Abigail Spannjard was an American citizen of Jewish heritage who was incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen with her husband and teen-age son. They were released early in 1945 as part of a prisoner-swap, and the account she gives of the abuses they endured is chilling:
The SS guards used to take off the prisoner’s caps and fling them to the fence, then order the men to fetch them. Refusal meant death, so the men obeyed. The guards in the towers, seeing the prisoners running toward the wire, would open fire and kill them. The bodies of the victims would be placed on the paths around the camp and all the women and children would be forced to walk past the corpses 20 times and told: ‘See what happens to disobedient husbands,”
Another article about Bergen-Belsen can be read here.
