Emsland camp

Hall with memorial stones for the Emsland camps

The Emslandlager are a group of concentration, criminal and prisoner of war camps in the districts of Emsland and Grafschaft Bentheim , in western Lower Saxony. There were a total of 15 prison camps established. They served the National Socialists from 1933 to 1945 as detention centers with changing functions with central administration in Papenburg . Its history was presented from 1985 to 2011 in a permanent exhibition in the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager in Papenburg and since November 2011 in the new Esterwegen memorial .

History until 1945

View of the Neusustrum concentration camp from the watchtower

The first three camps KZ Neusustrum , KZ Börgermoor and KZ Esterwegen were set up in 1933 for political “ prisoners ”. After the first two camps were dissolved as a concentration camp in April 1934 and the Esterwegen camp in August / September 1936, they and four newly established camps served as prison camps for the Reich Justice Administration from 1934 to 1945 . The first camp manager of the prisoner camp was Werner Schäfer from 1934 to 1942 . From 1939 to 1945, an increasing number of Wehrmacht members who had been convicted by military courts were admitted to the six camps to the north . Members of various nations were accommodated in the nine southern camps that were taken over as prisoner-of-war camps by the Wehrmacht High Command in September 1939 . In 1943/1944 resistance fighters from France , Belgium and the Netherlands were arrested in Esterwegen . From 1944 to 1945 the Emsland camps Dalum and Versen were also satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp .

A total of around 80,000 concentration camp prisoners and prisoners as well as 100,000 to 180,000 prisoners of war were imprisoned in the camps. Up to 30,000 people, mostly Soviet prisoners of war, died.

In 1942 about two thousand prisoners were shipped to the North Cape for forced labor in order to build defensive structures and roads for the Todt organization under inhumane conditions and to keep them free of snow in winter.

Shortly before the liberation, from April 12 to 19, 1945, around 150 prisoners from the Emsland camps were shot in the Aschendorfermoor camp by a troop led by Willi Herold , who falsely posed as an officer. In addition, at the end of the war, prisoners were killed by Allied bombings and by inhumane treatment during the evacuation marches that led to East Frisia.

View along the memorial

Monument to Liberté chérie

After the liberation

The Emslandlager were liberated from British, Canadian and Polish units. The liberated camp inmates were initially housed in DP camps . For this purpose, the British military administration evacuated some hamlets in the Emsland and requisitioned suitable buildings. The community of Haren (Ems) was placed under Polish administration and thus as a whole became a DP camp. In January 1946 there were 15 DP camps for Polish displaced persons (DP) and one camp for those from the Baltic States . The camps were looked after by the aid organization UNRRA until June 1947 and were then under the care of the IRO . In 1951, responsibility for the DP camps was transferred to a German administration. The remaining DPs were given the legal status of Homeless Foreigners . The Lingen DP camp was not dissolved until 1957.

In November 2004, a memorial for the Belgian Freemasons lodge Liberté chérie was inaugurated at the burial site in Bockhorst / Esterwegen (cemetery for those who perished in the northern Emsland camps) . It was the only lodge that was established within a camp.

structure

The Emsland camps included the following concentration camps:

• the KZ Börgermoor 1933/34, then Strafgefangenenlager to 1945
• the Neusustrum concentration camp in 1933/34, then a prisoner camp until 1945
• the Esterwegen concentration camp 1933–1936, from January 1937 prisoner camp until 1945

The Emsland camps also include:

Service postcard from the headquarters of the Emslandlager in Papenburg

• II Aschendorfermoor
• III Brual roadstead
• IV Walchum
• VI Oberlangen
• VIII Wesuwe
• IX verses
• X fill
• XI Great Hesepe
• XII Dalum
• XIII Wietmarschen
• XIV Bathorn
• XV Alexisdorf

Location of the Emsland camps in Germany (political borders from 1993)

The different uses of the Emsland camps between 1933 and 1945 in the "Third Reich" (concentration camp, prisoner camp, prisoner of war camp)

