Bergen-Belsen 1945 (part 5: the SS)

Continuation of Part 4.

References and Part 1: here.

*

For the SS, a distinction is necessary between Wachmannschaften (guards) and Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungspersonal (supply and administration personnel). Female SS members were mostly of the latter kind [K, p.177]. 

Also note that by 1945 many were included in the SS without having chosen so. In December 1944 the Austrian prisoner Ella Lingens-Reiner travelled for five days with eighteen S.S. men from Auschwitz to Dachau, and wrote: among those eighteen S.S. men there were exactly three genuine Nazis [L, p.160]. She also describes the case of a girl of a good family who had applied for "supervision of foreign workers" and was surprised to end up as an SS wardress [L, p.185]. At Belsen, most of the female SS members were recently conscripted civilians of low standards. The civil firms were compelled to deliver a certain number of women [K, p.176-177] and, understandably, did not send the best of their personnel.

In the agreement it had been clearly stipulated that any SS guards remaining in the camp would become Prisoners of War. What would happen to the other SS personnel, once their duties under British command performed, was not. The camp commander, camp doctor, administration and supply personnel had stayed, and the female SS members had even voluntarily returned in the camp. One might argue that Wardresses were "guards" and that the female SS would immediately become Prisoners of War — at least those who were wardresses. This did not happen, and no distinction was made between them and the others; all were disarmed and imprisoned as soon as they were no longer considered useful for the administration of the camp. No doubt, the worst they had feared was to be Prisoners of War under the Geneva convention. In fact, all without exception (including cooks and the like) were very brutally treated.

Quotations from [T]

The whole lot were locked in the cells, just outside the concentration camp proper, much to the delight of the inmates. The men were later set to work carting the corpses from the camp to the big pit – the women joined them later helping with this job.  They were given the same ration at the internees had had prior to our entry. (p.5)

 During the first night one committed suicide and 2 more attempted but failed to do so.  The following day 2 tried to run away but were immediately shot. (p.5)

Comments. 

a. There is no proof that the Germans deliberately chose to starve their Belsen prisoners, but the British did exactly that, adding forced labour and brutal beatings.

b. In the following weeks some 20 SS people died, some from sepsis (induced by ptomaine), the major part from spotted fever, which they probably contracted handling the corpses. [Kolb 169] 

 

BU 4259:
British troops have to keep the women internees back 
from attacking the S.S. men

(Actually, the women seem more amused than threatening, probably enjoying the insults being shouted.)

Quotations from [M,A].

(a) "the women guards". [Note: this terminology is debatable, see introduction above.]

We saw the women guards first. A British sergeant threw open the cell door and some twenty women wearing dirty gray skirts and tunics were sitting and lying on the floor. “Get up,” the sergeant roared in English. 

They got up and stood to attention in a semi-circle round the room and we looked at them. Thin ones, fat ones, scraggy ones and muscular ones; all of them ugly and one or two of them distinctly cretinous. I pointed out one, a big woman with bright golden hair and a bright pink complexion. 

“She was Kramer’s girl friend,” [Irma Grese, see photograph below, where the couple is displayed as some sort of curiosity.] the sergeant growled. “Nice lot, aren’t they?” 

There was another woman in a second room with almost delicate features, but she had the same set staring look in her eyes. The atmosphere of the reformatory school and the prison was inescapable. 

(b) "the SS guards" [Note: this terminology is definitely not correct; the SS guards had long left the camp.]

As we approached the cells of the SS guards the sergeant’s language became ferocious. 

“We have had an interrogation this morning,” the captain said. “I’m afraid they are not a pretty sight.” 

“Who does the interrogation?” 

“A Frenchman. I believe he was sent up here specially from the French underground to do the job.” 

The sergeant unbolted the first door and flung it back with a crack like thunder. He strode into the cell jabbing a metal spike in front of him. “Get up,” he shouted. “Get up; get up, you dirty bastards.” 

There were half a dozen men lying or half-lying on the floor. One or two were able to pull themselves erect at once. The man nearest me, his shirt and face spattered with blood, made two attempts before he got on to his knees and then gradually on to his feet. He stood with his arms half stretched out in front of him trembling violently. 

“Get up,” shouted the sergeant. They were all on their feet now, but supporting themselves against the wall. “Get away from that wall.” 

They pushed themselves out into space and stood there swaying. Unlike the women they looked not at us but vacantly in front, staring at nothing. 

