[WW2] - De "rikstyska" koncentrationslägren

http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/history/belsen.htm

500 mindes Bergen-Belsen

BERGEN-BELSEN: Omkring 500 överlevande från nazisternas koncentrationsläger Bergen-Belsen samlades i går för att markera 50-årsdagen av sin befrielse. Då brittiska soldater den 27 april 1945 tog kontroll över Bergen-Belsen hade 50000 människor dött av svält, utmattning eller tyfus under bara några månader.
-Det här känns hemskt. Man kommer ihåg sina föräldrar och de goda vänner man förlorat, sade den 76-årige Abe Enisman, en polsk jude som numera bor i New York.
Under hela kriget dog omkring 100000 människor, de flesta judar, i Bergen-Belsen, ett läger som egentligen var byggt för att ta emot högst 10000 fångar. Någon känsla av lycka fanns knappast bland dem som britterna befriade.
-Jag kommer ihåg befrielsen. Men jag var för sjuk i tyfus för att kunna hysa några känslor. Jag kunde inte ens stå på benen, berättade Abe Enisman.
(TT-Reuter)

Svenska tidningar rapporterade inget om gaskammare i Belsen vid detta tillfälle. Ur GP 28-4-1995:

Men siffrorna är helt vansinniga: 100.000 döda! Omkring 7000 döda under tyskt herravälde, cirka 14.000 efter britterna kommit dit (tyfusepidemi).

ab Juli 1941
Eintreffen von ca. 20.000 sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, die unter freiem Himmel zusammengepfercht werden. Bis zum Frühjahr 1942 sterben 14.000 Gefangene an Hunger, Kälte und Krankheiten.
....
Insgesamt starben in Bergen-Belsen etwa 50.000 KZ-Häftlinge und 20.000 Kriegsgefangene.

Var har du dina siffror ifrån? http://www.bergen-belsen.de/de/chronik/:

"---Thus, the victorious Allies claimed the existence of "extermination camps" of which there was not a single one in Germany. For years visitors to the Dachau concentration camp were shown "gas chambers" where as many as 25,000 Jews were allegedly killed daily by the SS. Actually, the rooms displayed were dummy chambers that the US military had forced imprisoned SS men to build after the capitulation. A similar case involved the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where 50,000 inmates were supposedly murdered. Actually, about 7,000 inmates died during the period when the camp existed, from 1943 to 1945. Most of them died in the last months of the war as a result of disease and malnutrition -- consequences of the bombings that had completely disrupted normal deliveries of medical supplies and food. The British commander who took control of the camp after the capitulation testified that crimes on a large scale had not taken place at Bergen-Belsen.---"

Professor Helmut Diwald vid Universitetet i Erlangen, skrev 1978 i sin Geschichte der Deutschen (Frankfurt, 1978), sidorna 164-165:

Ähnlich verhielt es sich mit dem berüchtigten KZ Bergen-Belsen, in dem fünfzigtausend Häftlinge ermordet worden seien. In Wirklichkeit starben in der Zeit, in der das Lager existierte, von 1943 bis 1945, rund siebentausend Insassen, und zwar vorwiegend in den letzten Monaten des Krieges aufgrund von Seuchen und Unterernährung, da im Zuge des Bombenkrieges die medikamentöse Versorgung und Verpflegung zusammengebrochen war. Der britische Kommandant, der nach der Kapitulation das Lager übernahm, stellte fest, daß in Bergen-Belsen Verbrechen großen Ausmaßes nicht vorgekommen waren.

The story of Bergen-Belsen can be summed up by a chart that hangs on the wall of the Museum there. It shows that there were 350 deaths in the camp in December 1944 before the typhus epidemic started. In January 1945, after a typhoid epidemic started, there were between 800 and 1000 deaths; in February 1945, after the typhus epidemic broke out, there were 6,000 to 7,000 deaths. In March 1945, the number of deaths had escalated to an incredible 18,168 in only one month. In April 1945, the deaths were 18,355 in only one month, with half of these deaths occurring after the British took over. Unlike the death camps in Poland, the Bergen-Belsen camp was not equipped to handle this kind of death rate; there was only one crematory oven in the camp. When the British arrived on April 15, 1945, there were 10,000 bodies that were still unburied, and more were dying every day because the Germans could not control the epidemics. By the end of April, in only two weeks time, 9000 more had died. Another 4,000 died before the end of May.

"---Estimates of the number of people who died in Bergen-Belsen have ranged widely over the years. Many have been irresponsible exaggerations. Typical is a 1985 York Daily News report, which told readers that "probably 100,000 died at Bergen-Belsen".[111] An official German government publication issued in 1990 declared that "more than 50,000 people had been murdered" in the Belsen camp under German control, and "an additional 13,000 died in the first weeks after liberation".[112] Closer to the truth is the Encyclopaedia Judaica, which maintains that 37,000 perished in the camp before the British takeover, and another 14,000 afterwards.[113]

Whatever the actual number of dead, Belsen's victims were not "murdered", and the camp was not an 'extermination' center.---"

"---Martin Broszat, Director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, wrote in 1976:[102]

"[...] In Bergen-Belsen, for example, thousands of corpses of Jewish prisoners were found by British soldiers on the day of liberation, which gave the impression that this was one of the notorious extermination camps. Actually, many Jews in Bergen-Belsen as well as in the satellite camps of Dachau died in the last weeks before the end of the war as a result of the quickly improvised retransfers and evacuations of Jewish workers from the still existing ghettos, work camps and concentration camps in the East (Auschwitz) [...]"

Dr. Russell Barton, an English physician who spent a month in Bergen-Belsen after the war with the British Army, has also explained the reasons for the catastrophic conditions found there:[103]

"Most people attributed the conditions of the inmates to deliberate intention on the part of the Germans in general and the camp administrators in particular. Inmates were eager to cite examples of brutality and neglect, and visiting journalists from different countries interpreted the situation according to the needs of propaganda at home.

For example, one newspaper emphasized the wickedness of the "German masters" by remarking that some of the 10,000 unburied dead were naked. In fact, when the dead were taken from a hut and left in the open for burial, other prisoners would take their clothing from them [...]

German medical officers told me that it had been increasingly difficult to transport food to the camp for some months. Anything that moved on the autobahns was likely to be bombed [...]

I was surprised to find records, going back for two or three years, of large quantities of food cooked daily for distribution. I became convinced, contrary to popular opinion, that there had never been a policy of deliberate starvation. This was confirmed by the large numbers of well-fed inmates. Why then were so many people suffering from malnutrition? [...] The major reasons for the state of Belsen were disease, gross overcrowding by central authority, lack of law and order within the huts, and inadequate supplies of food, water and drugs.

In trying to assess the causes of the conditions found in Belsen one must be alerted to the tremendous visual display, ripe for purposes of propaganda, that masses of starved corpses presented."---"