The Lipstick Miracle of Bergen-Belsen
The Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp was not an extermination center, there were no gas chambers, no ovens, and the camp had originally been designated for prisoners of war. That all changed in April of 1943 when the SS took over and repurposed the facility to house Jewish prisoners with foreign passports, with the hope that they could be exchanged for German prisoners or other incentives. That effort never came to fruition, as nobody would seriously negotiate with the Nazis.
The camp gradually came to house not only Jews but other “undesirable” marginalized groups such as homosexuals, the mentally ill, some Balkan ethnic groups, and the chronically homeless. The homeless were made up of a diverse group of individuals classified as “Roma or Sinti”, who had been nomadic people in Europe commonly referred to as “gypsies”, along with the “asozial” or “arbeit-scheu,” (anti-social or work-shy) these were generally people who, for whatever reason, the Nazis just could not get any work out of them. They were likely comprised mostly of the mentally ill or deficient along with the disabled.
In late 1944, the camp began to get an influx of prisoners from other camps to the east that were being over-run by the Russian advance. two of these prisoners were diarist Anne Franke and her sister Margot, who perished in Bergen-Belsen sometime in late February or early…