Same thing in the next cell and the next, where the men, who were bleeding and very dirty, were moaning something in German. 

(c) "the doctor" [Note: Klein had been the responsible camp doctor for three days only.]

“You had better see the doctor,” the captain said. “He’s a nice specimen. He invented some of the tortures here. He had one trick of injecting creosote and petrol into the prisoners’ veins. He used to go round the huts and say: ‘Too many people in here. Far too many.’ Then he used to loose off his revolver round the hut. The doctor has just finished his interrogation.” 

The doctor had a cell to himself. 

“Come on. Get up,” the sergeant shouted. The man was lying in his blood on the floor, a massive figure with a heavy head and a bedraggled beard. He placed his two arms on to the seat of a wooden chair, gave himself a heave and got half-upright. One more heave and he was on his feet. He flung wide his arms towards us. 

“Why don’t you kill me?” he whispered. “Why don’t you kill me? I can’t stand any more.” 

The same phrases dribbled out of his lips over and over again. 

“He’s been saying that all morning, the dirty bastard,” the sergeant said. 

(d) forced labour.

We came on a group of German guards flinging bodies into a pit about a hundred feet square. They brought the bodies up in hand-carts, and as they were flung into the grave a British soldier kept a tally of the numbers. When the total reached five hundred a bulldozer driven by another soldier came up and started nudging the earth into the grave. 

(e) Kramer.

“But how did you come to accept a job like this?” he [Kramer] was asked. 

The reply: “There was no question of my accepting it. I was ordered. I am an officer in the SS and I obey orders. These people were criminals and I was serving my Führer in a crisis by commanding this camp. I tried to get medicines and food for the prisoners and I failed. I was swamped. I may have been hated, but I was doing my duty.” 

Quotations from [M,L pp. 93-94] 

The British soldiers who took over Belsen had no time to inquire into the background of the S.S. men and women who had remained behind. They had no time to inquire how Belsen itself had come about. They looked around, and what they saw made them mad with rage. They beat the S.S. guards and set them to collecting the bodies of the dead, keeping them always at the double; back and forth they went all day long, always running, men and women alike, from the death pile to the death pit, with the stringy remains of their victims over their shoulders. When one of them dropped to the ground with exhaustion, he was beaten with a rifle-butt. When another stopped for a break, she was kicked until she ran again, or prodded with a bayonet, to the accompaniment of lewd shouts and laughs.   

It made one pensive to see British soldiers beating and kicking men and women, even under such provocation. These S.S. guards were a brutalised and inhuman lot, and yet when you talked to their victims it seemed that they were, in many cases, by far the best of the lot; the worst had decamped while they still had time, and would probably never be caught.

After a few days, observers and investigators moved into Belsen and some of the facts about it began to emerge. The victims were questioned, and it became apparent that the camp had been a collecting point for sick men and women from other concentration camps in other parts of Germany. Its camp staff had been brutal enough, but not nearly so cruel as at other camps in Germany; and, until the Russian push, it had coped well enough with its dead and dying. Then trainload after trainload of diseased German and Allied prisoners began to pour into the camp. Thousands began to die every day; there was not enough food to feed them; and the crematoria could not handle the enormous number of bodies. It was then, with no isolation wards possible, with dead lying all over the camp awaiting burial, that the situation got so completely out of hand that Kramer and his staff no longer tried to handle it. 

Eventually, 17 SS men and 16 SS women, 33 of those who had remained in the camp under British command, would be tried in Lüneburg, September 1945. Those who had left in time were not. [Kolb, p. 176]

BU 9745:
Irma Grese and Josef Kramer together in the prisoners' yard.
Of the whole lot to be tried, these two will rank as the worst. (8 August 1945)

Final note. "Bergen-Belsen" with its unbearable images is a standard reference to the inhumane nazi regime. Many may have come to regard it as typical of the criminal German killing machinery. Yet, the Bergen-Belsen of 1945 was anything but typical, and it was by design the opposite of an extermination camp. It had collapsed and ceased to function as a result of external factors caused by the war. 

* * *

 

Bergen-Belsen 1945 (part 4: the truce)

Continuation of Part 3.

References and Part 1: here.

*

For a full timeline, see https://www.belsen.co.uk/diary-of-events/. The main persons involved in the events are the following.

