It was with much trepidation that we set off to travel the short distance to Belsen.
It was a beautiful clear, sunny morning and the long straight road passed through pale green beech woods.
We followed the signs to Gedenkstatte Bergen-Belsen. At 10.30am there were lots of cars and coaches in the car park.   Most of the coaches were for German school parties.

We went first into the Memorial and Documentation Centre.
This is divided into separate sections to cover the camp's history:
The Wehrmacht POW Camps 1939-1945
The Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp 1943-1945
The Bergen -Belsen Displaced Person's Camp 1945-1950

The camp was originally for POW's - mostly from Russia, 20,000 of whom died.
In 1943 the SS took over part of the grounds and established the Concentration Camp. At least 52,000 men,women and children died in this camp. Most of them during the last months of the war.
When the British liberated the Camp on 15th April 1945 they found 63,000 inmates and approx 10,000 unburied bodies. These are buried in mass graves on the Camp Grounds.
The survivors, most of whom were at death's door,


  were gradually moved to the Army Barracks just down the road ( now Hohne Barracks and run by the British Army Armoured Brigade)
The wooden huts at the camp were set on fire to limit the Typhus and other epidemics.
After the Liberation another 13,000 of the survivors eventually died and are buried at the Barracks.
The documents and photos in the memorial were very harrowing to see. It is beyond belief that this happened.
The British command insisted that the 3 of the leaders of Celle Town and 3 from the area were brought to the camp to witness the horrors which had taken place right under their noses, so they could inform the local inhabitants.

After we had visited the Memorial centre we had a break and then entered the actual Camp area.
This was very quiet and it seemed that not a lot of the younger visitors came here.
There is not a lot of the actual camp to see, as most of it has been raized to the ground.
The main memorials still had all the beautiful flowers from the ceremonies to mark 70 years since the Liberation.  
The huge mass graves stand out as almost the only structures.
The area is now quite wooded, with silver birches and beeches and there were birds singing....

After we left the camp, we drove past Hohne Barracks and about 6kms back up the road we turned off to see the Ramp at the station where the transports arrived.  This is now a protected area, although it is also in the military zone and verboten to enter. The train tracks are full of Army Tank transporters for NATO manoeuvres on Luneberg Heide, nearby.
We walked down a track behind the military fence to access an original cattle truck,used for transport, which is now a memorial. After getting off the train the prisoners had to walk the 6kms back up the road to the camp entrance.  Many died along the way, but were ignored by the locals.

There was a MH Aire in a nearby village but we did not feel comfortable spending the night in the area. So we drove on past Luneberg, to an Aire at Adendorf.   This had been newly developed, so instead of being free we had to pay 10e.   We did get free water and pump out though.