“Reception Camps”

The destination of most transports were the so-called “reception camps”. Around 9,000 prisoners were taken to Sandbostel POW camp near Bremervörde. Most of these prisoners came from the Bremen satellite camps, as well as from some of the Hamburg satellite camps, and many sick prisoners from other satellites were also sent there. More than 8,000 prisoners were transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The main groups represented here were Jewish women, sick prisoners from the main camp, and prisoners from the satellites in the Hanover region. Around 5,000 prisoners, predominantly from the satellite camps in the Braunschweig and Salzgitter region, ended up in Wöbbelin satellite camp near Ludwigslust. In these three camps, prisoners were simply left to die, with thousands perishing of hunger and disease. Approximately 1,000 prisoners died in Wöbbelin, and around 3,000 in Sandbostel. How many Neuengamme prisoners were among the 25,000 people who died in Bergen-Belsen shortly before and during the first weeks after liberation is unknown.

The 2,470 concentration camp prisoners who have arrived at Stalag XB are in the worst possible physical state and severely undernourished. A large number of them are sick. The camp physician of Stalag XB at Sandbostel on 14 April 1945.

The mortality rate has risen to an average of 250 to 300 deaths per day and will increase even further under the current circumstances. Josef Kramer, Commandant of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, in a letter to SS-Gruppenführer Glücks on 1 March 1945.

Twenty thousand naked carcasses lay rotting between the run-down huts. Louis Martin-Chauffier, a former prisoner from France, 1947.

We could smell Wöbbelin concentration camp even before we saw it. James M. Gavin, Commander of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in his memoirs, published in 1978.