Last Saturday afternoon I was able to finally visit the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp located just outside of Celle, Germany. I've been trying to go there for months, but getting there without a car is really difficult. My neighbor and friend from church Ute had an American exchange student staying with her for 10 days, so she took both of us. The camp was originally a prisoner of war camp, but was later transformed into a concentration camp in 1943. Between 1943 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 Russian prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there. The camp was found and liberated by the British Army in April 1945. While there were no gas chambers here, the camp was just as deadly as others due to disease. Probably the most famous thing about Bergen Belsen is that this is where Anne Frank and her sister Margot died of typhus.
When you visit the camp, there is hardly anything left, since the British burned the disease infested barracks. There are only mounds where the mass graves were dug with signs explaining how many unidentified bodies are buried there.
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| map of the camp as it was in 1945 |
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| Grave Mound |
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| Jewish Memorial |
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| Anne & Margot Frank |
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| view of the camp and memorial |
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| "Here rest an unknown number of dead" |
Last Saturday afternoon I was able to finally visit the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp located just outside of Celle, Germany. I've been trying to go there for months, but getting there without a car is really difficult. My neighbor and friend from church Ute had an American exchange student staying with her for 10 days, so she took both of us. The camp was originally a prisoner of war camp, but was later transformed into a concentration camp in 1943. Between 1943 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 Russian prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there. The camp was found and liberated by the British Army in April 1945. While there were no gas chambers here, the camp was just as deadly as others due to disease. Probably the most famous thing about Bergen Belsen is that this is where Anne Frank and her sister Margot died of typhus.
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