Emsland camp Dalum

Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 22.2 "  N , 7 ° 11 ′ 12.8"  E

Emsland camp Dalum​

Germany

The Emslandlager Dalum , also called Emslandlager XII, existed from 1939 to 1945 two kilometers west of the village of Dalum .

history

Establishment of the camp

Plan of the Emsland camp Dalum in 1941 and 1992

At a meeting of officials from several Reich Ministries on July 7, 1936, it was decided to use more prisoners to accelerate the reclamation of the moors in the Emsland . Because prisoners could be deployed and exploited far more ruthlessly than the Reich Labor Service (RAD), which did not keep its promises during the cultivation work in the moor, neither with regard to the number of men deployed nor their performance. After the Reich Labor Service had withdrawn, construction work began in the spring of 1938 for further Emsland camps, including camp XII Dalum. But just a few months later, in August 1938, 10 barracks were dismantled and moved to the French border near Zweibrücken as part of the Westwall project . After the Munich Conference and the incorporation of the Sudetenland , the barracks on the Siegfried Line were dismantled and rebuilt in the Dalum camp. The camp was completed in May 1939, but until the beginning of the Second World War it had not been filled with prisoners.

POW camp

Remaining remains of the Emsland camp Dalum: transformer house and three posts of the entrance gate

In September 1939 the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) took over the Dalum camp - as did the other eight new Emsland camps. Organizationally, it was one of several branch bearing the team Stammlager Bathorn assigned VI C (Stalag VI C). Around 5000 Polish prisoners of war were imprisoned in camp VI C in 1939, most of them merely as transit prisoners. In December 1939, only 571 Poles were registered in the entire Stalag VI C.
In 1940 the Dalum camp was mainly occupied by French prisoners of war.
The prisoners were first transported by Reichsbahn to Osterbrock and marched from there the seven-kilometer route from the train station through the village of Dalum to the camp, escorted by guards.
The camp became hopelessly overcrowded after the German troops captured more than two million Red Army soldiers in the summer and autumn of 1941 . In September 1941, 4,100 Soviet prisoners of war were crammed into the Dalum camp. As a rule, the guards treated Western prisoners better than Eastern European ones, as the latter were considered "unworthy of life" due to the racial ideology propagated by the Nazis . In the very cold winter of 1941/1942 in particular, the disease and mortality rates were extremely high - due to hard physical work, moisture, inadequate clothing and food and the unsanitary conditions due to overcrowding in the barracks.

The camp cemetery

Dalum war cemetery

After the first Russian prisoners of war to die in the Dalum camp were buried in the cemetery of the Dalum Catholic community, resistance arose. The camp commandant reported to the Münster military district command on August 20, 1941: With the increase in the number of deaths among Russian prisoners of war ... the excitement of the population that would not tolerate Bolsheviks being buried in their cemetery has increased. As a result, a camp cemetery was set up two kilometers from the camp, where 8,000–16,000 dead rest. With this high number, however, it must be taken into account that deceased prisoners from other camps ( Alexisdorf , Wietmarschen ) were also buried in Dalum. Most of them are buried in mass graves; by far not all are known by name (yet). But there is a prospect of finding out at least a large number of the names of the prisoners of war resting in the Dalum camp cemetery. After all, after the end of the war, the Western Allies handed over to the Wehrmacht the registry of Soviet prisoners of war; They are kept in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (the former Archives of the Red Army) in Podolsk , including the index of prisoners of war in the Emsland camps. Around 10,000 names have now been documented (as of 2014).

Everyday work

To work in the moor, the prisoners were taken to their respective locations in the Dalum-Wietmarscher moor by light rail . All camps of the camp complex were connected to such a field railway, which u. a. was also used for - of course poor - medical care by so-called camp doctors. From 1941 the prisoners were increasingly used in agriculture instead of in the moor, and to a lesser extent in local businesses. Because it was necessary to replace the workers drafted into the Wehrmacht. In the village of Bathorn - and elsewhere it was similar - it happened as follows: Almost every local resident who owned a farm or business could submit an application for the assignment of prisoners in advance. If the application was granted, the camp inmates were escorted to a collection point in the morning and picked up there by the farmer or the client. It was expressly forbidden to include prisoners in family life, such as B. Eating meals at the same table, let alone establishing closer contact with them. These prohibitions were not always obeyed - neither by the prisoners nor by the farmers themselves. The guards were, however, obliged to regularly check the work and behavior of the prisoners. In the evening the camp inmates had to be brought back to the assembly point, from there they went back to the camp. The fact that the prisoners in the Dalum camp were badly treated could not go unnoticed in Dalum. The Emsland camps were deliberately not “hidden” from the population; they should serve as a warning against oppositional behavior.

Subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp

From June 5, 1942 to November 1944, the Luftwaffe used the camp as an equipment store. From mid-November 1944 about 2,000 men were brought from Rotterdam to Dalum. They were among the almost 50,000 men between the ages of 17 and 40 who died on 10/11. November 1944 were arrested as part of a raid in Rotterdam and were forced to work in Germany. But after two or three weeks, until mid-December, the prisoners from Rotterdam were distributed to other forced labor camps.
Because since November 1944, the camp Dalum was a satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp ( sub-camp Dalum ). About 2500 prisoners were "brought" from Neuengamme to Dalum and Versen . Here is a statement from a Danish prisoner:

Immediately after New Year 1945, around January 1st and 2nd, 1945, we were set off in the direction of Dalum, initially by train, the rest on foot. The transport took two to three days. It comprised around 1,000 prisoners, including around 100 Danes and 5 Norwegians. [...] When we arrived in Dalum, there were no other prisoners there.

The prisoners relocated from Neuengamme to Dalum and Versen were supposed to dig defensive positions ( armored trenches ) in the Meppen area against the allies advancing from the Netherlands ( Friesenwall project ). Inmates from the Versen camp later spoke of completely pointless measures, since the British, Polish and Canadian troops simply came over the paved roads through the moor. Even when the trenches were being built, the edges often collapsed again due to the soaked boggy earth. To illustrate this pointless measure, the following fact: The Canadian troops managed to advance from Coevorden and Emlichheim over cobbled streets to Meppen on the Ems in less than a day. The biggest problem was the road itself, as the paving stones sank into the boggy ground under the weight of hundreds of military vehicles and so later on alternative routes had to be used. Crossing the moor itself was out of the question for the Canadians from the start. So it would have been enough to just make parts of the cobblestone streets impassable. Since no incidents between German and Canadian soldiers are known during this advance, it can be assumed that the defensive positions were probably not even registered.

The guards of the subcamp

At the beginning of 1945 the guards consisted of just five SS men, to whom up to a hundred marines were assigned. (At that time, older marines were often employed in concentration and labor camps as "retired" soldiers who were no longer suitable for frontline work.)
In this last phase of the war, SS-Untersturmführer Hans Hermann Griem and his deputy SS-Unterscharfuhrer Josef Klingler became the camp commandant used. Klingler was considered brutal, Griem, who used to withhold food, was also a drunkard and one of the few SS camp commanders who actively mistreated their prisoners themselves at the time. On his orders, terrible tortures and ill-treatment were perpetrated, including sadistic "revolver firing exercises" by the commandant on his "prisoner material". Griem's ​​attitude is made clear by a dialogue at the end of 1944 between him and the Danish prisoner doctor Dr. Paul Thygesen, who confronted Griem because of the exorbitantly high sick leave in the Neuengammer subcamp Husum-Schwesing, in which Griem was previously the camp commandant and triggered a real mass death there: “The prisoners who cannot be kept alive here also have none Permission to exist in a new Europe and they may as well die now as they will later. This is not a supply establishment, and I will simply request new prisoner material - by the way, leave me alone with your false humanitarian delusions. ” It should be mentioned that Thygesen's criticism of an SS man alone could have been life-threatening. Thygesen, however, must have enjoyed a certain respect from Griem, as he was later used by Griem as a prisoner doctor in Dalum.
Klingler's brutality was not unknown, he was given the reputation that he liked to beat prisoners to the point of broken bones and was more of Griem's ​​staunch henchman than simply taking orders. In one case in the Ladelung subcamp, Klingler took this to the point that he posted a prisoner who had previously been severely abused for alleged food theft and who had then died in front of the camp entrance and asked the returning prisoners to take a close look at him in the evening as they passed. Anyone who did not do this was severely punished by Klingler. Klingler later had to answer for this incident in court.
In another case, at the beginning of March 1945, Griem and Klingler tried to reduce the high level of sick leave in the camp by placing a board over the camp's own extinguishing water pond and driving 20 obviously sick prisoners over it. Anyone who made it across the pond was considered healthy enough for the hard work. Two inmates didn't make it. Griem and Klingler prevented them from reaching the bank in the ice-cold water. One of the two died the next day.
Unterscharführer Josef Klingler was sentenced to death by a British military tribunal in Hamburg in March 1947 after the war. After his escape from Neuengamme at the end of the war, however, Griem lived on for almost two decades, sometimes under an assumed name near Hamburg and in Schleswig-Holstein, and died in 1971 before the start of legal proceedings that were resumed.

In March 2020, a decision by the Department of Justice in the state of Tennessee in the USA caused a sensation in which the former security guard Karl Friedrich Berger was involved in guarding the prisoners due to his service in the Meppen-Dalum subcamp. The now 94 year old Berger did not deny his presence, but stated that he did not carry a weapon. Among other things, he was also involved as a guard during the evacuation march to Cloppenburg.

Eviction of the camp

The Dalum camp was abandoned on March 24, 1945 when the Allies advanced on the Emsland. Those who were still able to work had to start the march around noon, the sick were transported in train wagons towards Cloppenburg , where the train was bombed.

Parts of the 4th Canadian Armored Division reached the camp, which had already been completely cleared at that time, as well as Dalum itself on April 6, 1945.

post war period

After the end of the war in May 1945, some of the camp was still used, and that - like camps in other places - u. a. as a reception center for displaced persons (DP). Many of them, like most of the DPs in Emsland as a whole, were Poles.

In the meantime - around 1950 - a furniture distributor (meanwhile) and the Elwerath union set up on the former warehouse site. A few years later the remains of the camp were demolished and the area leveled. Only a transformer house, which also served the waterworks next door, and three posts of the entrance gate remained. These remains of the camp are listed as warning evidence of the past.

Commemoration

Since 1981 the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager has ensured that the Dalum camp was not forgotten.

A group of former Danish prisoners visited the former satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp in Dalum every year until the beginning of the 2010s and commemorated the dead by laying a wreath. Today (as of 2019) annual commemorative trips of the Amicale de Neuengamme from Belgium, the Netherlands and France lead to the location of the former Dalum camp.

literature

in order of appearance

• Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prison camps in Emsland 1933–1945 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1985, pp. 109–114: Versen (camp IX) and Dalum as subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (near Hamburg) - November 1944 to March 1945 .
• Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (Hrsg.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd ed. 1991, pp. 63–66: Lager XII Dalum .
• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps , Volume 5: Angelika Königseder (Red.): Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , pp. 480-483.
• Bernd Faulenbach , Andrea Kaltofen (ed.): "Hell in the Moor". The Emsland camps 1933–1945 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3137-2 .
• Geeste community (ed.), Martin Koers: "Who of us no longer remembers those long struggles of Russian prisoners ...". Documentation on the historical traces of the Groß Hesepe and Dalum camps and the camp cemetery (Dalum war cemetery) . Geeste 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063302-7 .

Web links

Commons : Emslandlager Dalum  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Camp XII Dalum at the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager, accessed on December 29, 2012
• Camp XII Dalum Memorial Esterwegen, accessed on September 27, 2016

Footnotes

1. ↑ Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prison camps in Emsland 1933–1945 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1985, p. 142 and p. 164-165.
2. ↑ Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prison camps in Emsland 1933–1945 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1985, pp. 177-178.
3. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 29, 2012. 
4. ^ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd edition 1991, p. 64.
5. ↑ Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prison camps in Emsland 1933–1945 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1985, pp. 110-111.
6. ^ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd ed. 1991, pp. 64-65.
7. ^ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd edition 1991, p. 65.
8. ^ Rolf Keller: The German-Russian research project "Soviet prisoners of war 1941-1945". Goals, content, first results . In: Gunter Bischof, Stefan Karner, Barbara Stelzl-Marx (eds.): Prisoners of War of the Second World War. Prisoners - Camp Life - Return. (= Research on the Consequences of War, Vol. 4) Oldenbourg, Munich 2005. ISBN 978-3-486-57818-8 . Pp. 460-475.
9. ↑ Meppener Tageszeitung from September 3, 2014: The commemorative event at the Dalum camp cemetery on the 75th anniversary of the start of the war in 1939.
10. ^ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd ed. 1991, pp. 65-66.
11. ^ Directory of the concentration camps and their external commandos in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG No. 260.
12. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , quotation p. 480.
13. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Page 31 
14. ↑ Tennessee Man Ordered Removed to Germany Based on Service as Concentration Camp Guard During WWII. March 5, 2020, accessed April 11, 2020 . 
15. ↑ Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prison camps in Emsland 1933–1945 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1985, p. 109.
16. ^ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd edition 1991, p. 66.