British 

• Victor FitzGeorge-Balfour, temporary brigadier, General Staff of 8th Corps, see [T, Appendix A] signed by him. More information here.
• Richard (Dick) Taylor, Lieutenant-Colonel, commander of 63rd Anti Tank Regiment Royal Artillery, taking command over the Bergen-Belsen area.

Wehrmacht 

• Erhard Grosan, Oberst=Colonel, commander of Tank Training School
• Karl Harries, Oberst=Colonel, commander of Bergen-Belsen barracks 
• Hanns Schmidt, Oberst=Colonel, second-in-command

SS 

• Josef Kramer, Hauptsturmführer=Captain, commander of Bergen-Belsen since December 1944
• Fritz Klein, Hauptsturmführer=Captain, doctor in Bergen-Belsen since January 1945 and responsible camp doctor for only three days
• Franz Hössler, Hauptsturmführer=Captain, second-in-command, commander of Bergen-Belsen Camp 2.

BU 4068:
Lt. Col. Taylor, M.C. and the German Commander go over the final details of the transfer.
 (17 April 1945)

The English text of the truce agreement as given in [T]:

Appendix B: 

a copy of the agreement concluded between representatives 

of the Allied and German Armies

on 12 April 1945.

1.  On instructions from the Reichsführer SS [=Himmler], the military commander at BERGEN approached the Allied forces, 12 April, with regard to the concentration camp at BELSEN.

2.  The following area will be regarded as neutral: 475635 – 450640 – 448690 – 460705 – 490705 – 495675. [Note: an area of 6 by 8 kilometres. — C.I.]

3.  Both British and German troups will make every effort to avoid a battle in this area, and, as far as operations make it humanly possible, no artillery or other fire (including bombing and strafing) will be directed into this area. Equally, neither side will use this area for the deployment of troups or weapons.  This paragraph is subject to overriding military necessity.

 4.  The German military authorities will erect notices and white flags at all the road entrances to this area as far as possible.  These notices will bear, in English and German, on one side “Danger – Typhus” on the other “End of Typhus Area.”  A disarmed post will be mounted by the Germans at each notice board.

 5.  Hungarian and German troups at present employed on guard duties will remain armed and at their posts. All such troups will wear a white arm-band on their left sleeve.

 6.  The Hungarians will remain indefinitely and will be placed at the disposal of the British forces for such duties as may be required. The German Wehrmacht personnel will be released within not more than 6 days and conveyed back to the German lines with their arms and equipment and vehicles at the end of the period.

 7.  SS Guard personnel will be removed by 1200 hrs 13 April, any remaining will be treated as Prisoners of War.  SS administrative personnel will (if the Wehrmacht can prevent them running away) remain at their posts and carry on with their duties (cooking, supplies, etc.) and will hand over records. When their services can be dispensed with, their disposal is left by the Wehrmacht to the British authorities.

 8.  The Wehrmacht will continue to man the telephone exchange until it can be relieved. Wires leading out of the Camp will require disconnecting.

A German version of the truce document, with a (not contemporary and not official) English translation is given here: 

The handwritten annotation says the document was signed by Harries, Schmidt (difficult to decypher though), Grosan, Taylor and (Fitzgeorge-)Balfour. 

Comments.

a. It is often claimed that Oberst Harries was executed afterwards for having surrendered the camp. In fact, he ended as a prisoner of war and died in 1978. (Read it here.)

b. Many around the globe, following [K, p.162], mention a "Brigadier Taylor-Balfour" as the British Chief of Staff signing the agreement, but there is no such person. Apparently, Taylor and FitzGeorge-Balfour have been merged into one. 

c. The English and the German texts are not in perfect agreement. Thus in point 7 the German text stipulates that the S.S. Supply and Administration personnel and the camp Doctor will carry out their duties until relieved, but the English text does not mention the camp doctor. As a matter of fact, the camp doctor left, leaving his subordinate Fritz Klein, who stayed, in charge.

As a result of "the" agreement the SS guards left. The 40 female SS members also left but Kramer recalled them, and 22 of them did return the next day [K, p.177]. The guards were replaced with Wehrmacht and Hungarian troops under British command. On 15 April 1945 the British took possession of the camp alongside them. The Hungarians shot rioting and looting inmates, and the British fired shots over the heads in an attempt to keep order. Several Kapo’s were beaten to death by former prisoners in Camp 2. 

