Emslandlager ("Emsland camps") were a series of 15 moorland labor, punitive and POWs-camps, active from 1933 to 1945 and located in the districts of Emsland and Bentheim, Lower Saxony, Germany.
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Camp Wesuwe was the eighth of the fifteen Emslandlager and was established in the spring of 1938 as one of the eight new penal camps in the Emsland.
The camp had to be able to handle an occupation of 1,000 people. In August 1938, Hitler ordered 12,000 prisoners and a large number of barracks from the Emslandlager to be transferred to the Westwall. Camp Wesuwe, also without prisoners, was involved in this, but after the Munich conference in which the Germans appropriated the Sudetenland, all prisoners and barracks could return to their old destination.
The camp remained empty until September 1939. Soon after the outbreak of the war, however, it was transformed into a prisoner of war camp, mainly for Russian prisoners. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) then takes the lead. Camp Wesuwe then becomes part of Stalag VI B Meppen-Versen.
As Emslandlager, the camp is known as Lager VIII Wesuwe. The camp is not on the official German list of concentration camps.
The number of prisoners' nationalities also increased during the course of the war. Many French, Belgian and Polish prisoners of war were also housed there. In September 1941, 2,100 Russian prisoners of war were imprisoned in Lager VIII Wesuwe, including many officers. When in May 1942 Stalag VI B Meppen-Versen merged with Stalag VI C Bathorn , Camp Wesuwe was part of it.
The Western European prisoners of war were treated according to the convention, but the Russian prisoners of war, in particular, were subject to a concentration camp regime: diseases, starvation, cold and murder took a very high toll.
The camp was liberated by the Canadians on April 12, 1945.
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Even today, there is a cemetery "Kriegsgräberanlage Wesuwe" near the former camp.
On this rest 98 Soviet soldiers in single and 2000 to 4000 prisoners of war in three mass graves.
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