{"id":100,"date":"2023-06-18T09:34:47","date_gmt":"2023-06-18T07:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lagernaplok.abtk.hu\/?page_id=100"},"modified":"2025-10-09T11:55:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:55:47","slug":"lagerek","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lagernaplok.abtk.hu\/en\/lagerek\/","title":{"rendered":"Camps"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The dozens of Hungarian-language camp diaries were primarily written by the inhabitants of the special camp section of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the so-called Ungarnlager, by the rural Jews who were transferred from Auschwitz to various labor camps instead of the Strasshof distribution camp, and the women deported to the Buchenwald subcamp, S\u00f6mmerda.      <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Number of Diaries:<\/strong>
Strasshof (and different family camps): 13
Bergen-Belsen: 8
S\u00f6mmerda: 12 (14)
Auschwitz-Birkenau (and different subcamps): 10<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bergen-Belsen<\/h1>\n

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The Hungarian Camp sector of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany was the site of the so-called \u201cKasztner Group.\u201d Under the terms of an agreement between the Zionist Rescue Committee, led by Rezs\u0151 Kasztner, and SS leaders in Hungary, most notably Heinrich Himmler's representative, Kurt Becher, the Kasztner train departed Budapest on June 30, 1944, in exchange for a substantial sum of money and other valuables. The train initially transported approximately 1,700 passengers to a separate section of the Bergen-Belsen camp. The first group of \u201cKasztner Jews\u201d crossed to neutral Switzerland in August 1944, the others in December. Historical works on the Bergen-Belsen camp, primarily in English, focus on the camp's history from the perspective of the Allied troops and as part of the British narrative of World War II. The Kasztner group, which was removed by the end of 1944, was not included in these studies. While the negotiations between the Zionist Aid and Rescue Committee, which organized the Hungarian camp, and the SS have been extensively analyzed in the literature, the nature of the life of the Kasztner Jews in the camp is little known.\nConditions in Bergen-Belsen were more conducive to diary writing. The SS regarded the inhabitants of this camp sector as \u201chostages\u201d or \u201cexchange Jews,\u201d which gave them many advantages. Members of this group were in a privileged position: families were allowed to stay with their children, they were not abused, they did not have to do forced labor, they could keep their luggage, and they had better supplies, some of which were brought from home and others provided by the SS or the Red Cross. In addition, limited autonomy was established within the camp under the control of the Hungarian Jewish camp leadership, which divided up positions and resources among its members, leading to numerous conflicts. The community was divided by several internal fault lines, partly shaped by pre-war social, religious, and ideological differences. The diaries report on this complex situation through the filter of actors thinking in terms of a variety of group interests. In addition, another diary was created in the women's prison camp of Bergen-Belsen, where deportees were deported without any privileges and where starving prisoners suffering from typhus epidemics waited in overcrowded barracks for the arrival of British-Canadian troops in April 1945.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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