Camp V

Neusustrum

Alongside the Börgermoor and Esterwegen camps, Camp V Neusustrum was one of the early concentration camps in the Emsland. After coming to power in 1933, the National Socialist leadership and the Prussian state imprisoned mainly political opponents here and used them for forced labour in moorland cultivation. The camp was completed on 1 September 1933 and could hold 1,000 prisoners.

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. An expansion in 1937 increased the camp's capacity to 1,500 prisoners.

The camp road divided the camp into a fenced-off section with the prisoner barracks and a section for the camp administration and guards in the middle of a newly created park. Parts of this park are still preserved today. Near the camp, on Nord-Süd-Straße, the prisoners built the ‘Emslandhaus’ with a banqueting hall, which was donated by Adolf Hitler for the SA guards and inaugurated in 1936.

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.

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.

From 1940 to the end of 1942, up to 1,750 Polish prisoners were imprisoned in the camp. There were also around 70 Jewish prisoners. From 1943, former soldiers convicted by Wehrmacht courts were mainly imprisoned here. In February 1945, there were still 281 prisoners in the camp.

The civil register records 248 deaths. But the actual number is likely to be higher. The dead were buried at the Börgermoor camp cemetery, which is now the Esterwegen burial ground.