Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen was not a death camp, but a special detention camp for Jews who for various reasons the Nazis thought they could be released in exchange for P.O.W. or other purposes. At the end of the war the detention camp was evacuated, and Bergen-Belsen became the final destination for many inmates from other concentration camps.
The detention camp
In the detention camp, life was very hard but not as hard as in other camps, at least initially. Around 2,500 children lived there (around 500 of them perished). A first group of inmates from Hungary (including 273 children) were released in 1944 on the Kastner Train. All the other inmates (including 2000 children) were evacuated at the end of the war and sent to Therensienstadt on board of three trains: only the second reached the destination, the Magdeburg Train and the Tobitz Train were liberated during their journey. On board of each train were around 600-700 children. Most of them survived.
Noticeable child survivors
The concentration camp =
Around 1,000 children were among the thousands of inmates who arrived at Bergen-Belsen in the last days of the war. Conditions were desperate because of hunger and disease. 50% of the children perished (including Anne Frank. Around 500 children were found alive by the British liberators.
Noticeable child survivors (liberated at Bergen-Belsen by the British)
- Miriam Akavia (Poland, 1927-2015)
- Rudy Kennedy (Poland, 1927-2008)
- Zuzana Růžičková (1927-2017).
- David Faber (Poland, 1928-2015)
- Alice Lok Cahana (Hungary, 1929-2017)
- Nanette Blitz Konig (Netherlands, 1929)
- Renee Salt (Poland, 1929)
- Edith Bruck (b.1932).
- Coby Lubliner (Poland, 1935)
- Tomi Reichental (b.1935)
- Ivan Lefkovits (Slovakia, 1937)
- Maurice Blik (Netherlands, 1939)
- Julius Maslovat (Poland, 1942)
Memoirs
- Tomi Reichental, I Was a Boy in Belsen (2011).
- Nanette Blitz Konig, Eu Sobrevivi ao Holocausto (2015) / ET: Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor & Classmate of Anne Frank (2018).
- Zuzana Růžičková , One Hundred Miracles: A Memoir of Music and Survival (2019).