Camp XV

Alexisdorf

The justice administration had Camp XV Alexisdorf completed in May 1939 for a total of 1,000 prisoners in order to expand the system of penal camps in the Emsland from seven to fifteen camps and to be able to use more prisoners for moorland cultivation. However, it was no longer occupied by prisoners until the beginning of the Second World War.

After the start of the war in September 1939, the Wehrmacht High Command took over the camp as a prisoner of war camp and assigned it as a subcamp to the main prisoner of war camp VI C Bathorn. In 1939, it was a transit camp for Polish and Western European prisoners of war. From 1941, it was occupied by 3,900 Soviet prisoners of war.

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.

The Soviet prisoners of war who died in the Alexisdorf camp were buried in the Dalum camp cemetery until the early summer of 1943. Today, around 600 unknown Soviet prisoners of war rest in mass graves at the Großringe/Neugnadenfeld war cemetery (Camp Alexisdorf).