Esterwegen memorial

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General plan of the Esterwegen memorial
The way to the Kuhmoor.
View from the camp through the memorial to the moor

The Esterwegen memorial is located in the village of Esterwegen in the Emsland district near the coastal canal between Oldenburg iO and Papenburg . It is reminiscent of the 15  Emsland camps , of which the Börgermoor concentration camp was first established on June 20, 1933; the Esterwegen and Neusustrum concentration camps followed .

History of the Emslandlager

The history of the Emsland camps began on June 20, 1933 with the establishment of the first of three concentration camps (" early concentration camps "). Up until 1945 the camps had different functions: state concentration camps, SS concentration camps , protective custody camps , camps for "night and fog prisoners" , prisoner-of-war and prisoner-of-war camps.

History of the memorial

First efforts to create a memorial site

Shortly after the Second World War , there was a desire to set up a memorial, e.g. B. at a meeting of a few hundred prisoners, the so-called "bog soldiers" . In 1963 the union youth erected a memorial stone for Carl von Ossietzky in the camp cemetery on the B 401 . In 1979 the Weser-Ems district government refused to put up a memorial plaque in Esterwegen for a local working group on the grounds that the prisoners were also “ordinary criminals”. Hermann Vinke , Gerhard Kromschröder u. A., who dealt with the history of the Emsland camps, were massively - also professionally - disabled. Since many of the bog soldiers were communists , the Office for the Protection of the Constitution also attended to their meetings and also observed the journalists.

DIZ Emslandlager

Association "Action Committee for a DIZ Emsland Camp"

In 1981, with the support of former prisoners, a private non-profit association was founded under the name “Action Committee for a DIZ Emsland Camp”. His aim was to set up a memorial to research, process and present the history of the Emsland camps. But the efforts were unsuccessful. The association's desired site for a historical location, the former Esterwegen concentration camp, was used by the Bundeswehr as a depot.

DIZ in Papenburg

In 1985 the DIZ Emslandlager association set up a temporary permanent exhibition in a rented house in Papenburg. Under the direction of Kurt Bucks, tours with school classes and other interested parties were organized from here, and once a year for former prisoners. Documents and models were shown in the exhibition. Seminars and conferences were held outside the DIZ. On the initiative of the district of Emsland, with the support of the state of Lower Saxony and the city of Papenburg, construction began in 1991. In 1993 it was inaugurated as part of an international meeting of former prisoners.

Esterwegen memorial at a historical location

View over the former Lagerstraße in today's Esterwegen memorial
Plantings indicate the former barracks.
Artistically suggested watchtower on a corner of the warehouse

“In the Emsland , the legend has long been widespread that they strongly rejected National Socialism , and that is not entirely wrong, at least for the beginning. But when the Nazis were there, you adapted well or had to adapt - depending on the situation. And so many Emslanders have the feeling that they were deeply involved. ... Especially in a region like the Emsland, you are ashamed of what your neighbor has committed, your relative or someone from your own village. "

- Henning Harpel : Later Change of Heart , taz from October 30, 2011

After no memorial could be erected on a historical site for decades, Lower Saxony's Minister of the Interior Egbert Möcklinghoff decided that a commemorative plaque could be set up at the Esterwegen burial site. In 2001 the district of Emsland took over the site of the former camp in Esterwegen from the Bundeswehr with the aim of building a central memorial for the 15 Emsland camps. 2008 was the Emsland district , the Foundation Memorial Esterwegen founded. The DIZ has continued its work in this facility since the inauguration of this memorial. The memorial cost almost six million euros; it came from the federal government, the state of Lower Saxony, the district of Emsland and several foundations. The institution is run by the Esterwegen Memorial Foundation .

“All of our employees, who have been employed at the DIZ up to now and who have all been with us almost from the start, go into the new memorial, as does everything that we have collected in our 26 years of exhibits, letters, drawings and carvings from former camp inmates . "

- Kurt Buck : Later Change of Heart, taz from October 30, 2011

"After more than six decades you have built a wonderful house - one can only hope that memories will also move in."

