Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen
KZ Bergen-Belsen
Берген-Бельзен (концентрационный лагерь)
ברגן-בלזן
Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen was a complex was composed of numerous camps, but there were three main components of the camp complex:
* POW camp
* Aufenthaltslager, the residence camp
* Häftlingslager, the prisoners' camp

The Aufenthaltslager housed several thousand Jewish prisoners in four subcamps, supposedly, for exchange for German nationals held by the Western Allies.
The Germans hoped such exchanges would facilitate a diplomatic channel to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies, but few Jewish prisoners were exchanged, and by July, 1944, over 4,000 of the Austauschjuden were interned in Bergen-Belsen.

In April, 1943, the SS established the Häftlingslager, to house more than 500 prisoners, virtually all non-Jews, who came from Natzweiler-Struthof, Buchenwald, and Niederhagen concentration camps to construct the Aufenthaltslager.
In February, 1944; the SS closed the Häftlingslager, and transferred the few surviving prisoners to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

In July, 1943, the first transport of Jewish prisoners arrived in the Sonderlager, which housed 2,300 to 2,500 Jews transported from Poland.

From August 1943 to March 1945., the SS internted several hundred Jewish citizens, mainly Sephardic Jews rounded up Greece, of neutral countries, mainly Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Turkey, in the Neutralenlager.
In February, 1944, the SS authorities released 365 of these prisoners, transporting them to the Spanish border.

In September, 1943, the SS established the Sternlager, which housed 4,000 Jewish prisoners, mostly the Netherlands via the Westerbork, but the SS also interned Jews from other countries, such as France, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Morocco, and Tunisia, in the Sternlager as well.
The SS intended to exchange these prisoners for German nationals interned by the Allies.

In October, 1943, the SS and German police transported 1,800 prisoners in the Sonderlager, who were told they were being sen, temporarily, to a transit camp called Bergau, from where they would continue on to Switzerland in exchanged for German POWs. to Auschwitz to be killed.
On October 23, 1943, at Auschwitz, the Jews were told that they were to be disinfected before crossing the Swiss border.
In February, 1944, SS and German police transported a further 200 prisoners, and in May, 1944, they transported another 147 prisoners, to Auschwitz.

In June, 1944, the Germans exchanged 222 Sternlager prisoners, who had ties to Palestine, to leave for Palestine in exchange for German citizens held on British territory.
At the end of January, 1945, a German-American exchange allowed 136 Jews with Central and South American papers to go to Switzerland.

On June 30, 1944, the Kasztner Transport, carrying 1,685 persons, left Budapest.
The train was re-routed by the Germans to Bergen-Belsen, where the passengers languished for four months. awaiting negotiations between rescue activists and the Nazis.

In July, 1944, the SS established a Ungarnlager, for more than 1,600 Hungarian Jews, whom Heinrich Himmler planned to exchange for money and goods.
Between August, 1944 and December, 1944, the SS permitted more than 1,600 of these Hungarian Jews to enter Switzerland in return for cash payment.
In December, 1944, 4,200 Hungarian Jews arrived in the Ungarnlager, and remained there until their evacuation in April, 1945.

On August 21, 1944, the first 318 Jews were released from Bergen-Belsen, and transported to Schweiz.

On December 7, 1944, the second group of the Kasztner Transport from Bergen-Belsen, consisting of 1,368 Jews, arrived in Schweiz.

In December, 1944, the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt officially re-designated Bergen-Belsen a concentration camp.
Between April 6-11, 1945, shortly before British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen, the SS and German police evacuated the remaining prisoners from all four subcamps of the Aufenthaltslager to Theresienstadt.

On April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division, after American and British forces crossed the Rhine River, reached Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.
As they approached the camp, some French women burst into a rendition of la Marseillaise.
The British found 58,000 prisoners (mostly Jewish) and 13,000 corpses unburied.
At the Sabbath service, surviving Jewish inmates sang an emotional rendition of Hatikvah התקווה.
Over the following weeks, 10,000 succumbed to typhus.

After evacuating Bergen-Belsen, British forces burned down the camp to prevent the spread of typhus.
A DP (Displaced Persons’) Camp, become the largest such camp in Germany, was established near the site.