Bergen-Belsen was never a typical concentration camp. It was established in 1943 to house a special group of wealthy and influential Jews. The Germans thought they might be able to exchange them for Germans imprisoned by the British and Americans. The inmates of Belsen, as the camp has come to be known, had to work and survive on little food, but conditions were generally better than at any other camps and there were no gas chambers. In 1944, as the Russian began their advances into Europe, the Nazis started evacuating camps in Eastern Europe. Belsen was flooded with starving evacuees from these camps, who were left there to die.