Camp VII

Esterwegen

Alongside Neusustrum and Börgermoor, Camp VII Esterwegen was one of the early concentration camps in the Emsland. From August 1933, the National Socialist leadership and the Prussian state imprisoned mainly political opponents in the camp, which was set up for 2,000 prisoners, and forced them to work in moorland cultivation.

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 the early summer of 1934, the camp became a concentration camp solely operated by the SS, which expanded the camp to become the second largest concentration camp in the German Reich after Dachau concentration camp by 1936. In 1936, the guard force consisted of over 500 SS men. The camp was occupied by around 800 prisoners in 1935.

In October 1936, the camp was dissolved as a concentration camp and continued to operate as a penal detention centre for the judiciary. It was guarded by an SA unit in the service of the judiciary, which was later complemented by judicial officers. An expansion in 1937 increased the camp's capacity to 1,600 prisoners.

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. In 1944, the engineering company Klatte from Bremen set up a factory at the camp where prisoners had to produce armaments, including aircraft parts.

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 were 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.

Between May 1943 and May 1944, the judiciary transferred around 2,700 ‘Nacht-und-Nebel’ (‘Night-and-Fog’) prisoners, resistance fighters from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, to Esterwegen. The judiciary separated the ‘Camp South’ from the rest of the prison camp to accommodate them.

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