On 17 April 1945 all remaining SS personnel was disarmed and arrested [T, p.5], and on 20 April 1945 German non-SS military personnel was escorted back to the German lines. Taylor and Harries signed a certificate to the effect that the agreement had been carried out to the best of the ability of both sides [T, p.5].

BU 4067:

The Wehrmacht of the camp leaving to em-bus for their journey. (17 April 1945.)

Note. From Taylor's report we know that the Germans troops left on 20 April, which means that the date of the event given by IWM is wrong.

The whole infected area was then demarcated with typhus warnings.

and eventually, the whole camp was burnt down as a sanitary measure.

*

Continued and concluded in Part 5

Bergen-Belsen 1945 (part 3: images)

Continuation of Part 2.

References and Part 1: here.

*

Note. Viewing images and films of Bergen-Belsen one should be aware of the fact that prisoners who had poured in recently were in much better condition than those who had been there longer. (Read [S] for instance.) The starving and dying were simply unable to cheer at the wire when the British entered. 

The captions are those of IWM.

FLM 3762:
Women inmates of the German concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen
 wave through the wire to liberating British soldiers.
(First image in an unedited footage by Mike Lewis) 

Third scene in the footage by Mike Lewis.

BU 4013:
Women queueing up for food (17 April 1945)

These women are in the main road of the camp, near the "Shoe Mountain", consisting of shoes brought to the camp from all over Germany. Many inmates of the Star Camp worked in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from these. Herzberg, who worked there, provides us with some details. (Pages refer to [H5], translation is ours.)

The Ältestenrat negociated and organised the "commandos": Cleaning the camp, Care for the younger etc. (...) The Shoe Commando had a long working day, but no hard work. Outside service was a lot harder. (p.99)

What is the work we have to do? Mainly ripping apart old shoes and cutting out the usable pieces of leather. It is indescribably imbecile work, and —understably— very dirty. (p.96)

The shoes have to be carried from a tent nearby to the workplaces, while material and waste have to be removed. (p.97)

The Polish women in the tent camp next to ours change more than once, and whenever this happens, the Jews have to clean up the stable. By this I mean an old ragged tent, immediately next to our camp, initially meant as depository for old shoes we had to cut to pieces. (p.88)

The Germans required for the "shoes" 190 women. (...) In the "shoes" work goes on now during fourteen hours per day, i.e. till half past seven in the evening. (p.190 and 192)

There is no more wood for the kitchens, let alone coal. Burning is now done with old shoe soles. This causes the food to arrive hours late or not at all. Today we have nothing but a spoon of rutabaga soup. Perhaps a little piece of bread. Initially we were to get half a ration, but "thanks" to 1200 dead prisoners, so they say, we get a full ration. (2 April 1945, p.231)

The lay-out by Kolb (see Part 2) shows the "Shoe tent" and "working places" near the Star Camp, but not the Shoe Mountain. The liberated prisoners continued to use shoe soles as fuel, see photograph below. (The caption provided by IWM is misleading; these are not "the boots of the dead".)

BU 3810:
The boots of the dead are piled up and used for fuel (17/18 April 1945).

BU 4274:
Women of the camp collect bread ration (21 April 1945)

BU 4538:
A small group of children happy and smiling,
and at long last able to enjoy life (26 April 1945)

*

Continued in Part 4.

Bergen-Belsen 1945 (part 2: the situation)

References and Part 1: here.

*

Bergen and Belsen are two different villages, a few kilometers apart, in the Lüneburger Heath, on the border of a vast training area for tanks. The Panzer Training School had its barracks near Bergen, and was run by the regular army (Wehrmacht). In Belsen a concentration camp had grown, run by the SS under commandant Josef Kramer. Due to overcrowding, part of the army barracks at Bergen had also been turned into a prisoners' camp, called Camp 2 to distinguish it from the primary Camp 1.

The villages of Bergen and Belsen. Red is part of the Panzer training area.
(Bianca Roitsch, Mehr als Zaungäste, 2018, p. 189)

As of April 1945, the situation in Camp 1 was becoming catastrophic. British war correspondent Moorehead summarises how this had come about. 

