Utter chaos and scenes of horror greeted the British and Canadian soldiers who walked into the hell that was Bergen–Belsen. Soldiers were now face-to-face with 60,000 prisoners who were in various states of starvation and illness—many of whom, surrounded by thousands of corpses, were in the final throes of death themselves[1]. Eight hundred died on the day of liberation, and 14,000 more would die in the weeks to follow, the camp deliberately burned to the ground by the British to combat the spread of disease.
Today, we assume that we know all about the World War II concentration camp system devised by the Nazis in their quest to eliminate their enemies and kill the Jews. In reality, they had existed long before the war broke out, the first ones opening in Germany (namely Dachau and others) at the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933. The SS, Hitler’s early ‘protection squadron’ selected for unquestioning obedience, fanatical loyalty, and commitment to racial purity, evolved into a complex organization with many branches and was specifically charged with the administration of the camps. Political dissidents, ‘criminals,’ and ‘asocials’ were among the first to be incarcerated, but as time went on, the number of camps grew, and their purposes were sinisterly modified. By 1943 the plan to eliminate the Jews was operating at full swing—in tandem with an unprecedented scale of slave labor as prisoners were worked to death as a matter of state policy—although, in point of fact, the total annihilation of the Jews would take precedence, to the irrational extent of committing economic resources to the task as the war was being lost.
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, was the man most responsible for carrying out the policy of the elimination of the Jews. On Hitler’s behalf he commanded the orchestration of the ‘Final Solution’ from Berlin, overseeing the deployment of mass murder shooting squads on the eastern frontier, the construction of the concentration camps, and the ‘resettlement’ of the deported. As time went on and the war progressed, the new masters of Europe imposed their will and retooled the system to suit their twisted agenda. According to the British commentators after the Belsen Trials, concentration camp objectives fell into several categories: Extermination, Slave Labor, Sick, Experimental, and Training.[2] In the East, the names of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka would become synonymous with mass murder on an industrial scale. Ravensbrück was a women’s camp providing slave labor to the nearby Siemens Company plants, and it was also a training center for female SS guards. The vast Auschwitz complex included three main camps and facilities for mass murder, a major slave labor complex, and horrible pseudo-scientific experiments on human guinea pigs.
Belsen, on the other hand, was somewhat different both in its origins and its evolution in the framework of abomination. In its span as a prisoner-of-war and later a concentration camp, up to 120,000 men, women, and children had been imprisoned here; most of them today remain anonymous, as the SS destroyed the records as the Allies closed in. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, captured Russian soldiers began arriving here, (then known as Stalag XI C); in the winter of 1941–1942, 14,000 Soviet prisoners of war, allowed nothing more than holes dug into the frozen ground for shelter, died of starvation and exposure to the elements.
As fortunes in the East began to turn with the reversals of the German offensives at Stalingrad and elsewhere, Himmler was not above considering alternative methods of survival for the Nazi regime, to buy time, as it were, until Germany could get on its feet again and continue full throttle with its policy of eliminating the Jews. Perhaps on a purely economic level, the exchange of some Jews deemed valuable could give the Reich ‘breathing space’ for this purpose.[3] In April 1943, an exchange camp under SS administration was opened at Bergen–Belsen, holding Jews from occupied Europe who held certificates or papers that may have made them useful for exchanging for Germans interned abroad, or for hard currency, or for reserve bargaining purposes. While these prisoners, many of them families (or more accurately, fragments of families), were not compelled to undertake forced labor or wear prison uniforms, miserable conditions and rations deteriorated rapidly with the transfer of brutal SS administrative staff from Auschwitz to Belsen in the beginning of 1945. In addition to the exchange camp, in March of 1944 Belsen had also been designated as a sick or ‘recovery’ hospital camp for inmates from other slave labor facilities who were not deemed quite ready to be worked to death as labor pools throughout the Reich shrank. It was a fact that most of these prisoners would never recover.
In late November, a new commandant was assigned to the camp. Ever since his arrival from Auschwitz on December 1, 1944, Josef Kramer affected a depraved indifference, encouraging his kapos to mete out vicious beatings and carry out endless roll calls, forcing weak prisoners to stand for hours at a time in the most extreme weather conditions.
Kramer brought with him to Bergen–Belsen many of the leadership characteristics that marked his development as a career SS man in the concentration camp system. Dubbed ‘The Beast of Belsen’ and portrayed as a hulking gorilla-like animal at his trial by the British press, the reality was probably much more unimaginative, even banal. He joined the SS in 1932 not because of any diehard fanatical Nazi conviction, but because he needed a job. He rose through the ranks by carrying out orders without the slightest moral or ethical qualm. At the Auschwitz killing center, he had no problem carrying out his orders. At his trial, he admitted forcing some of the victims into the gas chambers himself. At the time, it was stated of him,
‘His type was that of the perfectly obedient underling with no scruples of any kind. If 500 men were ordered for execution at 0900 hours, they would be there to the minute and to the man, not a man too few nor a minute late. But this efficiency and the acts to which it led him sprang from his desire to keep a safe, comfortable job, rather than from any deep-rooted Nazi conviction. In the dock, at least, his appearance was not that of a brute though his features were coarse and his figure short and broad; and he seemed to derive considerable amusement both from the gorilla caricatures and from some of the more imaginative stories about him which appeared in the newspapers at the time of the trial. It was incongruous to observe such evidences of human emotion in a man guilty of crimes as inhuman as his.’[4]
At Belsen, he was generally given free rein from Berlin. Survivors consistently remember the roll call counts, or ‘appell.’ Reveille was generally very early in the morning, and no one was exempt—even the very ill were dragged out and forced to stand, sometimes for hours, in the cold and dark. If one moved, or collapsed, one suffered the consequences.
Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft, a Jewish dental surgeon from Poland, had observed Kramer’s SS underlings at work in Auschwitz before being selected to work in the hospital at Bergen–Belsen. At the Belsen Trial conducted by British authorities in the fall of 1945, which ran for 54 days, ‘Ada’ was one of the principal witnesses, and confronted her tormentors with her testimony.[*]
Ada Bimko
The treatment was so that it is hard to describe, blows were raining down and then at roll call we had to stand about for hours and hours in snow, in rain, in heat, or in cold. On its own, the standing about exhausted us entirely. If anybody moved during roll call, then the whole block to which we belonged had to stand for hours and sometimes kneel down, even with their arms raised high. If somebody came too late to roll call, the whole camp had to stand on parade for many hours and he, the culprit, was beaten so badly that he sometimes died from it. In the hospital I saw a number of people with wounds on their hands and legs, but particularly frequently on their heads, coming from blows. I left Auschwitz and arrived in Belsen on November 23, 1944, and Kramer arrived in the first days of December 1944.
Eleven-year-old Sara Gottdiener, from Hungary, could not forget.
Sara Gottdiener Atzmon
At the end of November it was very cold in Europe. Finally I was given some rags and one black ladies’ shoe with a high heel and one red girls’ shoe. Imagine the agony of a young girl having to walk
unevenly like that for half a year.
In those shoes I marched into Bergen–Belsen concentration camp on December 2, 1944. In those shoes my legs froze while I was enduring roll calls, which lasted between two to five hours.
Some of the SS staff that accompanied Kramer from Auschwitz also stood trial with him.[*] The prosecutors continued.
Ada Bimko
Q. What were the conditions at Belsen when you first arrived?—The conditions were bad, but the internees there were not beaten and there were no roll calls. In the morning there was either coffee or soup, for midday meal about half a pint of soup, and in the evening one-sixth of a loaf of bread, three times a week. The other three times, instead of bread, soup again. This ration does not kill instantly, but if you lived on these rations for a long period under those conditions, you must inevitably die. At the end of January and in February other SS men and women arrived from Auschwitz.
Was there any change after Kramer and the others arrived?—Yes. We had suddenly the feeling that Belsen was going to become a second Auschwitz. For instance, they started with roll calls, appell, and those SS men who previously did not hit the prisoners started now to do so. I remember when Russian prisoners were working in the women's camp erecting a hut. Four of them were so weak that when they carried a wall, the side of this hut, they had to bend down very low to be able to do so. Kramer came and started shouting at them, ‘Quicker, quicker,’ but these people were unable to work quicker. Then he went to the Russians and kicked them. I worked in the hospital at Belsen and many prisoners were admitted suffering from beating. Some of them could be attended to at once and their wounds bandaged, but some of them were in such a state that they had to remain in the hospital.
What was the medical supply situation?—We received very small quantities. We had 2,200 patients in the hospital, and apart from that, 15,000 sick women in camp. For a whole week we received only 300 aspirin tablets.
One of the accused you recognized this morning was the man at the far end of the front row of the dock [Karl Franzioh]. What can you tell us about that man?—He was in charge of the kitchen in the women's camp. Near the kitchen there was a room where potatoes were peeled, and there a young woman internee was bending down to take a few peelings of these potatoes which were lying about when suddenly this man jumped out of the kitchen with his gun in his hand and shot her twice. I was only a few yards away from the spot, and approached the wounded woman, and very soon, I had to state that she was dead. [5]
Another prisoner, twenty-nine-year-old Sophia Litwinska of Poland, testified.
Sophia Litwinska
I left Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944, and, after being at other camps, reached Belsen approximately three months before the liberation by British troops. [They] put me to work in Kitchen No. 2 in the men's camp for a few days, after which I was transferred to Kitchen No. 1 where there were two SS men, one Aufseherin, a supervisor, and a Jewish kapo with the Christian name Hilde.
[On one occasion shortly before liberation] the man in charge of the kitchen told us he was going to lock up for an hour or two. All the SS men had a meeting, and we waited in front of the kitchen. Near the kitchen there were remains of vegetables, and one or another of the prisoners tried to get a potato or two. At that moment the SS men returned and started shooting, and many of the prisoners were killed.
