Lager XIII - Stalag VI C - Wietmarschen

History (Info: Wikipedia)

Camp Wietmarschen was established in May 1938 as one of eight new penal camps in the Emsland. The camp had to be able to accommodate 1,000 people. In August 1938, Hitler ordered that 12,000 prisoners and a large number of barracks from the Emsland camp be transferred to the Westwall. Camp Wietmarschen, still without prisoners, was also included in this, but after the Munich Conference, in which the Germans appropriated the Sudetenland, all prisoners and barracks were able to return to their old destination. In June 1939, the possible occupancy of Camp Wietmarschen was around five hundred prisoners, but the camp was otherwise still empty.

In September 1939, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) decided to convert the camp, like eight other Emslandlagern, into a prisoner-of-war camp. Camp Wietmarschen became a branch of Stalag VI C Bathorn. Initially, the camp was an assembly and transit camp for Polish and Western European military prisoners of war. Later, in 1941, 2,700 Russian prisoners of war were held here. Wietmarschen does not appear on the official German list of concentration camps. Within the framework of the Emslandlager, the camp was called "Lager XIII Wietmarschen". It is assumed that prisoners of war from all over Europe were detained in the camp until its liberation, the vast majority of whom were Soviet prisoners.

Circumstances

The regional government hoped that, with the OKW's commitment of 16,000 to 17,000 prisoners of war, the loss of labour called up by the Reichsarbeitsdienst could be compensated for from the beginning of October. The accommodation of Russian prisoners was kept as cheap as possible. As a result of this policy, facilities such as nursing, food supply, shelter and clothing were absolutely below the subsistence level. The strategy followed can be compared to the extermination policy of the Jews. In 1934, a law was passed in Germany in which the Jews were declared Untermenschen without rights. In this background, Russians were later treated the same as the Jews. They were described by the Nazis as animals. Large numbers of prisoners died of hunger and exhaustion. The camp was regularly closed off from the outside world because there was an epidemic.

After the war

In April 1945, the Wietmarschen camp was liberated. Poles who could not immediately return to their Russian-occupied country lived in the camp for a while in 1945. The cemetery of the former camp is still in Wietmarschen. It is popularly called the Russian cemetery. There is a memorial stone with the text: "Ausländische Kriegstote 1939-1945" and a bronze table with the text: "Hier rest ca. 150 Tote der namen unbekant sind, zum grössten Teil Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangene". The names of two Serbs and two Soviet citizens are known, they were reburied here from Nordhorn in 1967. Nothing remains of the camp itself. A part of the houses of the village of Füchtenfeld now stand on the site of the camp.

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

Monday 22nd July 2024

Info panels at the cemetery

Wietmarschen Füchtenfeld Lagerfriedhof (info: Volksbund)

In the entrance area of ​​the cemetery you can read: "Here rest about 150 dead, whose names are unknown, mostly Soviet prisoners of war. Two Serbs and two Soviet citizens are known by name, who were reburied from the Evangelical Reformed Cemetery in Nordhorn in November 1967."

The Soviet soldiers who died in the Wietmarschen camp were buried in the cemetery in Dalum at least until August 1944. In January 1944 alone, 151 prisoners of war from Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne died in Wietmarschen, mostly of tuberculosis. The actual number of those who died in that month is significantly higher, as can be seen from the missing grave numbers in the records.