A friend of mine, a trained intelligence officer and interrogator in the British army, went into the whole question very carefully with Kramer, and this was Kramer’s statement: 

“I was swamped. The camp was not really inefficient before you crossed the Rhine. There was running water, regular meals of a kind—I had to accept what food I was given for the camps, and distributed it the best way I could. But then they suddenly began to send me train-loads of new prisoners from all over Germany. It was impossible to cope with them. I appealed for more staff, more food. I was told this was impossible; I had to carry on with what I had. Then as a last straws the Allies bombed the electric plant which pumped our water. Cart-loads of food were unable to reach the camp because of the Allied fighters. Then things got really out of hand. In the last six weeks I have been helpless. I did not even have sufficient staff to bury the dead, let alone segregate the sick.” [M,A p.269]

His colleague Mosley writes more or less the same (read it in Part 5), ending with

The situation got so completely out of hand that Kramer and his staff no longer tried to handle it. [M,L p.94]

Eventually, Himmler himself decided to call in the British, and he had the local army commanders negotiate a truce to that purpose. 

BU 3624:
TYPHUS CAMP HOLDS UP WAR (etc.)

On 12 April 1945 two Wehrmacht officers approached British army lines under a white flag, and were led to the headquarters of British 8th Corps. There, the Germans informed the British of the situation and after some negotiating an agreement was signed. (More about it in Part 4.) The next day brigadier FitzGeorge-Balfour of the General Staff of 8th Corps sent a first report to the superior echelon [T, appendix A]. The information therein deals with Bergen-Belsen as a whole, i.e., Camp 1 + Camp 2, though both differed considerably. Here are some excerpts of the report.

13 Apr 45

 

1.  In the general area of BELSEN (...) there is a Concentration Camp containing approximately 60,000 prisoners. These prisoners are partly political and partly criminal.  They are accommodated in two camps:-

Camp ONE (...) is enclosed with barbed wire.

Camp TWO (...) is an ordinary unfenced hutted camp. (...)

 

3.  Disease has for some time been a considerable problem but the loss of the electricity (...)  and consequently lack of adequate water has led to a serious outbreak.  There are at present 9,000 sick:-

Typhus exantematious   1,500

Normal Typhus             900

Tuberculosis                  500

Gastric Enteritis             a very large number

 

4.  It is essential that this area should be kept as free of our troups as possible and that persons at present in the concentration camp should be kept there till adequate arrangements can be made to sort them out – both from the point of view of preventing the spread of disease and preventing criminals breaking out.

 

10.  The supply situation is as follows:-

(c) The prisoners have food for about 4 days but there is NO bread.

Medical stores are very short. (...)

(sgd) V. FITZGEORGE-BALFOUR

Comments. 

•  The criminal prisoners ("green triangles") were in Camp 2 [read about it here and here], and the "sick" mainly in Camp 1 [C, p.814]. Collis, the senior medical officer, entered the camp on 17 April.  

• The number of "sick" given by the Germans is some 25% of the inmates of Camp 1 which, according to [C, p.814], housed approximately 22000 females and 18000 males. The situation must have been greatly different between subcamps, being terrible in some sections and less so elsewhere.  

• The 4 days' provision of food is surprising given the overall state of starvation. Food consisted mainly of raw turnips and swedes, because the kitchens had been out of fuel for several weeks, and had to burn shoe soles instead [H5 p.231, situation on 2 April].

Two days after this first report, the British took over the camp, and Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor made a first inspection of Camp 1 on 15 April 1945. (In the layout below, translation is ours.)

Layout of Camp 1 in April 1945 [K, p.344]

Taylor's report registers the total collapse resulting from overcrowding, the lack of fuel and of water:

There was a concrete pit near the first cookhouse we visited, with a few inches of dirty water in the bottom – this was the only water supply that was seen. [T, p.3]

It was quite impossible for all the internees to enter the hut allotted to them at the same time, a large proportion were therefore living in the open. [T, p.3]

This [the crematorium] consisted of a single furnace which owing to shortage of coal had not been used for some weeks. Nearby was a covered-in grave. [T, p.4]

 

He also provides a glimpse of the Dantesque conditions in Belsen-the-Horror-Camp:

As we walked down the main roadway of the camp we were cheered by the internees, and for the first time we saw their condition. A great number of them were little more than living skeletons, with haggard yellowish faces. [T, p.3] 

There were men and women lying in heaps on both sides of the track.  Others were walking slowly and aimlessly about – a vacant expression on their starved faces.  [T, p.3]

in the women's camp 2 large piles of naked corpses and an uncovered pit some distance further on. [T, p.4]

