Zwischen Menschenhandel und "Endlosung": Das Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen (review)

"Belsen became a synonym for utter evil and suffering for which humanity has not yet invented a name." These words of the survivor Joseph Rosensaft begin Alexandra- Eileen Wenck's 1997 dissertation, the basis for the work under review. Using memoirs and extensive archival materials, Wenck sheds new light on the concentration camp officially called "Holding Camp Bergen-Belsen" (Aufenthaltslager Bergen-Belsen). Her work does not focus primarily on the years 1944-45, when Bergen-Belsen became the destination for evacuation transports and death marches, the final resting place of 30,000 Holocaust victims. Instead, Wenck describes Bergen-Belsen's establishment in 1943 as an assembly camp for Jewish prisoners who might be exchanged for German POWs: currency for Nazi hostage policy.

In the first chapter Wenck describes the background for the prisoner exchange program, and the "emigration in exchange for foreign currency" (Loslösung gegen Devisen) plan, while surveying the Third Reich slave trade in general. Next Wenck portrays the actual establishment of Bergen-Belsen as an assembly camp for exchange purposes (Sammellager für Austauschzwecke).

As opposed to more recent victim-centered research, Wenck focuses on higher-ranking SS perpetrators and officials of the Foreign Office and other ministries. Taking as her starting point Richard Breitman's study "Himmler and Belsen" (in Belsen in History and Memory, eds. Jo Reilly and David Cesarani [London: Routledge, 1997]), she lays out Reichsführer-SS Himmler's contradictory role in more concrete terms, arguing that his decision to establish Bergen-Belsen was made in close cooperation with the Foreign Office.

Wenck's diligent research reveals the protagonists' scope of action. Her depiction of SS personnel—such as the first camp commander, Adolf Haas, and SS- Hauptsturmführer Joseph Kramer, who took over in early December 1944 after having served in Auschwitz—shows the discrepancy between intentions of making the SS an "elite unit" and the moral depravity of its actual personnel. She also highlights contradictions within the SS command. Despite specific instructions by the Nazi leadership, section chiefs of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) came up with varying strategies for the "slave trade" (Menschenverkauf). For instance Adolf Eichmann, section chief for Jewish questions (Judenreferent), reduced the number of "optional passports" (Gefälligkeitspässe) and the sale of "exchange Jews" (Austauschjuden), undermining the original program. On the other hand, the chief of the Foreigners Department of the RSHA (Ausländerpolizeilicher Referat), Rudolf Kröning, attempted (in close cooperation with the Legal Division of the Foreign Office) to further the operations planned by Himmler, seeking for instance to exchange inmates for wounded German POWS. He helped organize one transfer with the United States and Great Britain.

Contradictions between and inside the party and SS commands explain the constant functional change of Bergen-Belsen. The former "holding camp," which Himmler turned into an "assembly camp" for prisoner exchanges, later became a "dying camp" (Sterbelager) for critically ill inmates from other camps. Wenck investigates Bergen-Belsen's temporary functions as transit camp and reception center for "evacuation transports" and death marches arriving from camps abandoned in the East.

Her depiction of the Hungarian camp (Ungarnlager) in Bergen-Belsen is particularly gripping. In this context she mentions Raoul Wallenberg's strategy of safe conduct letters and the so-called Musy-Schellenberg Operation. The desperate attempts of Jewish organizations to ransom Jews might have jibed with the Third Reich's enormous need for foreign exchange. According to Wenck, Himmler himself coined the phrase "blood for goods" (Blut gegen Ware).