Camp XIV

Bathorn

The justice administration had Camp XIV Bathorn completed in June 1938 for a total of 1,000 prisoners in order to expand the system of prison camps in the Emsland from seven to fifteen camps and to be able to use more prisoners for moorland cultivation. In August 1938, there were 228 prisoners in the camp.

In the summer of 1938, eight barracks were disassembled and transported to the Palatinate, where prisoners were used for forced labor in the construction of fortifications on the ‘Westwall’ (= western bulwark). After the barracks were transported back, the reconstruction of the camp was completed in May 1939.

After the start of the war in September 1939, the Wehrmacht High Command took over the camp as the VI C Bathorn prisoner-of-war camp. In 1939 it was a transit camp for Polish prisoners of war, in 1940 for Dutch and French prisoners of war. In August 1941, the Wehrmacht held 4,016 Soviet prisoners of war here.

The Soviet prisoners of war in particular suffered ruthless treatment due to Nazi racial ideology. The inadequate nutrition and poor hygienic conditions in the overcrowded barracks claimed countless victims. After cultivation work was discontinued in 1941, the German leadership increasingly deployed the prisoners of war in agriculture and in commercial businesses, especially in peat, clay and brickworks.