It may seem strange to ‘recommend’ a former concentration camp. Nonetheless, sites like Auschwitz and Dachau are popular tourist destinations for anyone wanting to learn more about the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. While Bergen-Belsen is a less obvious choice, a visit by the Queen in 2015 recalled the liberation of the camp by the British in 1945. The Memorial’s museum is both an informative and emotive experience.
Why go there?
The lack of material evidence leaves curators in an understandably difficult position when approaching the commemoration of the former camp. The result is a sparse but inventive museum, marking, but not recreating, the site where approximately 70,000 people died. A portion of these thousands are still buried here in unmarked graves. As is to be expected, not much of the original site remains. However, this is not completely due to the passage of time. After its liberation, the camp was destroyed by the British in order to halt the same Typhus epidemic that had ended the life of young diarist Anne Frank just weeks before they arrived.
English captions are available throughout and the video interviews with survivors are subtitled in English. As with all museums of this nature, the content can be harrowing. Consequently, parents may choose to avoid this exhibition if they are concerned about younger children. The displays aren’t especially graphic, but the museum recommends its tours for those 14 and up. There are also guidelines for visitors available in English on their website for those wanting to check the suitability for themselves. A café, library and bookshop make up the rest of the building complex.
What’s inside?
The exhibition hall is sobering: grey concrete walls and minimalistic vitrines set the tone for a solemn, reflective visit. A variety of objects, documents, and photographs attempt to offer a window onto an otherwise unimaginable experience.
The camp’s most famous prisoner, Anne Frank, is naturally commemorated here. Although hers is the only name many visitors are likely to immediately recognise, many items are connected with specific individuals, going some way to preserve their memory. The result is moving, without sentimentality. Instead, examples of humanity, compassion, and creativity are used to reinstate the dignity of those murdered or persecuted. A handwritten diary and magnifying glass belonging to prisoner Felix Hermann Oestreicher, for example, stands in stark contrast to the inhumane uniformity of the list of prisoners found elsewhere in the displays. The magnifying glass was a strategic tool, allowing Oestreicher to write in smaller handwriting in a situation in which paper – and the freedom of expression it represented – was a rare and precious commodity. Seemingly prosaic objects like cutlery also provide a vivid link to the past and are infinitely more evocative than the anti-Semitic items mass-produced by the Nazis (which are given no space here). In keeping with the museum’s human stories, there are also several video interviews with survivors explaining the personal significance of the objects in the displays, which bring the selected items to life.
German History Museums 