Bergen-Belsen blog report 2

One of the slightly unlikely elements of the camp at Bergen-Belsen was the number of Russian prisoners held there. And so these pictures record the Russian cemetery and the Belarus Ambassador to Germany (?) leading the tributes (below - suited).

This was essentially due to it's being used as a prisoner of war camp initially. It's only later that it was used for Jewish and civillian prisoners and then subsequently as a concentration camp.

So it is that over 50,000 Russians lie buried here... a truly awful number of people. And of course being so far removed from Russia, in western Germany, it's one of the more over-looked elements.

The burial mounds are all laid out and marked with a brown stone witha slavic cross - the number of them is the most daunting feature of the graveyard.

The other element that is so stark is just how far away from the document centre and the Jewish memorial the Russian monument is...

It adds to the sense of a forgotten sacrifice and reveals a small element of the tensions that existed.

Further, it also illustrates the size of the camp when in operation and the extent to which the forest has since encroached back. The other factor is that actually the prisoners in the camp were themselves segregated and kept very very much apart...

Bergen-Belsen blog report 1

I'd been putting off the visit for a while so wasn't quite sure what to expect. For those not familiar Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp in Lower Saxony from the second world war - my grandfather had been in the liberation relief forces and I had been planning to for ages.

Because of the typhus outbreak before, at liberation the camp was totally destroyed and burnt down and so it has the effect of being essentially a wooded park land with memorials and graves.

But four kilometeres up the road, close to the village of Bergen itself are the rail track where the prisoners were unloaded and forced to walk to the camp.

It is a truly awful and poignant reminded of the reality if what was involved.

I walked from Bergen to the tracks and then onto the camp and it gave a real sense of perspective on the alienation of being uprooted from your home and transported to this place - unfamiliar, aggressive, unpleasant - a genocidal holocaust...

Now there is a sculpted memorial (above left) and also a service where local residents and school-children have written out the names of many of those transported to the camp and then candles are lit - some speakers, a few songs and a time to reflect. very moving, very emotional...
www.ag-bergen-belsen.de
www.bergenbelsen.de