- Gerhard Kromschröder : Later change of heart, taz from October 30, 2011

On October 21, 2011, the memorial was opened in a festive ceremony in the presence of Lower Saxony's Prime Minister David McAllister . It has been available to the public since November 2011. In 2015, 26,790 people visited the memorial.

concept

The long-term use of the concentration camp site after the Second World War posed a challenge to the work of remembrance, as many traces had been removed during use by the Bundeswehr.

“The dimensions of the area, the points that are particularly important for oppression, being locked up, being constantly guarded, cannot go away, that is, for all of the terrible conditions of detention that stand for it, the gates, the outer wall, the watchtowers, have been translated into Corten steel -Quotes. Steel as a very hard, sharp-edged material, then of course also reflects the hardness as such, makes reference to the material steel of the earlier peat spades that the prisoners had, the moor transport tracks , the rails and peat floors , and then it is just that creative this rust was used on purpose, so a dark brown-red rust patina on these elements, which now fit into the landscape accordingly. "

- Andrea Kaltofen, Managing Director of the Esterwegen Memorial Foundation : In: We are the Moorsoldaten - The history of the Emsland camps and the route to the Esterwegen Memorial (broadcast by Deutschlandradio Kultur on October 28, 2011
"Weg ins Kuhdamm-Moor" at the Esterwegen memorial (the moor soldiers had to go into the moor with a spade to dig peat.)

Way into the Kuhdamm moor

The prisoners in the Emsland camps that "Moorsoldaten" had the surrounding moor in the Emsland make reclaimed . From work in the bog in the well is KZ Börgermoor resulting Moorsoldaten song :

“Wherever the eye looks. Bog and heather only all around. Vogelsang does not refresh us, oaks stand bare and crooked. We are the moor soldiers and we move into the moor with our spades!
...
But for us there is no complaint, winter cannot be forever. One day we will be happy to say: Home, you are mine again! Then the moor soldiers won't drag their spades into the moor anymore! Then the moor soldiers won't drag their spades into the moor! "

- Text and explanations for the Moorsoldatenlied

When you leave the memorial, you can take the moor nature trail there on the way to the Kuhdamm moor .

Rows of graves in the burial place
Grave numbering

Burial place Esterwegen

1,315 prisoners from various Emsland camps are buried in the Bockhorst / Esterwegen cemetery. Many resistance fighters and also prisoners who were imprisoned for military and criminal offenses are buried there. A number of the deceased have been reburied in their home countries.

“In memory of the victims of National Socialism who perished in the Esterwegen concentration camp. Her remains rest on the cemetery in verse. "

- Memorial stone until 1969 at the Bockhorst / Esterwegen cemetery

This inscription gave the impression: The dead now lying in the cemetery were not victims of National Socialism , so members of the Democratic Club Papenburg chiseled out the end of the inscription in July 1969. Later a plaque was put up with a different text:

“Between 1933 and 1936 persecuted people under the Nazi regime were buried in this cemetery, who had died as prisoners in the Börgermoor, Neusustrum and Esterwegen concentration camps. In 1955 these dead were transferred to the cemeteries for victims of the tyranny in Versen (today the city of Meppen). In 1943 and 1944, resistance fighters from several Western European countries who had been deported to Germany during the war were also buried here. After the war they were exhumed and, with few exceptions, buried in their home countries. In the graves that still exist there are many dead who were subjected to inhuman and cruel detention as prisoners and remand prisoners in the Emsland camps Börgermoor, Aschendorfermoor, Brual-Rhede, Walchum, Neusustrum, Oberlangen and Esterwegen between 1936 and 1945. Not far from here - near Herbrum - rest around 200 prisoners from the Aschendorfermoor camp, who were shot in the last days of the war. The prisoners of war who died in the Emsland camps are buried in the Oberlangen, Wesuwe, Versen, Fullen, Dalum, Füchtenfeld and Neu-Gnadenfeld cemeteries. We remember all prisoners who suffered in the Emsland camps in dismay and sadness. "

