A concentration camp in northwest Germany, Bergen-Belsen was named for its location near two villages.

Originally a camp for Allied prisoners-of-war, Bergen-Belsen was converted into a holding camp for Jewish prisoners in the spring of 1943. Detainees were often individuals with prominence or international standing, or related to influential people overseas, who were to be exchanged for Germans in Allied custody.

From the spring of 1944, the camp was expanded to include other prisoner groups, many of them female prisoners assigned to work in the armaments industry. Conditions in the camp worsened severely with the arrival of prisoners from camps in the east who were evacuated into the Reich as the Soviet army pushed westward in the fall of 1944. the prisoner population grew from c. 15,000 at the end of 1944 to over 40,000 by March 1945. Some 8,000 women were transported to Bergen-Belsen from Auschwitz-Birkenau, including Anne Frank and her sister Margot. Both were among the c. 18,000 who died here in March 1945.

British soldiers reached Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. It was the first major camp to be liberated by the western Allies. From July 1946, Bergen-Belsen was the site of the largest camp for displaced persons (DPs) in Germany. An important center of political, social and cultural activity among DPs, who immediately began to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Many young survivors married and started families in the camp before emigrating. The last DPs left the camp in mid-1951.