Description: Bergen-Belsen, A History From 1935
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In its 10 year existence under National Socialist control Bergen-Belsen was used to house construction workers, Prisoners of War, exchange prisoners and finally evacuees from Concentration Camps across Europe. Approximately 70000 of the prisoners interned there died, mainly through neglect of the administration, their graphic images unleashed upon the world when the British Army liberated the camp on 15 April 1945.
Unlike other camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald etc there is very little remaining of the original structures, most of them either burnt to the ground in May 1945 or destroyed/sold off in the early 1950's. Any visitor to the Gedenkstätte therefore has to rely upon their own imagination and interpretation of available information in order to picture the camp and events in their mind.
With the introduction of the internet many information sources for Bergen-Belsen have sprung up, many of which provide a valuable contribution although there are some that provide inaccurate and often twisted versions of events, in turn affecting visitors preconceptions. The Gedenkstätte itself has gone a long way to address this issue opening a new and much improved Documentation Centre in late October 2007.