- Text of the memorial plaque

Remembrance work in the memorial

Educational offers are made at the Esterwegen Memorial:

  • Age-specific or topic-related lectures on the history of the Emsland camps
  • short introduction and individual tour of the exhibition
  • Explanations of the Emsland camps on the overview map and aerial photo
  • Walk across the camp area
  • Drive to the Esterwegen burial site
  • Archive work on biographies, aspects of camp life, etc. in the memorial archive
  • Project days or weeks with a thematic focus for youth groups - if desired with practical work in the field
  • Day seminars on aspects of the Emsland camp - especially for adults
  • Excursions to the locations of the other former camps

Prominent prisoners in the Emsland camps

literature

  • Fietje Ausländer: A “digital memory” of the Emsland camps: Project “Preparatory work for a virtual prisoner archive. Securing, expanding and listing the sources of contemporary witnesses and documentary holdings of the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager ” . In: DIZ-Nachrichten / Action Committee for a Documentation and Information Center Emslandlager eV - Papenburg. 2009, No. 29, pp. 48-51: Ill.
  • Kurt Buck: In search of the moor soldiers. Emslandlager 1933 - 1945 and the historical places today , Papenburg, 6th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-926277-16-9
  • Henning Harpel: The Emsland Camps of the Third Reich. Forms and problems of active historical memory in the northern Emsland 1955–1993 . In: Study Society for Emsland Regional History (ed.): Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 12. Haselünne 2005, pp. 134–239.
  • Bernd Faulenbach , Andrea Kaltofen (ed.): Hell in the moor. The Emsland camps 1933–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3137-2 .
  • Wolfgang Langhoff: The moor soldiers. 13 months concentration camp , Verlag Neuer Weg, Essen, 10th edition 2002
  • Dirk Lüerßen: We are the moor soldiers . The inmates of the early concentration camps in Emsland 1933 to 1936 - Biographical studies on the connection between the categorical assignment of the arrested, their respective forms of behavior in the camp and the effects of imprisonment on the further life story . Dissertation , University of Osnabrück 2001 ( full text as PDF (Internet archive), 2.79 MB ( memento from June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )).
  • Theo Paul : Esterwegen - memory needs places. A new monastery on the site of a former concentration camp . In: The Minster. Journal for Christian Art and Art History, ISSN 0027-299X, vol. 62 (2009) pp. 21–24.
  • Elke Suhr: The Emsland camps. The political and economic importance of the Emsland concentration and prison camps 1933–1945 . Verlag Donat & Temmen, Bremen 1985, ISBN 3-924444-07-2 (plus dissertation, University of Oldenburg 1984).

Web links

Commons : Esterwegen Memorial  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ruth Hunfeld, The wall of silence is broken, broadcast by NDR on October 30, 2010 ( Memento from November 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ DIZ = Documentation and Information Center
  3. ↑ Simone Schnase: Trouble with memory work in Emsland: The truce is crumbling . In: The daily newspaper: taz . August 9, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed October 20, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Robert von Lucius : Don't forget in the moor: Esterwegen - inaugurated as a memorial . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 31, 2011, p. 2.
  5. ↑ A memorial for "Hell in the Moor", NDR, October 31, 2011 ( Memento from October 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Almost 27,000 visitors to the Esterwegen memorial. welt.de, February 22, 2016, accessed on February 22, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Camp 6 / Oberlangen
  8. ^ Camp 8 / Wesuwe
  9. ↑ Camp 10 / Fullen
  10. ↑ Camp 14 / Bathorn ( Memento of October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Camp 15 / Alexisdorf ( Memento from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ In Search of the Moorsoldaten, educational guidelines of the Volksbund (PDF; 822 kB)
  13. ↑ Memorial plaque at the entrance to the Bockhorst / Esterwegen burial site
  14. ↑ Hartmut Soell : Fritz Erler , Vol. 1 (International Library, Vol. 100), JHW ​​Dietz Nachf., Berlin, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1976, pp. 53–57, ISBN 3-8012-1100-2 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 0 ′ 30.8 ″  N , 7 ° 38 ′ 32 ″  E