He notes 

There was no sanitation of any sort in the camp, not even trenches for use as latrines [T, p.4]

but he may have been mistaken here. Kolb's layout (above) shows 4 locations with latrines, and Collis does mention sanitation pits:

Sanitation is non-existent. Pits, with, in only a few instances, wooden perch rails are available in totally inadequate numbers, but the majority of inmates, from starvation, apathy, and weakness defecate and urinate where they sit or lie, even inside the living huts. [C, p.814]

Speaking of Camp 1, Collis has also this to say:

Riddled with typhus and tuberculosis. (...) Approximately 3,000 naked and emaciated corpses in various stages of decomposition are lying about this camp. (...) Actually the state of affairs was worse than described above: for instance, when the corpses were more accurately counted the figure was nearer 8,000 to 10,000 than 3,000. (...) For a week they had had almost no water. (...) Death came chiefly through starvation, typhus, tuberculosis, and dysentery: 500 a day were dying from disease. [C, p.814]

* 

Continued in part 3.

 

 

Bergen-Belsen 1945 (part 1: two witnesses)

References (for all posts on this subject)

[C] W.R.F. Collis, Belsen Camp: a preliminary report, British Medical Journal, June 9, 1945, pp. 813-816 (here).

[H4] Abel J. Herzberg, Amor Fati, 1946. (Relevant chapter, in English, here).

[H5] Abel Herzberg, Tweestromenland, 1950 (Dutch, here).

[K] Eberhard Kolb, Bergen-Belsen, 1962. (Relevant chapter, in German, here.) 

[L] Ella Lingens-Reiner, Prisoners of Fear, 1948 (here.)

[M,A] Alan Moorehead, Eclipse, 1945 (Relevant chapter here.)

[M,L] Leonard Mosley, Report from Germany, 1945 (here).

[S] Z.L. Smith (pseudonym), Buchenwald, Dachau, Belsen etc., 1945. (Relevant chapter, in Dutch, here.)

[T] R.I.G. Taylor, Report on Belsen Camp, 1945, including Appendices A, B, C  (here.)

Photographs and movie reels are available in Imperial War Museums (search for "Belsen, liberation").

* * *

Introduction

Advance of British 8th Corps in April 1945

Days before the end of WW2  three German armies surrendered in Lüneburg (see map above). Some three weeks earlier, the British had gained control of Bergen-Belsen, a huge prisoner camp, situated near the fork in the route of 8th Corps. This occurred in very strange circumstances. Below are two accounts by inmates of the camp.

Account I 

The "Star Camp" was one of the six subcamps of the Belsen complex, and was designed for Jews thought to be valuable enough to be traded with the outside world. Here, families were not separated, and people lived in their civilian clothes; on the other hand, they were set to work, unlike the other inmates.

Abel Herzberg and his family, inmates of this "Star Camp", were evacuated a week before the British would take over the camp. They left on a beautiful Sunday, while a large jazz orchestra sat merrily playing behind the barbed wire, looking healthy and clean in freshly laundered blue-striped prison uniform. (Note that these are not in the Star Camp.) Herzberg wrote an account of his life, in Dutch, in 1946. We quote from the English translation [H4]. 

On 8 April 1945, five or six empty trains, each some fifty wagons long, were standing in the station of the small town of Belsen on Lüneburg Heath. (...)

The sick were to be taken to the station in lorries. The healthy had to walk. However, the distinction between healthy or sick was no longer very clear. A scramble that became ever more desperate ensued. The evacuation took more than a day. The strongest, the boldest, secured a place. The weak, the hesitant, arrived too late. They had to go on foot. There was little or no food. During the past few weeks, there had been no bread, or so little, that no one could remember it. Instead, we had been issued with a few raw swedes and now and then, at irregular intervals, a container of swede soup arrived which on rare occasions was thickened with a little flour that would immediately send us into a state of ecstasy then. (...)

Evacuation means fighting, shouting, punching, quarrelling, pushing, and securing a place for oneself. For children it means crying and wailing, for mothers snapping, for the sick shivering with fever, and for everyone, being herded, beaten, and afraid. We, who must walk, carry our luggage on our backs. We left behind as much as possible, but everyone still has a pair of trousers, a shirt, a pair of socks, usually inherited from a dead person in the camp, and a book that he does not want to part with under any circumstance. It is all in the rucksack. He has also gathered as many swedes and carrots as he could, because he realises that there will be nothing to eat. He also does not part with a dish or a pan, a mug, a spoon, or a knife. Of course, he also has his blankets to lug along, as many as possible, and a pillow. Altogether, it is terribly heavy and in his present condition, almost too heavy to hump. Nevertheless, all this is called being bevorzugt: The other prisoners are not troubled by luggage. They have nothing. Some amongst us are also without anything. They were robbed. Onwards! Where to? They are clearing the camp. The archives are being taken to the crematorium by the cartload, to stoke the fire to burn the corpses. The British are advancing. 

