Bergen-Belsen, Oerbke, Wietzendorf
In addition to Bergen-Belsen, prisoner-of-war camps were also set up in Oerbke and Wietzendorf.
About one kilometre south of the barracks site, the "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces) housed a work detail of French and Belgian prisoners of war in a former Labour camp from the construction period of the barracks from 1940. In 1941, the camp was expanded and became the site of Prisoner of War base camp (Stalag) 311 (XI C) for Soviet prisoners of war. At least 25,000 people were imprisoned in the POW camp. In addition to Bergen-Belsen, prisoner of war camps were also set up in Oerbke and Wietzendorf.
By the end of the war, at least 50,000 Soviet prisoners of war had died in these three camps. In the summer of 1943, Stalag XI C Bergen-Belsen was dissolved and part of the camp was used as a central hospital for Soviet prisoners of war and Italian military internees until January 1945 - now as a "branch camp" of the Stalag ("POW base camp") Fallingbostel.
Prisoner groups
The majority of the prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen POW camp were soldiers from the Soviet Union. Other larger prisoner groups came from Italy and Poland.
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The first transports from the Soviet Union arrived in Bergen-Belsen in July 1941; by the beginning of November, around 21,000 Soviet prisoners of war had been brought to the POW main camps. The adjoining hospital was housed in the wooden barracks of the former Army Construction Camp. Massive new accommodation was to be built in the main camp, but progress was slow. As a result, the prisoners vegetated in self-built earth caves, leaf huts or makeshift tents until well into the autumn. The completely inadequate rations contributed to emaciation and mass illnesses. Dysentery was already rampant in the camp from August.
In the summer and autumn of 1941, almost 10,000 prisoners were taken to the 150 or so work details of Prisoner of War base camp (Stalag 311 XI C) Bergen-Belsen. At least 500 prisoners of war were selected by a Gestapo task force and murdered in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This murder programme was primarily aimed at the Jews and political functionaries among the prisoners of war.
Following the outbreak of typhus, the camp was quarantined in November 1941. Thousands of sick people and those unfit for work were brought in from the work details of the Bergen-Belsen, Fallingbostel and Oerbke Stalags. By the spring of 1942, around 14,000 Soviet prisoners of war had died in Bergen-Belsen as a result of the deadly living conditions in the camp and during labour operations. The dead were initially buried in individual graves and from October 1941 in mass graves at the camp cemetery, which was about 600 metres away.
From the summer of 1942, there were only a few prisoners left in the camp outside the hospital. Stalag XI C (311) was dissolved when the Schutzstaffel SS ("Protection Squadron") took over the southern part of the camp in June 1943. However, the hospital with its 1,200 beds continued to exist as a Subcamp of the main camp XI B Fallingbostel. Sick prisoners of war from the work details in the region were brought there. A large number of people continued to die here.
In January 1945, the prisoner of war camp was finally abandoned by the "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces). This left the site to the Schutzstaffel SS ("Protection Squadron"). In the meantime, over 19,500 Soviet prisoners of war were buried in the camp cemetery.
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Italienische Militärinternierte bei der Trümmerräumung in der Celler Straße, Hannover, 30. Mai 1944 © Historisches Museum Hannover Fascist Italy was allied with the German Empire until the summer of 1943. After the deposition of the dictator Mussolini and Italy's subsequent surrender to the Allies, the "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces) occupied northern Italy and established a new fascist Italian puppet state. Around 600,000 Italian soldiers who refused to continue fighting on the German side were disarmed and transported to Germany for forced labour. In the eyes of the National Socialist leadership, the "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces) and the German population, they were traitors. They were denied prisoner of war status in accordance with the protective provisions of the Geneva Convention. They were officially regarded as interned soldiers of a state that remained an ally and were labelled "Italian military internees" (IMI). This meant that they no longer received vital services from the International Red Cross, such as food parcels, medicine deliveries and inspection visits by international delegations.
In autumn 1943, the Oerbke and Wietzendorf camps served as transit camps for tens of thousands of Italian military internees, who were taken from there to work details throughout northern Germany. From January 1944, Wietzendorf was one of the largest camps for Italian officers (Oflag 83). There was a hospital for Italian military internees in the Oerbke camp, which was moved to separate areas of the Bergen-Belsen Prisoner of War hospital at the end of July 1944. The patients mostly suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis or the consequences of industrial accidents. By the end of the war, 142 Italian military internees had died in the Bergen-Belsen hospital and were buried in a separate area on the edge of the Prisoner of War cemetery.
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Stalag XI B Zweiglager Bergen-Belsen, 1944: Baracke für Offiziere (vorne) und Soldatinnen (hinten) der polnischen „Heimatarmee“. © SnG In October 1944, around 1000 male and female officers and soldiers from the Polish underground organisation Armia Krajowa (Home Army) were sent to the Bergen-Belsen Subcamp, half of them women. They were housed in a separate barrack complex. The Armia Krajowa had organised an uprising against the German occupiers in Warsaw in August 1944. Among the prisoners were the deputy commander of the insurgents and other members of the military leadership of the Armia Krajowa as well as members of Warsaw's cultural elite.
The "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces) had promised the insurgents treatment in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention when they surrendered. The Polish prisoners of war were therefore treated much better than the Soviet prisoners of war and the Italian military internees. A delegation from the International Red Cross was allowed to visit them in Bergen-Belsen.
The members of the Polish Home Army only spent a short time in the Bergen-Belsen prisoner of war camp. The female officers were taken to a camp near Erfurt at the end of December 1944. At the same time, the ordinary female soldiers were transferred to the Oberlangen camp in Emsland, where they were liberated by Polish units within the British army in April 1945. The 500 male officers experienced an odyssey: transported from Bergen-Belsen to a camp in Pomerania in January 1945, they soon had to march westwards for weeks before the advancing front. After a stopover in the Sandbostel prisoner-of-war camp, they were finally liberated by British troops in Lübeck on 2 May 1945.