Bergen-Belsen, or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an "exchange camp", where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp was later expanded to hold Jews from other concentration camps.
Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans in the territory of pre-war France. The camp was located in a heavily forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft).
Irmgard Ilse Ida Grese was a Nazi concentration camp guard at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and served as warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen. She was a volunteer member of the SS.
Aufseherin was the position title for a female guard in Nazi concentration camps. Of the 50,000 guards who served in the concentration camps, training records indicate that approximately 3,500 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. In the context of these camps, the German position title of Aufseherin translates to (female) "overseer" or "attendant". Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano (1944–1945), Kaiserwald-Riga (1943–44), Mauthausen, Stutthof (1942–1945), Vaivara (1943–1944), Vught (1943–1944), and at Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps and other posts.
Elisabeth Volkenrath was a German supervisor at several Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
The Belsen trials were a series of several trials that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II. British Army and civilian personnel ran the trials and staffed the prosecution and judges.
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.
Herta Bothe was a German concentration camp guard during World War II. She was imprisoned for war crimes after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and was subsequently released early from prison on 22 December 1951.
Juana Bormann was a German prison guard at several Nazi concentration camps from 1938. She was executed as a war criminal at Hamelin after a court trial in 1945.
Herta Ehlert was a female guard at many Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Alice Orlowski was a German concentration camp guard at several of the Nazi concentration camps in German-occupied Poland (1939-1945) during World War II. After the war, a Polish court convicted of her crimes against humanity, and she served 10 years in prison in Poland. In 1973, Orlowski, now 70 and living as a pensioner in West Germany, muttered that only "half the work" had been finished, referring to the Holocaust. She was promptly arrested, convicted of making antisemitic remarks, and sentenced to 10 months in prison.
Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dubbed The Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was a German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British Army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes, and hanged on the gallows in the prison at Hamelin by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
Luise Danz was a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II. Danz was captured in 1945 and put on trial for crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, but released due to general amnesty on 20 August 1957.
As a Nazi concentration camp for forced labor, Helmbrechts concentration camp was a women's subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp founded near Helmbrechts near Hof, Germany in the summer of 1944. The first prisoners who came to the camp were political prisoners from the Ravensbrück camp in northern Germany. Later Jewish prisoners were brought.
Fritz Klein was a Romanian-German Nazi doctor and war criminal, hanged for his role in atrocities at Auschwitz concentration camp and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust.
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmführer and Schutzhaftlagerführer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Captured by the Allies at the end of the war, Hößler was charged with war crimes in the First Bergen-Belsen Trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging at Hameln Prison in 1945.
Gertrud Elli Heise was a female guard and later, SS overseer at several concentration camps during the Second World War. Heise was born in Berlin, Germany. She was tried for war crimes in 1946.
Anneliese Kohlmann was a German SS camp guard within the Nazi concentration camp system during World War II, notably, at the Neuengamme concentration camp established by the SS in Hamburg, Germany; and at Bergen-Belsen. She was tried for war crimes at the Belsen Trial in Lüneburg in 1946.
Erich Zoddel was a prisoner functionary at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In 1941, Zoddel was sentenced to a year in prison for theft before being transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942. He worked as a forced laborer in the Heinkel factory in Oranienburg until October 1943. In November 1943, after a brief stay at Buchenwald concentration camp, he was taken to Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. On 27 March 1944, Zoddel and 1,000 other prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora arrived at Bergen-Belsen. By January 1945, Zoddel had risen in the ranks to a camp division. On 18 April 1945, after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British army, Zoddel shot a female detainee named Maria Konatkwicz.
Hilde Lobauer was a German prisoner and later a German camp guard in both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. She was known most infamously as the SS woman without uniform.