The occupancy of the Emsland camps in the "Third Reich" between 1933 and 1945 (prisoner categories: concentration camp prisoners, prisoners, military prisoners and perpetrators, prisoners of war, prisoners of war, night and fog prisoners, prisoners on remand)

The foreign prisoners in the Emsland camps in the "Third Reich" during the war (1939–1945)

See also

• The bog soldiers
• Italian war cemetery Hamburg-Öjendorf

literature

• The captain of Muffrika : reviews and comments on the documentary about the wrong captain Willi Herold. In: DIZ-Nachrichten / Action Committee for a Documentation and Information Center Emslandlager e. V., Papenburg 1997, No. 1997, pp. 49-58.
• 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 e. V. - Papenburg. 2009, No. 29, pp. 48-51: Ill.
• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Angelika Königseder (Red.): Early camps, Dachau, Emslandlager. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 531ff.
• Hermann Bogdal: What is important? Life, struggle and fate of the communist Paul Langer, with a foreword by Werner Boldt, Ed. Temmen, Bremen 1997, (DIZ-Schriften Vol. 9), ISBN 3-86108-320-5 .
• Kurt Buck: Esterwegen - The camp . In: Bettina Schmidt-Czaia (Ed.): Esterwegen 1223 to 1999. "Moor and heath only all around ...?" . Edited on behalf of the Esterwegen community, Esterwegen 1999, ISBN 3-00-004441-8 , pp. 205-253.
• Kurt Buck: In search of the moor soldiers. Emslandlager 1933–1945 and the historical places today. 6th edition, Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager, Papenburg 2008, ISBN 3-926277-13-0 .
• Rainer Drewes: Labor service in the Emsland moor: a vision, its abuse and its end. (On youth books by Peter Martin Lampel (1932) and Heinz Ludwig Renz (1938).) In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund, ISSN  0421-1405 , Bd. 52, Sögel 2006, pp. 177-193: Ill. [Note: Es goes to the books . Comrades! Exploration trips to the Emsland camps by Peter Martin Lampel (Berlin: Rowohlt 1932) and Die Front im Emsland by Heinz Ludwig Renz (Voggenreiter, Potsdam 1938)].
• Bernd Faulenbach , Andrea Kaltofen (ed.): "Hell in the Moor". The Emsland camps 1933–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3137-2 .
• 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.
• Wilhelm Henze: High traitor out! Stories, poems and drawings of a moor soldier , edited by Habbo Knoch, Ed. Temmen, Bremen 1992, (DIZ-Schriften Vol. 5).
• Andrea Kaltofen, Hermann Bröring: The Esterwegen Memorial. In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund, Vol. 59, 2013, pp. 31-48, ISBN 978-3-88077-091-1 .
• Hans-Peter Klausch: Extermination through work - prisoners of the Emsland camps in the Neuengamme concentration camp . In: Excluded: “Asocials” and “Criminals” in the National Socialist camp system , publisher Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Ed. Temmen, Bremen 2009, pp. 60-75, ISBN 978-3-8378-4005-6 .
• Hans-Peter Klausch: perpetrator stories. The SS commanders of the early concentration camps in Emsland (DIZ-Schriften; 13). Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-86108-059-1 .
• 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 .
• Erich Kosthorst: The camps in Emsland under the Nazi regime 1933–1945. The task and meaning of historical memory . In: Karl Dietrich Erdmann, J. Rohlfes (Ed.): History in Science and Education , No. 6/1984, pp. 365–379.
• Erich Kosthorst, Bernd Walter: Concentration and prison camps in Emsland 1933–1945 . Düsseldorf 1985, ISBN 3-7700-0638-0 .
• Wolfgang Langhoff: The moor soldiers . Zurich 1936 (later, among others, Stuttgart 1978).
• Andreas Lembeck: Liberated, but not in freedom: Displaced Persons in Emsland 1945–1950 . With documents and with the collaboration of Klaus Wessels. Ed. Temmen, Bremen 1997, (DIZ-Schriften, Vol. 10), ISBN 3-86108-321-3 .
• 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 )).
• Paul Meyer: "No prisoner may fall into the hands of the enemy" - The end of the war in the prisoner camps of the northern Emsland 1944/45 , in: Studiengesellschaft für Emsländische Regionalgeschichte (Ed.), Emsländische Geschichte 25, Haselünne 2018, pp. 300-421 .
• Klaus-Uwe Nommensen (Ed.): Caught in the width: Emslandlager (1933–45); Images, encounters, changes of perspective. Publishing workshop kreuz & quer, Papenburg 2001, ISBN 3-9805547-6-7 .
• TXH Pantcheff: The executioner from Emsland. Willi Herold, 19 years old. A German lesson . Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-7663-3061-6 (2nd edition as: Der Henker vom Emsland. Documentation of barbarism at the end of the war 1995. Schuster, Leer 1995, ISBN 3-7963-0324-2 ).
• Willy Perk: Hell in the moor. On the history of the Emsland camps 1933–1945 . 2nd edition, Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-87682-713-2 .
• Heinrich and Inge Peters: PATTJACKENBLUT. Approaching to die - in a line of 5 limbs. The Herold massacre in Emslandlager II, Aschendorfermoor in April 1945, Norderstedt 2014, ISBN 978-3-7357-6297-9 .
• Karl Schröder: The last station. Ed. By Fietje Ausländer, with contribution from Habbo Knoch, Ed. Temmen, Bremen 1995, (DIZ-Schriften; Vol. 7), ISBN 3-86108-259-4 .
• 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).
• Giovanni R. Frisone, Deborah Smith Frisone: From Albania to Stalag VI C, Versen and Fullen branch camp. Drawings and notes by the Italian military internee Ferruccio Francesco Frisone 1943–1945 , Papenburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-926277-18-3 .
• Ludwig Windthorst Foundation: The path to dictatorship - the implementation of National Socialist rule in the Emsland , materials for teaching from grade 9, Lingen 2012, especially pp. 76–93 PDF version for download

