Curated tour with Dr Thomas Rahe
In no other Nazi main concentration camp were the camp records – including the prisoner personnel files and transport lists – destroyed by the Schutzstaffel SS ("Protection Squadron") on such a scale shortly before Liberation as at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The aim was to eliminate all evidence of their crimes and to make it difficult, if not impossible, to remember the mass crimes and their victims.
What does this mean for the work of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, for historical research and for the presentation of the camp’s history in a permanent exhibition? What other visual and textual sources, films and artefacts nevertheless make it possible to reconstruct the history of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and to present it visually? What significance do the photographs and film footage taken by the British liberators hold in this context, and in particular the images and texts produced by prisoners during their time in the camp, at incalculable risk? What do we know today about the often extraordinary history of how these materials have been preserved?
Dr Thomas Rahe, Deputy Director of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial until 2022, explores these questions in this themed guided tour, focusing on the original objects and documents on display in the permanent exhibition, as well as drawings, photographs and film footage.
Admission is free. The meeting point is at the information desk of the Documentation Centre. You can reserve a place via our booking portal.
The organisers reserve the right to exercise their domiciliary rights and to refuse admission to or exclude from the event any persons who belong to right-wing extremist parties or organisations or who have made or continue to make anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, history-denying, nationalistic, racist or other inhuman statements, attitudes or visible signs.