Springer, Elisa

Elisa Springer (12 Feb. 1918 – 19 Sept. 2004) was an Austrian Jewess who married an Italian and moved to Italy in 1940, living under a false identity. She was betrayed in 1944, arrested and deported to Auschwitz, arriving there in early August. After three months she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen Camp.

She went public with her story only in 1997 with the publication of her autobiographical story. She claimed in it that “the gas chambers and furnaces” in Bergen-Belsen were put into operation after Josef Kramer had become camp commandant there (Springer 1997, p. 88). However, there was never a homicidal gas chamber conceived or planned, let alone built and put in operation at the Bergen-Belsen Camp, and the camp had only one furnace, which went into operation long before Kramer was transferred to that camp in late 1944. Together with Moshe Peer, Elisa Springer is among the few witnesses who have made up bold lies about alleged homicidal gas chambers in the Bergen-Belsen Camp.