bitburg). Shortly before Reagan\'s visit on May 5, there had been a large memorial event on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the camp\'s liberation, which had been attended by German president Richard von Weizsäcker and chancellor Helmut Kohl.[18]:44 In the aftermath of these events, the parliament of Lower Saxony decided to expand the exhibition centre and to hire permanent scientific staff. In 1990, the permanent exhibition was replaced by a new version and a larger document building was opened. Only in 2000 did the Federal Government of Germany begin to financially support the memorial. Co-financed by the state of Lower Saxony, a complete redesign was planned which was intended to be more in line with contemporary thought on exhibition design.[28] On April 15, 2005, there was a ceremony, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation and many ex-prisoners and ex-liberating troops attended.[29][30] In October 2007, the redesigned memorial site was opened, including a large new Documentation Centre and permanent exhibition on the edge of the newly redefined camp, whose structure and layout can now be traced. Since 2009, the memorial has been receiving funding from the Federal government on an ongoing basis.[31] The site is open to the public and includes monuments to the dead, including a successor to the wooden cross of 1945, some individual memorial stones and a \"House of Silence\" for reflection. In addition to the Jewish, Polish and Dutch national memorials, a memorial to eight Turkish citizens who were killed at Belsen was dedicated in December 2012.[32] Personal accounts Bergen-Belsen ist seit 1945 ein internationaler Erinnerungsort. Mahnmale aus der Nachkriegszeit erinnern an die mehr als 70 000 Menschen, die hier zwischen 1941 und 1945 umkamen. Ausstellungen von 1966 und 1990 informierten über die Geschichte des Lagers Bergen-Belsen. Doch erst in den beiden vergangenen Jahrzehnten konnte die vielschichtige Geschichte dieses Ortes als Kriegsgefangenenlager, Konzentrationslager und Displaced Persons Camp detailliert untersucht werden. Die Ergebnisse werden seit 2007 in der Dauerausstellung des neu errichteten Dokumentationszentrums präsentiert. Die Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen ist heute ein Ort des Gedenkens, des Sammelns, Bewahrens und Forschens sowie ein Ort des Lernens und der Reflexion. Neben etwa 300 000 Einzelbesuchern werden jährlich über 1000 Gruppen durch mehrstündige Führungen, durch Studientage und im Rahmen von Projekten betreut. Trägerin der Gedenkstätte ist die 2004 gegründete Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten. Als Erinnerungsort von nationaler und internationaler Bedeutung wurde die Gedenkstätte im Jahre 2009 in die institutionelle Förderung des Bundes aufgenommen. Bergen-Belsen has been a site of international remembrance since 1945. Monuments from the post-war period commemorate the over 70,000 people who died here between 1941 and 1945. Exhibitions set up in 1966 and 1990 outlined the history of Bergen-Belsen, but only in the past two decades has detailed research been carried out into the multi-faceted history of this site as a POW camp, concentration camp and displaced persons camp. The results of this research can be seen in the permanent exhibition that opened in the new Documentation Centre in 2007. Today the Bergen-Belsen Memorial is a place of remembrance, a place where historical research is carried out and historical knowledge is collected and preserved, and it is a place of learning and reflection. Every year, about 300,000 people visit the Memorial and more than 1,000 groups take part in guided tours, study days and projects here. The Bergen-Belsen Memorial is managed by the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation which was founded in 2004. As a commemorative site of national and international importance, the Memorial has received regular funding from the German Federal Government since 2009. German military authorities established the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1940, in a location south of the small towns of Bergen and Belsen, about 11 miles north of Celle, Germany. Until 1943, Bergen-Belsen was exclusively a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp. In April 1943 the SS Economic-Administration Main Office (SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA) which administered the concentration camp system, took over a portion of Bergen-Belsen and converted it first into a civilian residence camp and, later, into a concentration camp. Thus, while the German government placed the Bergen-Belsen camp complex within the concentration camp system, the WVHA initially gave it a special designation. The Bergen-Belsen camp complex was composed