Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Memorial

by coach & on foot

This experience will take you for an emotional visit to Bergen-Belsen – the concentration camp where Anne Frank and her sister Margot were interned.

Upon arrival, you will no doubt notice that the countryside appears peaceful and quiet, with very few locals living close by. In 1940 the fascist regime of Germany built a small camp for French POWs next to a huge army training complex. Following the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the camp was used to imprison more than 20,000 Russian POWs in appalling conditions with no medical support, leaving the prisoners to survive without any form of accommodation.

Between 1943 and 1944, Bergen-Belsen was absorbed by the SS and transformed into a huge concentration camp. Until its liberation by British forces in early 1945, over 50,000 POWs, Jews and other ‘political enemies’ died in Bergen-Belsen, mostly from the unbelievably harsh living conditions, lack of food, disease, or at the hands of the guards. Despite Bergen-Belsen not having been an extermination camp by design, the number of victims of the atrocities is staggering.

You will have a guided visit of the premises and see the Obelisk, the Room of Silence, the Wall of Names and the symbolic grave of Anne Frank. You will also visit the well-presented exhibition in the Information Centre, where there are hundreds of prisoners’ artefacts that were recovered from the grounds. Finally, you will have the opportunity to listen to some of the many moving audiovisual interviews with former camp inmates and learn about the victims’ and perpetrators’ fates.

Following your guided visit, you will have some free time to contemplate this moving experience and maybe browse the camp’s bookstore or purchase some refreshments before re-joining your coach for the approximately 1h30min return drive to Hamburg.