in april 1943, a part of the bergen-belsen camp was taken over by the ss economic-administration main office ("ss wirtschafts-verwaltungshauptamt; wvha"). it thus became part of the concentration camp system, run by the "ss schutzstaffel" but it was a special case. having initially been designated a "zivilinterniertenlager" ("civilian internment camp"), in june 1943 it was redesignated "aufenthaltslager" ("holding camp"), since the geneva conventions stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees. this "holding camp" or "exchange camp" was for jews who were intended to be exchanged for german civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency. the ss divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the "hungarian camp", the "special camp" for polish jews, the "neutrals camp" for citizens of neutral countries and the "star camp" for dutch jews). between the summer of 1943 and december 1944 at least 14,600 jews, including 2,750 children and minors were transported to the bergen-belsen "holding" or exchange camp. inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to the camp from all over germany and occupied europe. in general the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of bergen-belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value. however, only around 2,560 jewish prisoners were ever actually released from bergen-belsen and allowed to leave germany.