Emsland camp Walchum
The Emslandlager Walchum , also called Camp IV, in today's municipality of Walchum , was a National Socialist prisoner camp that was established in May 1935. It could hold 500 prisoners and served as a training camp for the SA guards.
history
In May 1935, Camp IV Walchum was established as one of 15 Emsland camps . It was used by the Reich Ministry of Justice as a prison camp. The camp was designed for 500 prisoners. These came from all over the German Empire and were mostly sentenced to prison terms. Later those sentenced to prison terms were also imprisoned.
The prisoners were used to cultivate the left-hemisphere moor . This included digging peat , draining the site, and building roads and paths.
From 1935 the camp was used to train new guards. Most of these were men of the SA from the Emsland region, who were voluntary . Over the years, however, the number of applicants fell due to poor pay.
In December 1936 it was planned to increase the camp to a capacity of 1000 prisoners. This plan was implemented until 1939. The prisoners were guarded by 200 SA and judicial officers, but the camp was rarely full.
The prisoners were subjected to mental and physical abuse in the camp by the guards. In addition, the prisoners' food was inadequate. As a result, there were 71 known deaths in the Walchum camp. They were buried in the cemetery in Esterwegen . On December 8, 1942, three guards were sentenced by the Osnabrück Regional Court to prison terms of between 5 and 9 months for beating a prisoner to death after attempting to escape.
From 1942, convicts and prisoners of war were also imprisoned by Wehrmacht courts in Walchum . These came from Poland , the Czech Republic and France .
In February 1945, 167 prisoners were still held in the camp. They were taken to the Emsland camp Aschendorfermoor on April 4th .
literature
- Bernd Faulenbach , Andrea Kaltofen (ed.): Hell in the moor. The Emsland camps 1933–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3137-2 .
- Landkreis Emsland (ed.): The destruction of justice and humanity in the concentration and prison camps of the Emsland 1933–1945 , 1986.
- Vera Wollschläger: The death of prisoner Wilhelm Kudlinski in 1942 in the Walchum camp - The Nazi justice system between tolerance and punishment of violence in the prisoner camps of the Emsland. In: Emsländische Geschichte, Volume 26. Haselünne 2019, pp. 207–255, ISBN 978-3-9818393-8-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Esterwegen Memorial , accessed on December 16, 2011
- ↑ a b Camp 4 Walchum ( 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 17, 2011.
Coordinates: 52 ° 55 ′ 52 ″ N , 7 ° 12 ′ 27.5 ″ E