What Happened In Bergen-Belsen?

755 Words4 Pages
Bergen-Belsen The United States has had many horrifying accident that ended up costing millions of deaths, but never like the tragic deaths that happened in Bergen-Belsen. Northwest of Celle, in between the villages of Bergen and Belsen established in 1940, Bergen-Belsen was one of the worst concentration camps in history. It was originally a detention camp, where Jews were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The prisoners of this concentration camp experienced such dreadful conditions in the camp, including the most primitive sanitary conditions, starvation rations, and virtual lack of medical care contributed to the enormously high mortally rates. Bergen-Belsen was divided into 8…show more content…
On April 15, 1945, British troops entered Bergen Belsen. They liberated some 60,000 prisoners, many of whom were close to death. During the first weeks after liberation, close to 500 people in Bergen Belsen died every day by starvation and Typhus. From liberation day until June 20, an estimated 14,000 people died from the terrible conditions that had been inflicted on them by the Nazis during the war. Between April 18 and April 28, the dead were buried. At first the SS guards were made to collect and bury the bodies, but eventually the British had to resort to bulldozers to push the thousands of bodies into mass graves because they were too many. After evacuating Bergen-Belsen, British forces burned down the whole camp to prevent the spread of typhus. Judy Rosenzweig prisoner of Bergen Belsen describes the liberation: "All of a sudden out of the blue sky we saw tanks rolling into the camp…We had no idea what kind of tanks they were. Is it the Americans? Is it the Germans? Is it…We just didn't know. We just suddenly panicked…And loudspeakers started speaking loudly in German and in English: 'You are liberated.' 'We are the English Army - You are

More about What Happened In Bergen-Belsen?

Open Document