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 I Börgermoor was next to Neusustrum and Esterwegen to the early concentration camps in Emsland. From June 1933, the National Socialist leadership and the Prussian state imprisoned in the camp for 1,000 prisoners mainly political opponents and used them for forced labor in the Moorkultivierung. In his 1935 book "Die Moorsoldaten" published in Swiss exile, Wolfgang Langhoff describes his experiences in Börgermoor, including the creation of the song "Wir sind die Moorsoldaten" in August 1933.
The SS guards terrified the prisoners. Due to jurisdictional disputes between the Prussian state and the SS solved in November 1933 first police and then a guards of the SA from the SS. The inhumane treatment of the inmates did not change under the SA guards. In April 1934, the camp was dissolved as a concentration camp and continued as a prisoner of law camp. The guard took over a serving in the judiciary SA unit, which was later supplemented by judicial officials.
Depending on the time of year, the prisoners had to do forced labor in the moor for 8 to 12 hours a day (drainage, road and road construction, peat extraction). After the beginning of the war in 1939, they were increasingly used in war-important enterprises and in agriculture. The food was bad and in relation to the hard work not enough. Beyond this general ordeal, the prisoners were subjected to multiple physical and mental ill-treatment by the guards. There were an unknown number of deaths and murders.
Until the beginning of the war, people who were persecuted by the Nazi regime for political, racial, social or religious reasons were imprisoned. In addition, there was a much larger group of prisoners convicted of criminal offenses. After the beginning of the war, the judicial authorities increasingly transferred former soldiers who had been condemned by Wehrmacht courts to the camp.
In February 1944, the judiciary briefly transferred about 500 to 600 "night and nebulous" prisoners, resistance fighters from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, to Börgermoor, as the Esterwegen camp, which was planned for their reception, was completely overcrowded.
The dead of the camp Börgermoor, whose number is unknown due to lost documents in the post-war period, were buried in the camp cemetery Börgermoor, today burial site Esterwegen."
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