“Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp near Hanover, in north-central Germany during World War II. The Nazis built the facility in 1943 as a detention camp for Jews.

In the winter of 1944-1945, the camp’s population soared. At that time, German forces were in retreat from Allied forces. The Nazis evacuated concentration camps outside Germany and moved many of the prisoners to Bergen-Belsen, which became dangerously over-crowded. From January to mid-April 1945, almost 50,000 people died there of starvation, disease, or exhaustion, or were murdered by the guards. British troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. The soldiers found about 60,000 starving prisoners and more than 10,000 unburied corpses."

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World Book, 257