Movies

• Paul Meyer, Rudolf Kersting: The captain of Muffrika: he started his life at 19, he was dead at 20; a story from the last days of the war in Emsland; a documentary. Papenburg 1996, DIZ Emslandlager, 1 video cassette (VHS, 70 min.), B / w, ISBN 3-926277-02-5 .
• Volker Schröder: When I look into the depths: people and moor camps in the Emsland; a movie . 2nd edition, Papenburg 1996, DIZ Emslandlager, 1 video cassette (VHS, 90 min.), ISBN 3-926277-03-3 .

Web links

• The DIZ Emslandlager memorial (also: literature)
• Explanations and a map of the Emsland camps on the website of the Esterwegen memorial site
• Emslandlager project of the Friedrichsfehn primary school
• History of the Emslandlager at "Relektiven.com"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Moorsoldaten in Norway ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. 
2. ^ Maczków - An episode of Polish history
3. ↑ Juergen Hobrecht, When Haren Maczków was called, DIE ZEIT, 21/1995
4. ^ Karl Forster: Haren - Lwów - Maczków - Haren. A Polish city in Germany
5. ↑ Information and map on the website of the Esterwegen memorial site
6. ↑ Camp I Börgermoor at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Camp V Neusustrum at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Camp VII Esterwegen at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from March 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Camp II Aschendorfermoor at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Camp III Brual-Rhede at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from September 17, 2011 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. 
11. ↑ Camp IV Walchum at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ↑ Camp VI Oberlangen at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from February 25, 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. 
13. ↑ Camp VIII Wesuwe at DIZ Emslandlager ( 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. 
14. ↑ Camp IX Verses on DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2012 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. 
15. ↑ Camp X Fullen at DIZ Emslandlager ( 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. 
16. ↑ Camp XI Groß Hesepe at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2010 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. 
17. ↑ Camp XII Dalum at DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
18. ↑ Camp XIII Wietmarschenauf DIZ Emslandlager ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
19. ↑ Camp XIV Bathorn at DIZ Emslandlager ( 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. 
20. ↑ Camp XV Alexisdorf at DIZ Emslandlager ( 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.