The Moorsoldaten and the fight to build a memorial

The prisoners of the Emsland camps were called Moorsoldaten - the Moor Soldiers. They worked on reclaiming the moor, and a song called the Moorsoldatenlied was created in the KZ Börgermoor based on this work. This landscape became a site of profound suffering beginning in 1933 with the opening of KZ Börgermoor. From there, the system expanded to include camps at Esterwegen and Neusustrum, eventually growing into a network of fifteen sites.

Between 1933 and 1945, the region served many functions, including state concentration camps, SS concentration camps, protective custody camps, 'Night and Fog' prisoner camps, and camps for convicted and prisoners of war. After the war, the survivors called for a memorial site, but the path to building it was long and full of friction. In 1963, a memorial stone for Carl von Ossietzky was erected on the camp cemetery at B 401.

In the late 1970s, students from the University of Oldenburg, youth groups, trade unions, Jusos, and survivors campaigned for an appropriate memorial. The 'Arbeitskreis Carl von Ossietzky Emsland/Ostfriesland' was founded in 1979. In that same year, the Weser-Ems district government refused to install a memorial plaque in Esterwegen, arguing that the prisoners included 'ordinary criminals.' The Bundeswehr also occupied the former KZ Esterwegen as a depot, preventing the association from securing their desired historical site.

It took the founding of a documentation and information center (DIZ) in 1981 and a persistence that spanned decades to secure the land. Construction on a new building for the DIZ Emslandlager began in 1991 with support from the Emsland district, the state of Lower Saxony, and the city of Papenburg. The memorial, opened in 2011, features steel plates with the numbers and names of the 15 Emsland camps. Nearby, the Bockhorst/Esterwegen cemetery holds the remains of 1,315 prisoners, including resistance fighters and those held for military or criminal offenses.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons