In April 1943 the Nazis created Bergen-Belsen in Lower Saxony near the city of Celle as a transit center - Bergen-Belsen was never officially given formal concentration camp status. But the second commandant, SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Josef Kramer, completed the transformation of Bergen-Belsen into a regular concentration camp.
By 1945 thousands of prisoners who had become too weak to work were shipped there, to die off slowly by starvation and typhoid. In the one month of March, more than 18,000 succumbed.
The first commandant in Bergen-Belsen was SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Adolf Haas. His previous assignment had been the concentration camp known as Niederhagen/Wewelsburg near Paderborn. In early 1944, Haas was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Josef Kramer who had been working in concentration camps since 1934.
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