On 8 March 1945, the SS had some 2,250 inmates transferred from the Boelcke-Kaserne in Nordhausen to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. A significant number of them had been brought to Nordhausen from the Ellrich-Juliushütte subcamp just days earlier. They were so weak that even the Nazis no longer deemed them fit to work. As the SS had no further use for them at the region’s countless construction sites, they had them removed from the Mittelbau concentration camp.

Many of the completely enfeebled inmates had already died on the short transport from Ellrich to Nordhausen. Of the approximately 2,250 inmates the SS deported to Bergen-Belsen, only very few lived to be liberated in April.

The removal of concentration camp inmates unfit for work was nothing new. As far back as early 1944, for example, the SS had deported some 3,000 emaciated and deathly ill inmates from Dora to the Lublin-Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps to die. Of that number as well, only few survived.

(Anett Dremel)

Reference: Regine Heubaum and Jens-Christian Wagner, From Harz to Heath: Death Marches and Evacuation Transports in April 1945, Urbach bei Nordhausen 2015.