The Holocaust Pt. 14 - Bergen-Belsen - The Allies' Holocaust

Release Date: Apr 15, 2025

In this episode, Jack discusses the causation of the extreme tragedy of Bergen-Belsen. In April 1945, when the British were approaching the camp, a delegation of German soldiers came to them and asked for a truce in this area and offered to surrender the concentration camp. Typhus was raging through the camp. There were 10,000 bodies in the open air and 13,000 people would die after the camp surrendered. What caused this humanitarian disaster? The Jewish American Congress (JAC) had been lobbying the U.S. Department of War (i.e. - the Department of Defense prior to 1949) to bomb the railways leading to the western concentration camps in order to stop the "Death Trains" going to these "Death Camps". As shown in this episode, none of the western camps were death camps though Dachau was claimed to be a death camp for about a decade after the war. Finally the U.S. relented and bombed the railways late in the war. This destruction of logistics caused the camps to have a shortage of food, medicine, and, most importantly, Zyklon-B. Zyklon-B was the pesticide that the Germans used to delouse clothing and thus prevent the advent of typhus though the lice which carried it. Thus the Germans did not kill the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen. They died from the effect of the U.S. intentionally bombing the logistical apparatus which kept them alive. This U.S. holocaust was so bad that in December 1944 only 350 prisoners died, while in March and April of 1945, 18,168 and 18,355 prisoners died respectively.