By the side of the road at the end of the camp, behind barbed wire, a large orchestra, composed of Kapos, is playing jazz. It is Sunday. They look healthy and clean in freshly laundered blue-striped prison uniform. They play superbly. We stop for a moment to listen. When the piece has ended, we applaud, just like on the dance floor of a Parisian casino. The conductor bows obligingly, the drummer smiles, and the saxophonists tap the moisture from their instruments. Then a new piece commences, with a sentimental singer, whose crooning follows us. (...)

We meet endless convoys of prisoners who are being brought to Bergen-Belsen from the east. (...)

The prisoners have their orchestras. In the middle of the group they carry violins, cellos, basses, drums, timpani, trumpets, bassoons, flutes, copper horns, in short, every imaginable kind of instrument. The group consists of Mussulmen; those are the worn-out creatures on their final journey. They walk in rows of five, often with linked arms. If they were to let go of each other, they would topple over. The strongest march in front, then the weaker, then the still weaker, then the still much weaker, and stumbling along at the very end, are those who can go no farther. (...)

The train is the last train to carry Jews or prisoners from west to east. Hundreds of them went that way. When we arrive, it is already overcrowded. It was to carry two thousand four hundred people in all. Of these two thousand four hundred people, two thousand four hundred have dysentery. Additionally, we have seven hundred people who are sick with typhus, paratyphoid, rickettsia, camp-typhus, spotted fever, and similar diseases. Oedema cases are not included. It is crawling with lice. All this is about to set out on a journey together, around the world. The sick are lying partly in separate wagons, partly elsewhere on the floor. People fight for a place on the floor in the corridors. There is no water, not one drop. (...) 

Eventually, after a long journey, the train and all its people would be abandoned to the Russians.

 

Account II

In 1945 a Flemish inmate of Bergen-Belsen also left us an account in Dutch of the last days of the camp. The man, using the pseudonym "Z.L. Smith", has not been identified. He was a political prisoner, and must have arrived in Bergen-Belsen, coming from a different camp, around the time Herzberg left there. Their columns may have crossed each other, moving in opposing directions. Translation is ours; for the Dutch original, see [S].

To me it looks to be a very, very big camp. How many people are here I could not tell up to ten thousand: it's simply full. We are being divided into left and right without any order or rule. No one asks "where are you from? what are you doing, what can you do?"; no one tells us anything. With some ten men we have been pushed into an overfilled hut. No possibility for a corner of a bed, or a blanket or a little chair: simply nothing. We keep our mess tin and our spoon as if tied to our bodies, because in a camp it is not recommended to use a stranger's mess tin, we have seen enough.

We are hungry, but what does it matter, we have been hungry for ten months. I guess I lost forty kilo: on my chest the ribs lye as rails in a shunting spot in some station, and my thighs are exactly the width of my lower legs; I feel my neck has grown very long, and my belly is somewhat swollen. Even so, I feel fine. I watch with great pity the many men in my new hut: what misery! They all look like children with some old people's disease, their faces are like mummies; many are in bed and don't have enough power left to get upright; those in the lower bunks can occasionally rise, but when their place is taken they don't have the power to climb into the second or third level. (...) 

Those who do have some power left stand or walk outside and pass by all that misery with total indifference. The only thing they talk about is "liberation". The most insane gossip circulates here: the English have already crossed the Elbe, Hitler is dead, Keitel has capitulated, no... there is a revolt in the army. Hamburg is in revolutionary hands. The SS will shoot all the prisoners; we will be poisoned... Of all this something must be true however, because we notice how the SS, supplemented with old used Volkssturm men, flock nervously together and have agitated conversations.

