Jewish Children and Teenagers Surviving the Last Deadly Months of the Holocaust in Bergen-Belsen

Authors

  • Verena Buser Western Galilee College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23777/sn.0125/art_vbus01

Keywords:

Bergen-Belsen, Child survivors, Children's resilience, Adolescents in concentration camps

Abstract

Opened in 1943, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Celle, Germany, held at least 3,000 children and adolescents, most of them Jewish. In 1944, a process began in which thousands of prisoners died intentionally in Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen served first as an “evacuation camp” for prisoners from concentration camps near the front; from the summer of 1944. However, it also functioned as a transit camp for women and girls, many of them Polish, who were sent to subcamps for forced labour. Furthermore, it was used as a (cynically called) “rest camp” for prisoners who had been sent to concentration camps on Reich territory as sick and unfit for work. They died from deliberate neglect, as they were not cared for. In the last months of the war, between January and April 1945, some 80,000 to 90,000 people arrived at the camp.

Author Biography

  • Verena Buser, Western Galilee College

    Verena Buser is an Associate Researcher in the Holocaust Studies Program of the Western Galilee College, Israel, where she is responsible for the organisation of its online lecture series. Her areas of research include childhood during and after the Holocaust, and Zionist Hachshara and non-Zionist training for emigration. She has received research grants and awards from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, the Leo Baeck Institute New York, and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). Together with Dr. Boaz Cohen, in 2016 and 2017 she founded the Children after War, Holocaust and Genocide project, www.cwg1945.org. 

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Published

2025-03-05

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2025): S:I.M.O.N. – SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION.

Section

ARTICLES

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Verena Buser

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How to Cite

“Jewish Children and Teenagers Surviving the Last Deadly Months of the Holocaust in Bergen-Belsen”. 2025. S: I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 12 (1): 88-102. https://doi.org/10.23777/sn.0125/art_vbus01.