Lager VII Gedenkstätte Esterwegen

History  (info Wikipedia)

In the summer of 1933, the Prussian State built the concentration camp Esterwegen on the site of today’s memorial in order to accommodate political prisoners. From 1934 to 1936, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS, was directly responsible for the concentration camp. He dissolved it in 1936; subsequently, political prisoners were held at Sachsenhausen near Berlin. Doubtless, one of the best-known inmates of the concentration camp Esterwegen was the Nobel Laureate for Peace 1935, Carl von Ossietzky.

From 1937 through 1945, Camp Esterwegen housed convicts of the criminal justice system of the “Reich”. During World War Two, German soldiers convicted by courts martial of the Wehrmacht were imprisoned here and on other sites. Resistance fighters from various West-European countries, also called "Nacht- und Nebel" prisoners, were incarcerated in one part of Camp Esterwegen (“Camp South”).

In the immediate post-war period, Esterwegen was used as an internment camp by the British occupying forces. From 1953 through 1959, it was a transition camp for refugees from the German Democratic Republic. At that time, all buildings of the former camp were dismantled. From 1963 through 2001/2005, Bundeswehr used the site as an army depot.

Camp Esterwegen will be under construction until 2012. The former camp will be redesigned by artists. Authentic elements will be made visible again. The new information and documentation centre of the Dokumentations- und Informationszentrum Emslandlager (DIZ) will be located at the redesigned camp.

https://www.gedenkstaette-esterwegen.de/geschichte/die-emslandlager/vii-esterwegen.html

Liberté Chérie

The Liberté Chérie was one of the few Masonic lodges founded in a concentration camp. Following a letter dated 15 November 1943 from Luc Somerhausen, the seven Belgian resistance fighters Luc Somerhausen, Jean De Schrijver, Jean Sugg, Henry Story, Amédée Miclotte and Franz Rochat, together with Freemason Paul Hanson, founded the Freemason's lodge Liberté Chérie in barrack 6 in the Emslandlager VII.