Every day dozens of corpses are removed from each hut, of people having died that night or the day before. Is it some contagious disease? There is rumour of typhus and spotted fever. I cautiously keep clear of any hut, and go snooping around. In the yard packages of bones and skeletons are being stacked as if it were logs, the oven has ceased to function; probably out of fuel and, anyhow, what could a few ovens do in view of such numbers of corpses. Are they one hundred, one thousand? I don't even start to count them. A huge pit has been dug at the far side. This is terrible: I didn't know I was still able to shudder, but... I start sweating in horror: can this be possible? In front of me there are hundreds of corpses of men, women, almost children, as if poured from a huge handcart. Wouldn't there be any living among them? Half rotten, swollen, bloody and pale, blue and in excrements, everybody naked, in one hideous heap. More are poured in continuously... a sea of contamination...; a disgusting vision of demonic corruption...

For three days I have been living among that dead putrefaction. Here hunger attains its climax: sometimes we receive a spoonful of soup and a piece of bread; there is no supply here for that many thousands of people. Each day more remain inside because their legs are no longer strong enough to get outside: they are condemned, because there is nobody to bring them food, let alone to care for them. The prisoner-doctors do what they can, they run the whole day long to attend some of the dying, but to what avail? Food and medicaments are totally lacking. Here it is "help yourself, so help you God". Everyone tries to save his own life.

Friday 13 April 1945. It won't be long now: in the distance we already hear cannon firing and, sweating anxiously, we listen how rapidly they get closer. The SS men don't look angry: they stand their guard and don't care for anything. The Lagerschütze seem to be converted into common political prisoners, and even they don't have cigarettes or food left. It really is the end... will we live to see it? I am still strong, I can walk around in the camp, I still can climb into the uppermost bed, where I lay all by myself because the others can no longer make it. I slept a lot, this being the best thing to do in order to shorten the waiting...

Saturday 14 April 1945. Saturday a large part of the SS guards has disappeared, thousands of planes circle in the air and pursue the Germans rushing away... they flee... he who sits down is taken prisoner... he who runs on will be taken tomorrow... Only a few SS men stayed behind to guard us... Are we still dangerous? O yes, if we got loose of the camp, probably the whole region would be contaminated with typhus and dysentery.

During the night I lay listening hopefully, artillery is heard to approach... If only they could arrive this very night... What shall I tell the English? I collect all the words I have been taught previously... No, I don't manage to construct a single sentence and then, will I get the opportunity to talk to them? When will I be home? (...) Will I be able to go by train? And what direction to take? Let there be may trains, because thousands and thousands of prisoners will want to go home... and the workers that are still in Germany will want to go home too... Can I go home in this outfit? what will people say? (...) But what if the SS really wanted to poison us or shoot us in our beds while we are asleep... In a rush I jumped to the ground and waited between the beds. It was dark and in the pale light I saw phantoms moving slowly about...

Sunday 15 April 1945. I was relieved when it grew lighter... there was no morning call. I already heard machine guns firing, and a heavier shot now and then. The SS guards stood in small groups with their rifles hanging from the shoulders... I counted twenty-two of them and about a dozen some distance away. What if they were afraid and willing to shoot back?

The morning was spent in waiting... An English tank rolled by, two, three... the men did not even look at us, and just drove on... The SS men had withdrawn behind a hut and returned... nothing more...

And the day was drawing to a close. Were we liberated now? or what?

A British tank at the gate of Bergen-Belsen camp on 15 April 1945

 

Monday 16 April 1945. The next day a few jeeps accompanied by motorcycles entered the camp: I wanted to yell but I couldn't; like all the others I just stood there gazing with a silly smile on my face. One of the men simply said: "German rule has ended... we will care for food and everything that is needed." Not a cigarette, not a piece of bread, nothing... and half an hour later they had disappeared again. The SS men continued to guard us. (...) We were taken back to the SS baracks where we met again with our old friends: several green triangles lied there murdered. [This is in Camp 2. "Green triangles" were common-law criminals serving their prison sentences in Belsen.]

There were already English there, as well as a few Belgians serving in the English military. A Belgian officer from Antwerp gave each of the Belgians two cigars which we immediately lighted as Rotschilds... Slowly more and better food came... We came to life again... We would go home. And it went fast. The French were the first to leave, some thousand of them, and we Belgians, with Luxemburgers end Dutch, also some thousand, followed. We were loaded into large trucks and left for the West... home.

To the inmates the situation was utterly incomprehensible: Were we liberated now? or what? Shots were heard, but British tanks and jeeps entered the camp without actual fighting, only to leave it again under German custody. For an explanation, read the subsequent posts. 

*

Continued in Part 2.