RARE WWII PERIOD PHOTO BERGEN BELSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP

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RARE WWII PERIOD PHOTO BERGEN BELSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP Description: RARE WORLD WAR II GENUINE 1945 PHOTOGRAPH OF BERGEN BELSEN NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP IN GERMANY, SHOWING A VIEW OF THE CAMP FROM ONE OF THE GUARD POSTS A rare genuine British Official War Office photograph from April 1945. The photograph shows a view of the notorious Bergen Belsen Nazi concentration camp from one of the guard posts. Size approx. 7.5in x 9.5in (19cm x 25cm). A generally good bright impression of this scarce image which has one small closed nick to lower margin and some surface creasing which has been partially mounted onto an album leaf. Extremely low starting price and sold with NO RESERVE!! Bergen-Belsen (or Belsen) was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Between 1943 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 people died t, up to 35,000 of them dying of typhus in the first few months of 1945. Bergen-Belsen was first set up in 1940 as the prisoner of war camp Stalag XI-C (named Stalag XI-C/311 for 600 Belgian and French POW's). Between this time and the spring of 1942, about 18,000 Soviet soldiers died of hunger, cold and disease. In 1942, Bergen-Belsen became a concentration camp and was placed under SS command in April 1943. Initially it was designated Aufenthaltslager ("detention camp") to hold several thousand Jews intended to be sent overseas in exchange for German civilians who were interned. In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an Erholungslager ("recovery camp"), w prisoners too sick to work were brought from other camps. In August 1944, a shipment of approximately 8,000 female prisoners of various nationalities arrived from Auschwitz, most of whom were sent to Arbeitskommandos to work in factories. December 1944 saw the completion of the change-over of Bergen-Belsen into a concentration camp when SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer, previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, became the new camp commander. The number of inmates in the camp on December 1, 1944, was 15,257. In 1945, large numbers of prisoners were moved to Belsen from the eastern camps as the Soviet forces advanced. The resulting overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease (particularly typhus) and malnutrition in a camp originally designed to hold about 10,000 inmates. The number of inmates increased from 22,000 on February 1, 1945, to 41,520 on March 1, 43,042 on April 1 and ultimately to about 60,000 on April 15. The number of deaths increased from 7,000 in February to 18,168 during March and 9,000 during the first half of April. The bodies of these prisoners were buried in mass graves. T were no gas chambers in Bergen-Belsen, since the mass executions took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, an estimated 50,000 Jews, Czechs, Poles, anti-Nazi Christians, homosexuals, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) died in the camp. Among them were Czech painter and writer Josef Capek (est. April 1945), as well as Amsterdam residents Anne Frank (who died of typhus) and her sister Margot, who died t in March 1945. The average life expectancy of an inmate was nine months. After the war, t were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it), was "of a privileged nature", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in Thessaloniki against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen "as a special favour" granted by the Germans. The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945 by the British 11th Armoured Division. Sixty thousand prisoners were found inside, most of them seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lay around the camp unburied. The scenes that greeted British troops were famously described by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby who accompanied them :- " over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emacia... read more

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