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First Bergen-Belsen was a POW camp. About 18000 Soviet soldiers had died of hunger, cold and disease.
In April 1943 the SS took command of the concentration camp. Bergen-Belsen was planned as a “civil detention camp” but was called “residence camp”.
In December 1944 circa 16000 inmates lived at the camp. The biggest group were the Jews from the Netherlands. The concentration camp became more and more an integration camp for sick and exhaust inmates from the other Nazi concentration camps.
Over 1000 inmates from Mittelbau-Dora came to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, all of them sick (tuberculosis).
At least 50000 people died in Bergen-Belsen before liberation. Among them Anne Frank and her sister Margot, who died there in March 1945 on typhoid. Over 50000 people died in the concentration camp.
Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 15 1945 from the British soldier.
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