Dalum

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Dalum
Geeste municipality
Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 27 ″  N , 7 ° 13 ′ 14 ″  E
Height : 24 m above sea level NN
Residents : 4500  (Dec. 31, 2013)
Incorporation : 1st February 1971
Postal code : 49744
Primaries : 05937, 05925
Dalum (Lower Saxony)
Dalum

Location of Dalum in Lower Saxony

Dalum is a district of the municipality of Geeste in the Lower Saxony district of Emsland and with around 4,500 inhabitants is the largest district.

geography

Dalum is on the Ems between Lingen and Meppen . The village consists of the parts Dalum Dorf, Dalumer Rull, Großer Sand , Siedlung, Neuer Kamp and Kottheide.

history

Individual grave goods from the Bronze and Pre-Roman Iron Ages have been found, the first mention of the settlement comes from 1122 as Dalem or Dalham. The Christ the King Church was built in 1931. Dalum was part of the parish of Hesepe until 1936 . On February 1, 1971, Dalum joined the community of Geeste .

Emslandlager Dalum 2010

Emslandlager XII, Dalum

Plan of Emslandlager Dalum 1945 and 2010

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. In villages like Fullen near Meppen these were even signposted.

After the first Soviet prisoners of war who died in the Dalum camp were buried in the cemetery of the 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. Most of them are buried in mass graves; Most of them are known by name, although the opening of the Russian archives will achieve greater clarity here. With this high number it must be taken into account that deceased prisoners from other camps ( Alexisdorf , Wietmarschen ) were also buried here.

The places south of Dalum (Wachendorf and Lingen) had been taken by British forces. Dalum itself and the Dalum camp, which had already been completely cleared at that time, was reached on April 6, 1945 by parts of the 4th Canadian Armored Division . The Canadian unit was on its way to the strategically important city of Meppen and the Ems. It was supposed to advance via Sögel, Werlte, Friesoythe and Cloppenburg to Bad Zwischenahn in order to cut off the German troops in Emsland, East Frisia and the northeast of the Netherlands. Before the front pushed through Dalum, the population was called on by the Allied troops to remove combustible material such as furniture from the houses and to gather in the now empty warehouse.

A group of former Danish prisoners regularly visits the former satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp every year and commemorates the dead in the camp cemetery with a wreath-laying ceremony.

post war period

After the end of the war in May 1945, parts of the camp continued to exist and were u. a. used as accommodation for displaced persons (DP). The majority of them were, as in the entire Emsland, Poland. In addition, farms in particular had to take on at least one person. Some of the victims of National Socialism believed they were right not to be allowed to treat the local residents with little consideration. Frequent arguments were the result; The locals complained of thefts, which the Canadian military administration initially did not or rarely punished, with the commanding officer of the Canadian occupation forces, Christopher Vokes , increasingly punishing such offenses with the expulsion of Polish or Soviet DPs to their home countries. This also makes clear u. a. following statement from Vokes:

"Those Russians were absolute savages. After they were removed, law and order came back to my area and rape, murder and arson disappeared. Perhaps Russia, in it's 1917 Revolution, lost whatever civilizing element of society it had managed to acquire before that time. " ( Translated: "These Russians were absolute savages. After they were removed, law and order returned to my area and rape, murder and arson disappeared. Perhaps in the revolution of 1917 Russia lost the civilizing element of society that it had before." this time. ")

In the meantime - around 1950 - a furniture distributor and the Elwerath union used the former camp site until the remains of the camp were demolished a few years later and the site was 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. For future use, consideration is being given to placing further information boards in the form of a permanent exhibition in order to illustrate and preserve the changing functions of the warehouse for future generations.

Oil production

As early as the 1940s, during the war, oil deposits were discovered in Dalum and extracted by the Elwerath company, whose branch was located opposite today's drying plant. Thanks to the Emsland Plan , it was possible to increase the output significantly in the early 1950s. The number of winding towers (or later so-called "nodding pumps") grew, especially in the Kottheide between the town center and the neighboring Wachendorf. Due to its viscosity, the extracted oil had considerable disadvantages compared to other, more abundant deposits in the region and could only be refined with great effort. In 1950, the Elwerath - Preussag and Wintershall consortium of companies began building a refinery in Holthausen that could process this oil and, above all, should save unnecessary transport costs. But with oil from the Middle East becoming cheaper and cheaper, regional production continued to shrink over the course of the next two decades. Today there are two inactive nodding pumps in Dalum for illustrative purposes.

For decades (from 1952 to 1977) to the south of the former camp XII, drilling mud - which arose during the drilling of the individual oil production platforms - was disposed of. The camp was now called "Erika", although some of the former barracks were also used by the Elwerath union at the time. In the years 2015 - 2017, the former drilling mud pit was laboriously excavated, the contaminated sand disposed of (approx. 106,000 m³ in total) and then renatured.

Also funded by the Emsland Plan , the Neuer Kamp district was built in Dalum in the 1950s , in which mainly displaced persons settled. This is also indicated by the street names that are reminiscent of East Prussian and Silesian cities.

Incorporation

Dalum had the status of a municipality until 1971 - as did the neighboring towns of Geeste and Osterbrock . On February 1, 1971, the three places were merged to form the municipality of Geeste. Dalum became the administrative seat. On March 1, 1974, Bramhar, Groß Hesepe and Varloh followed.

politics

mayor

Community directors

The town hall of the municipality of Geeste is located in the center of Dalum.

Mayor of Geeste has been Helmut Höke (CDU) since November 1, 2014.

Sports

Soccer

The first men's team of SV Dalum will play in the 1st district class Emsland in 2018/2019; the second men's team plays in the 2nd district class Emsland-Mitte in 2015/2016; the third men's team will play in the 3rd district class Emsland-Mitte in 2015/2016. The sporting highlight in the football history of SV Dalum was the test match against Hamburger SV in summer 2018 . A total of over 20,000 spectators were counted.

Handball

The 1st Dalum men's and the first women's team currently play in the regional league in the Bentheim / Emsland area, the 2nd men's team and the 2nd women's team play in the regional league.

swim

In Dalum there is a swimming club called "SV Wasserfreunde Dalum".

tennis

There are several tennis courts in Dalum, including at the SV-Dalum sports field .

Economy and Infrastructure

Transport connections:

Sons and daughters of the church

literature

Local history

  • Bernhard Schniederalbers: My village - my home. Village stories from the past and present . Geeste 2006.
  • Catholic parish of Christ-King Dalum, Evang.-Luth. Parish Dalum (ed.): Dalum - two churches on the way into the 3rd millennium . Dalum 2000.
  • Martin Koers: The community of Geeste. A journey through time in pictures. Sutton, Erfurt 2015, ISBN 978-3-95400-609-0 .

Emslandlager XII, Dalum

  • 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 .
  • Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd ed. 1991, pp. 63–66: Lager XII Dalum .
  • Bernd Faulenbach , Andrea Kaltofen (ed.): "Hell in the Moor". The Emsland camps 1933–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3137-2 .
  • Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prisoner 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 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Geeste community: Geeste community. Retrieved September 2, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd ed. 1991, pp. 64-65.
  3. ↑ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd edition 1991, p. 65.
  4. ↑ Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (ed.): In search of the moor soldiers . Papenburg, 3rd edition 1991, p. 66.
  5. ^ Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Historical municipality directory for the Federal Republic of Germany. Name, border and key number changes in municipalities, counties and administrative districts from May 27, 1970 to December 31, 1982 . W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart and Mainz 1983, ISBN 3-17-003263-1 , p. 257 and 258 .