Camp 1 Vs Camp 2 Essay

Beating, hunger, disease-all concepts of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Death was around the corner for many innocent prisoners. For some, death was preferred. Nazis put many Jewish people, and others into camps where there was no escape. People dying by the hundreds and helplessness overpowered these prisoners. There were two camps inside the Belsen camp-Camp 1 and Camp 2. The conditions were terrible, but eventually, there came an end to this horror. In Camp 1, also known as the Horror Camp, was where many diseases which killed many of the people. “Overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and the lack of adequate food, water, and shelter led to an outbreak of diseases such as typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and dysentery, causing an ever increasing number of deaths” (USHMM). “The dead lie all over the camp and in piles outside the blocks of huts which house the worst of the sick and are miscalled hospitals” (Collis 1). There is no sanitation in this camp and no running water or electricity. The people slept on the floor with no blankets, and some without any clothing, too. Camp 1 also had a crematorium which was an oven that burned people to death. (Collis 1)
They were still horrible, but compared to Camp 1, Camp 2 was much better and preferred. Though people were housed in buildings for 150, but actually had 600 people per building, there was much less sickness in this camp. (Collis 1) These were only two camps in Bergen-Belsen. Actually, there was eight. The camps were "a detention camp, two women's camps, a special camp, neutrals camp, 'star' camp, Hungarian camp and a tent camp" (Bergen-Belsen). The Bergen-Belsen camps were mostly holding camps in the beginning, but that changed. "From 1944-45, the camp also served as an evacuation site for prisoners from the East, as the allies liberated Eastern Europe"