of numerous camps, established at various times during its existence. There were three main components of the camp complex: the POW camp, the \"residence camp\" (Aufenthaltslager), and the \"prisoners\' camp\" (Häftlingslager). The prisoner-of-war camp functioned as such from 1940 until January of 1945. The \"residence camp\" was in operation from April 1943 until April 1945, and was composed of four subcamps: the \"special camp\" (Sonderlager), the \"neutrals camp\" (Neutralenlager), the \"star camp\" (Sternlager), and the \"Hungarian camp\" (Ungarnlager). The \"prisoners\' camp,\" also in operation from April 1943 until April 1945, consisted of the initial \"prisoner\'s camp,\" the \"recuperation camp\" (Erholungslager), the \"tent camp\" (Zeltlager), the \"small women\'s camp\" (Kleines Frauenlager), and the \"large women\'s camp\" (Grosses Frauenlager). Over the course of its existence, the Bergen-Belsen camp complex held Jews, POWs, political prisoners, Roma (Gypsies), \"asocials,\" criminals, Jehovah\'s Witnesses, and homosexuals. As Allied and Soviet forces advanced into Germany in late 1944 and early 1945, Bergen-Belsen became a collection camp for thousands of Jewish prisoners evacuated from camps closer to the front. The arrival of thousands of new prisoners, many of them survivors of forced evacuations on foot, overwhelmed the meager resources of the camp. With an increasing number of transports of female prisoners, the SS dissolved the northern portion of the camp complex, which was still in use as a POW camp, and established the so-called \"large women\'s camp\" (Grosses Frauenlager) in its place in January 1945. This camp housed women evacuated from Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Ravensbrück, Neuengamme, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald concentration camps, as well as various subcamps and labor camps. At the end of July 1944 there were around 7,300 prisoners interned in the Bergen-Belsen camp complex. At the beginning of December 1944, this number had increased to around 15,000, and in February 1945 the number of prisoners was 22,000. As prisoners evacuated from the east continued to arrive, the camp population soared to over 60,000 by April 15, 1945. From late 1944, food rations throughout Bergen-Belsen continued to shrink. By early 1945, prisoners would sometimes go without food for days; fresh water was also in short supply. Sanitation was incredibly inadequate, with few latrines and water faucets for the tens of thousands of prisoners interned in Bergen-Belsen at this time. Overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and the lack of adequate food, water, and shelter led to an outbreak of diseases such as typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and dysentery, causing an ever increasing number of deaths. In the first few months of 1945, tens of thousands of prisoners died. On April 15, 1945, British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen. The British found around sixty thousand prisoners in the camp, most of them seriously ill. Thousands of corpses lay unburied on the camp grounds. Between May 1943 and April 15, 1945, between 36,400 and 37,600 prisoners died in Bergen-Belsen. More than 13,000 former prisoners, too ill to recover, died after liberation. After evacuating Bergen-Belsen, British forces burned down the whole camp to prevent the spread of typhus. During its existence, approximately 50,000 persons died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp complex including Anne Frank and her sister Margot, both of whom died in the camp in March 1945. Most of the victims were Jews. After liberation, British occupation authorities established a displaced persons camp that housed more than 12,000 survivors. It was located in a German military school barracks near the original concentration camp site, and functioned until 1951. SS PERSONNEL SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas became the first commandant of the Bergen-Belsen camp in the spring of 1943; SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer replaced him in December 1944. The number of SS functionaries in Bergen-Belsen varied over the course of the camp\'s existence. The SS succeeded in destroying many of the camp\'s files, including those on personnel. POSTWAR TRIALS In autumn of 1945 a British Military Tribunal in Lüneburg tried 48 members of the Bergen-Belsen staff, including 37 SS personnel and eleven prisoner functionaries. tribunal sentenced eleven of the defendants to death, including camp commandant Josef Kramer. Nineteen other defendants were convicted and sentenced to prison terms; the tribunal acquitted fourteen. On December 12, 1945, British military authorities executed Kramer and his co-defendants.