Camp I

Börgermoor

Alongside Neusustrum and Esterwegen, Camp I Börgermoor was one of the early concentration camps in the Emsland. From June 1933, the National Socialist leadership and the Prussian state imprisoned mainly political opponents in the camp, which was set up for 1,000 prisoners, and used them for forced labour in moorland cultivation. In his book ‘Die Moorsoldaten’ (‘The Peat Bog Soldiers’), published during his exile in Switzerland in 1935, Wolfgang Langhoff describes his experiences of imprisonment in Börgermoor, including the creation of the song ‘Wir sind die Moorsoldaten’ (‘We are the Peat Bog Soldiers’) in August 1933.

The SS guards terrorised the prisoners. Due to jurisdictional disputes between the Prussian state and the SS, the SS were replaced in November 1933 first by the police and then by an SA guard unit. The inhumane treatment of the prisoners did not change under the SA guards. In April 1934, the camp was dissolved as a concentration camp and continued to operate as a penal prison camp. An SA unit in the service of the judiciary took over the guard duties, which were later complemented by judicial officers.

Depending on the time of year, the prisoners had to perform 8 to 12 hours of forced labour in the moor every day (drainage, road and path construction, peat extraction). Following the start of the war in 1939, the prisoners were increasingly deployed in essential war industries and in agriculture. The rations were poor and inadequate in relation to the hard labour. In addition to this general ordeal, the prisoners were subjected to a great variety of physical and psychological abuse by the guards. There was an unknown number of deaths and murders.

Up until the beginning of the war, the prisoners were people who had been persecuted by the Nazi regime on political, racial, social or religious grounds. In addition, there was a much larger group of prisoners who had been convicted of criminal offences. After the start of the war, the judicial authorities increasingly transferred former soldiers convicted by Wehrmacht courts to the camp.

In February 1944, the judiciary briefly transferred around 500 to 600 ‘Nacht-und-Nebel’ (‘Night-and-Fog’) prisoners, resistance fighters from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, to Börgermoor, as the Esterwegen camp intended for their imprisonment was completely overcrowded.

The deceased of the Börgermoor camp, whose number is unknown due to lost documents in the post-war period, were buried in the Börgermoor camp cemetery, which is now the Esterwegen burial ground.