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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"The camp V Neusustrum was next to the camps Börgermoor and Esterwegen to the early concentration camps in the Emsland. Here the National Socialist leadership and the Prussian state imprisoned after the takeover in 1933 above all political opponents and used them for forced labor in the Moorkultivierung. The camp was completed on 1 September 1933 and was able to accommodate 1,000 prisoners.
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. Through an expansion in 1937 the absorption capacity of the camp rose to 1,500 prisoners.
Camp Street shared this with a fenced-in section of the prisoners' barracks and a warehouse management and guards section amidst a newly landscaped park. Parts of this park are still preserved today. Near the camp, on the north-south road, the prisoners built the "Emslandhaus" with ballroom donated by Adolf Hitler to the SA guards and inaugurated in 1936.
Until the war began, people were imprisoned in the camp who were persecuted by the Nazi regime for political, racial, social or religious reasons. In addition, there was a much larger group of prisoners convicted of criminal offenses.
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.
From 1940 until the end of 1942, up to 1,750 Polish prisoners were imprisoned in the camp. In addition, there were about 70 Jewish prisoners. From 1943, former soldiers were convicted here mainly of Wehrmacht courts. In February 1945 there were still 281 prisoners in the camp.
A total of 248 deaths are recorded. The actual number is likely to be higher. The dead were buried in the camp cemetery Börgermoor, today burial site Esterwegen."
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