Bergen-Belsen Memorial and Celle

Today I took a trip with Natalie´s dad to the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, about an hours drive from Hannover. It is the site of a concentration camp that opened around 1940. About 30,000 Jews were killed there from 1940 until the liberation in 1945. Anne Frank died there from Typhus a few months before the liberation of the camp. It was very... umm, I don´t know the word for it.. just sad and a time to remember what happened. This is one picture of MANY mass graves. See how it is elevated? Well they have many of these throughout the memorial. This was a smaller one and if you look at the next picture...

You can see that it says 1000. That means there were at least 1000 people put in just this one mass grave. Although at the time it was just a ditch they threw the bodies in. This big square used to be the water basin, not water for drinking but water to wash vegetables and put out fires. It´s hard to see in this picture but on the right in front of that man is where the vegetable cellar was.The next two pictures are of block 9 and 10, huts where people slept. Of course they are ruins now but you can see in the second picture very clearly where the building was. There were also holes that may have been bathrooms at one point. (not pictured)

This is the sign for the memorial. On the left you can see another elevated mass grave and the rememberance wall and tower.This is a huge mass grave. There were two of these long graves combined and they each hold 2500 bodies.Another picture of the wall and tower. Again in front is a different mass grave than the one above.The Jewish Memorial. The next picture shows what it says in English.

This isn´t really Anne Frank´s grave but her and her sister still died on this property, probably pretty close to this headstone.They had a House of Silence and this thing had hundreds of rocks and messages on it. Putting rocks on different memorials must be special because there were a lot fo them. You can see them in the picture above.Another mass grave with 5000 bodies. This one was attached with two others, one had 2500 and one had 800. In one mass grave that is 8300 bodies.The polish prisoners put up a cross just like this soon after liberation, in this exact spot. The cross has been replaced several times because of decay.The Wall and Tower of rememberance.

This was the largest mass grave on the site. I went to see how many people were buried here and the sign read.. (next picture)Number unknown. There had to be at least 10000, if not way more than that.This is the POW Cemetery. It was quite a walk to get here.This is the Soviet Memorial.

I am so glad I had the chance to see such a huge part of history. Now onto some lighter stuff. When we were walking to the POW Cemetery we were just walking down a dirt road the whole time. Once we got out of the boundaries of Bergen-Belsen we saw this sign on one side of the road.Well soon after that we turn a corner and this same sign was on BOTH sides of the road. It made me feel very safe.... NOT! After we left the memorial we went to Celle, a city on the way. We stopped in to see the downtown part and the castle. When the war was going on pretty much everything in Hannover was destroyed but Celle was left standing so there are some VERY old and VERY different looking houses. They are setting up for a fitness fair this weekend.Cute little German houses. They weren´t houses really, shops on the bottom apartments up top.The building on the left was made in 1649 and the one on the right was made in 1532. Pretty crazy huh?The park by the castle. Weeping willow trees are my favorite.
The castle and the weeping willow again.The pond with so much green!I thought this tree was pretty neat because you had to walk underneath its twisted branches.Hope you enjoyed seeing Bergen-Belsen and Celle through my pictures!