I3 BELZEC (PL)

By the summer of 1944, the Allied advance was forcing the Nazis to close down concentration camps. That autumn, tens of thousands of completely exhausted prisoners arrived in Bergen-Belsen after days spent in railway wagons or on “death marches”. In the winter of 1944/45, the hopelessly overcrowded camp held more than 60,000 prisoners, including hundreds of Sinti and Roma transferred there from Buchenwald. When the camp was liberated by British troops in April 1945, they found piles of unburied bodies and most of the survivors were on the verge of starvation.