Bergen-Belsen Catalogue P3,204,205
Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation
Bergen-Belsen
Wehrmacht POW Camp, 1940 –1945 Concentration Camp, 1943 –1945 Displaced Persons Camp, 1945–1950
Catalogue accompanying the permanent exhibition
Wallstein Satellite Camps of Bergen-Belsen
The SS established three satellite camps of Bergen-Belsen at armaments factories. Most of the workforce at these factories consisted of slave labourers and POWs of various nationalities. Around 2,000 female concentration camp prisoners were also forced to work there. Women who were no longer able to work because of exhaustion or disease were taken to Bergen-Belsen.
The satellite camps of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bomlitz-Benefeld Schneverdingen In Bomlitz, a gunpowder Rotenburg factory was operated by Eibia GmbH. Around 600 Jewish Bevensen Raubkammer women from Poland were military forced to work there, both in training area construction and in Visselhvede gunpowder production. Soltau Munster Munster Uelzen Hambühren-Ovelgönne Verden Bomlitz-Benefeld military 3 September–15 October 1944 training area Rheinmetall (aka camp III, Waldeslust) Fallingbostel Borsig AG The aircraft company Focke- testing site Wulf from Bremen was planning to establish a sub- terranean production facility Bergen military Bergen at an aban doned potassium training area Unterlüss- mine. At least 400 concen- Altensothrieth tration camp prisoners, most (Tannenberg camp) of them Jewish women from Late August 1944 – 13 April 1945 Poland and Hungary, were Bergen-Belsen forced to work setting up the sub terranean facility and Winsen Schwarmstedt laying tracks for the Hochtief A ller construction company. Celle Unterlüss-Altensothrieth Hambühren-Ovelgönne (aka Tannenberg camp) (Camp III, Waldeslust) Up to 900 Jewish women from 23 August 1944 – 4 February 1945 Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Steinhuder Meer Gifhorn Romania and Czechoslovakia were forced to work in am- muni tions production or on forestry or construction detail for Rheinmetall-Borsig AG in Unterlüss. Hanover
10 km
“There was a gunpowder factory in Bomlitz. We were 600 Jewish women, and we were the first prisoners at the camp. It was a new camp. We were guarded by SS men and women. We walked two kilometres to work every day. We produced gunpowder. We wore striped dresses, which we’d been given at the camp. Because the work was so hard, the people couldn’t work anymore after five weeks and were all sent to Bergen-Belsen […].” Excerpt from an account by Estera Winder recorded in 1947 Translated from the Yiddish Yad Vashem Archive, Jerusalem, M 1 E 2546 Estera Winder, born in 1924 in Radom (Poland), was transferred from Auschwitz to Bomlitz, from there to Bergen-Belsen and finally to the Elsnig satellite camp of Buchenwald with her mother Chana and her sister Matla.
204 Letter from Rhein- metall-Borsig to the Unterlüss council Concentration camp prisoners did not receive any payment. Companies who used the prisoners’ labour paid certain fees to the SS. In addition, the companies had to pay the relevant taxes to the respective councils. Translation on page 382 Gemeinde Unterlüß
“We had to work in a salt mine there [in Hambühren]. The work was done in two shifts. We worked the night shift. […] We worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. […] The work there was very hard. The salt had to be loaded onto little tipper wagons. The day shift blasted the salt out of the walls and we had to load the salt at night. Even the Germans would have admitted that women had never before done such work. The air was so thick, we almost suffocated.” Excerpt from an account by Irén and Edith Grünberger, recorded in August 1945 Translated from the Hungarian Yad Vashem Archive, Jerusalem, 015/2825 The sisters Irén and Edith Grünberger from Hungary, born in 1918 and 1925 in Gánya, were persecuted for being Jewish. They had been taken from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen and Hambühren.
The Concentration Camp: The Men's and Women's Camps, 1944–1945 205