Ilse Forster was in charge of Kitchen No. 1. A girl took a potato and she saw it and took her into the kitchen. There she started beating her so severely that the poor girl could not help herself and defecated. I could not look longer and ran out of the kitchen. She dragged the girl out of the kitchen and continued to beat her until her very death. She beat her until she was dead, and when she died, she still kicked her with her feet. Then, she returned to the kitchen and laughed hysterically. We went out later and saw the girl, and two men came and dragged her away, whether to the crematorium or to be buried elsewhere, I do not know. I saw shooting at Belsen every day.
Dr. Fritz Leo was a German doctor who had been imprisoned since 1935. He arrived at Bergen–Belsen on February 7, 1945, and described what he saw.
Fritz Leo
We had a number of patients with bullet wounds, every week three or four at least. Only the smaller wounds could be treated. There were people who tried out of despair to go through the barbed wire and were shot at, and also those who approached the kitchens and tried to get a potato or a turnip. I have seen a great number of people who were shot dead or wounded by the guards.
With the coming of February 1945, events careened out of control. As the Third Reich reeled from the pressure of the advancing Allies in the East and West, tens of thousands of camp prisoners were on the move, with many of them destined for Bergen–Belsen. Bergen–Belsen was, as one author has put it, ‘the terminus, the last station of the Holocaust.’[6] Prisoner access to water became extremely limited. Typhus, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis were now rampant, and the crematorium broke down.
The doctor continued his testimony.
Fritz Leo
Q. What was the position with regard to typhus?—Typhus was rampant in Men's Compound No. 1 early in January and in No. 2 early in February. It was spreading very strongly through lice, and against lice we had absolutely nothing, neither water, clean clothes, bathing facilities, or delousing powder, so from the end of February, typhus was spreading like fire through the whole camp and consequently nearly everybody in our camp got it.[*]
What was the position with regard to water supplies in the camp?—We could get water from some tanks sometimes for two or three hours a day, but then, for whole days, no water at all was available. In No. 2 compound, there were no facilities at all for bathing. Some of the doctors and nurses had the possibility of having a bath. Our compound got no fresh clothing or underclothing at all, although supplies were available in the stores.
What was the position with regard to latrines in the camp?—The situation was a real catastrophe. We had a few latrines which were soon blocked, and, in spite of all our efforts, we could not get them cleared. The people were too weak to build new ones. These weak and dying people simply defecated wherever they stood or wherever they lay about. They were too weak to move and so the whole camp became very soon almost a latrine itself.
What happened to people who died in the camp?—The first week, they lay about for days and slowly were dragged away and put in the crematorium where they were burned, but soon the crematorium was not big enough to cope with them, and then, they started to put up bonfires. They put the corpses into high piles to burn them wherever they were. Later, wood became so scarce that those high piles could not be dealt with in that way, as we heard that the Administration of Forestry prohibited the use of wood for that purpose, and consequently the bodies simply lay where they were. As every day the number of people who died was over a thousand, the result was that every day several thousand bodies were lying about in the camp in a terrific state, green and swollen through the heat, some of them stinking. Later, they were put in a stone block, and only before the liberation by the British troops did the SS start digging big graves for these people.
What was the food in the camp like?—About half a liter of turnip soup per man per day in the beginning; about 300 grams of bread were issued; later, however, less, and in the last few weeks no bread at all.
Under no circumstances were those rations sufficient to preserve life. Even those who came in in a fit and healthy state lost their strength after a few weeks, and those who came in a weakened state died in a few days or weeks.
Jean Weinstock had arrived in Bergen–Belsen with a Polish group in the summer of 1943, the first group of ‘exchange’ Jews.
Jean Weinstock Lazinger
We went to Bergen–Belsen in July 1943. And we were the first civilians in that camp. We used to get a slice of bread and coffee in the morning. And we used to get this turnip soup. Sometimes we used to get spinach soup with white worms on top. And there were a couple doctors there, they s
aid, ‘You better eat it, because it’s protein.’ But I was unable to do that.
They separated the men from the women, but we were able to see each other through the day. After 5:00 the men had to be in their barracks and the women had to be in the women’s barracks. We had bunk beds… but, as they were bringing other people from different [places], our camp got smaller and smaller. We were divided by the wires and we were able to speak to the people on the other side, and I remember exactly when the train came from Holland. There was hunger, there was cold, then they brought the Hungarian Jewish people… it was right in the next barrack from us, we had a hard time because they spoke a different language than us, but some people spoke German, so we were able to communicate a little bit.
Istvan Berenyi, or Stephen ‘Berenyi’ Barry, arrived at Belsen, single and without family, in early December 1944 from Hungary, destined for the Hungarian camp recently vacated by a transport of exchange Jews going to Switzerland.[7] In a 2009 interview, he related the horror of Belsen, especially the infamous nearby Block 10.
Steve Barry
I have exact dates and I will tell you why. I spent my twentieth birthday on a train going to Bergen–Belsen, and it was December 7, 1944. So I know exactly the dates.
[My friends and I] were totally, totally green. We really did not understand what was happening to the Jews, what was happening in Poland. It was [pauses, chuckles] ‘an enigma wrapped in a mystery,’ if I may use Mr. Churchill, because we knew that things were bad, but we did not realize that we were going to be systematically murdered.
A Train Near Magdeburg Page 2
