JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ergen-belsen
the first two of her 17 musical albums, Polly Bergen and Little
Girl Blue, on the Jubilee record label in 1955. She became
a household name as a regular on the TV game show To Tell
The Truth (1956–61). Bergen’s many film and television credits
over the following half-century include two memorable performances
opposite actor Robert Mitchum. The first as Peggy
Bowden in the classic film Cape Fear (1962), and again two
decades later as Rhoda Henry in the mini-series The Winds of
War (1983), for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Bergen was also nominated for a Tony Award for her role in
Follies (2001). She acted as the CEO and public face of several
corporations, including Polly Bergen Cosmetics, Polly Bergen
Shoes, and Polly Bergen Jewelry. Bergen is the author of three
books, The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm
(1962), Polly’s Principles (1974), and I’d Love to, but What’ll I
Wear? (1977). Continuing to perform, she made a notable TV
appearance in 2004 on The Sopranos.
[Walter Driver (2nd ed.)]
BERGEN-BELSEN, Nazi concentration camp near Hanover,
Germany. It was established in July 1943 as an Aufenthaltslager
(“transit camp”) in part of a prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag 311,
and intended for prisoners whom the German government
wished to exchange for Germans in allied territory. The camp
was run by the SS, whose commandants were Adolf Haas,
Siegfried Seidle, and Josef Kramer. It was built by Jewish prisoners
from Buchenwald and Natzweiler. Five satellite camps
were created: a prisoner camp for those constructing the camp;
a special camp for Jews brought from Poland who possessed
passports or citizenship papers of Latin American states, entry
visas for Palestine (or the official promise of visas), hostages,
prisoners who had paid a ransom, collaborators, and others;
a neutral camp for Jewish citizens of neutral countries such
as Turkey, Argentina, and Spain; a “star” camp for Jews who
would be exchanged; and a Hungarian camp which was established
at the conclusion of the deportations from Hungary
on July 8, 1944, and held the 1,684 prisoners on the *Kasztner
transport. During the war, two prisoner exchanges took place:
301 persons were sent to Switzerland (165 were detained on
their way, and only 136 arrived in Switzerland) and 222 to Palestine.
In August 1944, 318 Jews from the Kasztner transport
reached neutral Switzerland and in December the remaining
1,365 reached freedom. There was room in Bergen-Belsen
for 10,000 inmates, and conditions, though difficult, were at
first better than in other camps. But during 1944 there was a
significant deterioration in conditions. Food rations were reduced
to below the minimum nutritional requirement, and
the prisoners were forced to do hard labor and were cruelly
beaten. In addition, whether from intent, incompetence or
simply overwhelming conditions, the camp authorities failed
to provide even essential services.
Bergen-Belsen became a destination point for prisoners
sent inland away from the advancing Soviet front during what
became known as the death marches of the winter of 1944–45.
Just when most of the prisoners had reached the point of
physical and spiritual collapse, they were joined by prisoners
removed from other camps as a result of the German retreat.
Twenty thousand women arrived from Auschwitz and Buchenwald
and thousands of male prisoners from Sachsenhausen
and Buchenwald. The camp population swelled rapidly
from 15,257 in December 1944 to 41,000 in March 1945;
during the last few weeks there was an additional massive
influx of prisoners from the East. The new prisoners, who
arrived after forced marches sometimes lasting weeks, were
starved and disease-ridden. Epidemics broke out, but there
was no medical attention. Overwhelmed by the influx of arriving
prisoners, the camp simply ceased to function. One
survivor contrasted the orderly Auschwitz with the collapsing
Bergen-Belsen after the arrival of the death march survivors.
She recalls:
At least there [in Auschwitz] we worked. And every once in a
blue moon, we … we went into the showers. As much as we
were afraid to go to the showers, because we didn’t know if the
showers would give us water or gas. Over there [in Bergen-
Belsen], we had no showers.
As to the dead:
In Auschwitz there were well-planned facilities for cremation.
When these did not suffice, bodies were burned in open
fields and their ashes scattered.
At Auschwitz they took away the dead people. They gassed
them and they burned them; and in the camps we didn’t see any
dead people. We only saw the people being hit or being dragged
away, but we never saw any dead people lying around … Bergen-Belsen
was nothing but dead people. Skeletons, skin and
bones. They piled them up as they died. They just piled them
up, like a mountain.
The death rate was high: in March 1945 just weeks before liberation,
nearly 20,000 people died (including Anne *Frank).
A total of 37,000 died before the liberation.
Bergen-Belsen was the second major camp in Germany
to be liberated by the Allies. The British entered on April 15,
1945. The horrors, which deeply shocked the British soldiers,
received widespread publicity in the West. Among the arriving
liberating troops were British filmmakers who recorded
the scene of bulldozers burying the dead and filmed the burning
of the camps. These films were shown widely in movie
newsreels throughout the world and are emblematic of the
liberation and of the Nazi crimes for those who saw them
then and many years later. The British arrested the SS administrators,
including the commandant, Josef Kramer, and
almost all were put to work clearing and burying the thousands
of corpses. Twenty of them died doing this work, probably
from infectious diseases. The rest were tried at the end of
1945. Eleven were condemned to death, 19 to imprisonment,
and 14 were acquitted.
When British troops entered the concentration camp of
Bergen-Belsen they encountered more than 10,000 corpses
and around 58,000 surviving inmates – the overwhelming
majority of whom were Jews – who suffered from a combination
of typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery, extreme malnutrition,
and other virulent diseases.
420 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3