The traces remaining of the Prisoner of War and Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen are faint: the SS destroyed camp records before liberation and the camp barracks were burnt down by British forces post war to eradicate disease. The site became a mass grave for its victims and it is today a memorial and museum.

Some evidence remains, however, including in the archives of The Wiener Holocaust Library. Other material has been recovered in archaeological digs, or is held by descendants of the survivors. Photographs taken by soldiers on all sides and by the local population have also preserved a number of images of the camps, the prisoners and the guards. Testimonies given to The Wiener Library in the 1950s by survivors of Belsen provide an insight into camp conditions, and the Library also holds records of the DP camp. 

British forces ceremonially burning a barracks in Belsen, to which they have attached an image of Hitler, Enid Fordham’s Bergen-Belsen Photograph Album, 1945. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
British forces ceremonially burning a barracks in Belsen, to which they have attached an image of Hitler, Enid Fordham’s Bergen-Belsen Photograph Album, 1945. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

Marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, this new exhibition uses some of this evidence to tell the full story of not just the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, which has often been the moment in its history remembered in Britain, but also the history of the camps at Bergen-Belsen during the Nazi era and then post-war.

Uncovering the traces of Belsen, we reveal the history of the camp throughout the Holocaust and beyond, when it became the largest DP camp in Germany for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and emerged as a centre of renewal of Jewish life in Germany. 

More information coming soon.

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