Papenburg Penitentiary Camp/ Emslandlager

The collection contains among others:

Financial statements and correspondence on prison costs, proof of cultivation work in the Emsland moors, “performance reports” (type of work , number of prisoners working in the various companies, documentation of the “moor-suitable“ prison and penitentiary inmates registered by the various penal institutions , general correspondence about the penal system (measures, instructions, etc.), matters of the administrations, Correspondence with various judicial institutes, reports on meetings, et al; decrees and orders relating to the transfer of prisoners to other prisons and/or camps, inquiry of the Dutch Red Cross regarding the delivery of provisions to prisoners, documents relating to sterilizations, documents relating to camp kitchen and diet of the prisoners, orders regarding the processing of clemency pleas, reports of attempted escapes, interrogation protocols as well as correspondence about escaped and/or recaptured prisoners,

discovery protocols and judgment transcripts relating to “crimes” of the prisoners committed during incarceration period, correspondence on mistreatment and/or irregularities in the distribution of provisions in work units Höveler and Dieckhaus in Papenburg,

transport lists, registry of valuables, part of an alphabetical catalog of “night-and-fog-prisoners”, transcripts out of the patient records of the Marine hospital in Papenburg, prisoner lists, ledgers of prisoner funds, income and employment lists, list of expenditures for material goods and additional provisions, chamber inventories, status reports, excerpts from the prisoner registers in order according to nationality, cemetery lists, note book of the camp pastor, files of the Emsland proceedings, death certificates

Documents relating to:

Camp I = Börgermoor

Camp II = Aschendorfermoor

Camp III = Brual-Rhede

Camp IV = Walchum

Camp V = Neusustrum

Camp VI = Oberlangen

Camp VII = Esterwegen

Camp IX = Versen

Camp X = Fullen auf Lager

Camp XI = Gross Hesepe

Camp XIV = Bathorn

History of the Emsland Camp (Papenburg):

Immediately following the Reichstag fire, Reich President Hindenburg announced the decree on 28 February 1933 “for the protection of the people and the state” to “defend against communist, subversive acts of violence”. This emergency decree made it possible, among others, for political opponents to be taken into protective custody without providing reasons and without judicial intervention. Until June 1933 between 20,000 and 25,000 individuals, primarily communists, social democrats and unionists, were locked up in rapidly overcrowded prisons and other temporary prisons. Already in April the Prussian Ministry of the Interior gave the district president in Osnabrück the order to establish several camps in Emsland to hold from 3,000 to 5,000 prisoners. In summer the construction of Concentration Camps Börgermoor, Esterwegen und Neusustrum as “State Concentration Camp Papenburg” was finally completed and filled with an estimated 10,000 prisoners. Among them, besides political opponents, were soon also Jehova’s Witnesses and so-called protective custody prisoners. The prisoners, who referred to themselves as “moor soldiers“, were drafted to do forced labor in cultivating the Emsland moors. With the newly organized CC system under the watchful eye of the SS, the camps Neusustrum and Börgermoor as CCs were dissolved in the summer of 1934 and taken over by the Prussian judicial system as prison camps. Until its “relocation” to Sachsenhausen in August/September 1936, Esterwegen continued to exist as Concentration Camp and as of January 1937 as Camp VII, also functioned as a prison camp. Additionally there were the camps I Börgermoor, II Aschendorfermoor, III Brual-Rhede, IV Walchum, V Neusustrum und VI Oberlangen with capacity for initially 5,500 prisoners, before 1938 eight more prison camps were built in middle and south Emsland: Lager VIII Wesuwe, IX Versen, X Fullen, XI Gross-Hesepe, XII Dalum, XIII Wietmarschen, XIV Bathorn and XV Alexisdorf. Until the end of the war, up to 70,000 people were incarcerated in the prison camps, among those held prisoner were “legally” convicted criminals, homosexuals, political opponents, so-called “asocials” and, from the start of the war, soldiers convicted in the courts of the Wehrmacht. In 1943/44, in one part of the Esterwegen Camp and in Börgermoor, West-European resistance fighters, so-called “night and fog” captives, were also imprisoned. From 1939 on up to 100,000 prisoners of war were placed in the southern Emsland camps; as of 1941 approx 50,000 primarily Red Army soldiers. In April 1945 the prisoners in the Emsland camps were liberated by British, Canadian, and Polish troops.

Source: http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/210/Dokumentations--und-Informationszentrum-%28DIZ%29-Emslandlager-Papenburg [Latest access: 2012-08-06] and http://www.diz-emslandlager.de/lager/lager00.htm [Latest access: 2012-08-06].