Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp located in a heathland area of Lower Saxony, Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner-of-war camp in 1940, it became a concentration camp in 1943 and gained particular notoriety for the catastrophic overcrowding and disease epidemics that killed tens of thousands of prisoners in the final months of the war, including the diarist Anne Frank. The site is today preserved as the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, one of Germany’s most significant places of Holocaust remembrance.
At a glance
- Type
- Nazi concentration camp · Memorial site · Documentation centre
- Period
- POW camp from 1940; concentration camp 1943–1945; memorial site post-1945
- Style
- Open heathland memorial; mass graves marked by earthen mounds; modern documentation centre
- Location
- Bergen-Belsen, Lower Saxony, Germany
- Coordinates
- 52.7591° N, 9.9072° E
Overview
Bergen-Belsen was established as a prisoner-of-war camp in 1940, initially holding Soviet and other Allied prisoners under conditions of extreme deprivation. In April 1943 a section was converted into a concentration camp, used initially as an “exchange camp” where Jewish prisoners were held as bargaining chips for German nationals abroad. By late 1944, as camps in the east were evacuated ahead of the Soviet advance, Bergen-Belsen received tens of thousands of additional prisoners, leading to catastrophic overcrowding, starvation, and epidemic typhus that killed approximately 50,000 people before and after liberation.
History
British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945, discovering approximately 60,000 surviving prisoners in conditions of extreme suffering along with some 13,000 unburied corpses. The liberation was filmed and photographed extensively, providing some of the most widely seen documentary evidence of Nazi atrocities. Anne Frank and her sister Margot died at Bergen-Belsen in February or March 1945, just weeks before liberation. The former camp area was designated a memorial site in 1945, and a major documentation centre opened in 2007, presenting the history of the camp and the stories of individual victims.
What you see
The memorial site covers the area of the former camp, which was deliberately burned by British forces after liberation to prevent the spread of typhus — no barracks structures survive. Large earthen mounds mark the mass graves where tens of thousands of victims are buried, each inscribed with the approximate number of people interred. Commemorative monuments, including a Jewish memorial obelisk (1946) and a British military monument, stand among the heathland. The documentation centre contains permanent exhibitions tracing the history of the camp and individual testimonies.
Cultural significance
Bergen-Belsen is one of the most recognised Holocaust memorial sites in the world, its name inseparable from the story of Anne Frank and from the photographic record of British liberation that shaped post-war European consciousness. It remains a central site for international Holocaust commemoration and historical education, visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year including school groups, survivors’ descendants, and state delegations.
Practical information
- Address
- Anne-Frank-Platz 1, 29303 Bergen, Lower Saxony, Germany
- Opening hours
- Open year-round; documentation centre closed on Mondays; check the official memorial website for current hours
- Admission
- Free
Getting there
The memorial is located approximately 60 km northeast of Hannover. By car, take the A7 motorway towards Hamburg and exit at Soltau-Süd, then follow signs towards Bergen. Public transport options are limited; from Celle or Hannover, a combination of train and local bus services reaches Bergen, from where the memorial is approximately 2 km. Organised tours depart from Hannover and Celle.