The Dutch prison-camps during WWII; part 2: Camp Erika.

This is part 2 in a series of five stories about the camps that were in use, by the Nazi occupiers during the war as prison- or concentration camps, in the Netherlands.

Camp Schoorl, was in use as a prison-camp from June 1940 until the end of October 1941.

Camp Erika, near Ommen, was in use as a prison-camp from June 19 1941 until April 11 1945.

Camp Amersfoort, was in use as a prison-camp from August 18 1941 until April 19 1945.

Camp Vught, was in use as a prison-camp from January 1943 until September 1944.

Camp Westerbork, was in use as a prison-camp from July 1 1942 until April 12 1945.

The second camp that was put into use as a prison-camp by the German occupiers was Camp Erika, officially known as; Arbeitseinsatzslager Erika. It was situated in a forest near the village of Ommen, near the German border, about 140 km east of Amsterdam.

The name for the camp probably came from the fact that in the surrounding area a lot of heatherfields could be found. The latin name for heather is Erica.

The main gate of Camp Erika

Before the war, in 1924, Camp Erika started off as the home of the religious/philosophical Krishnamurti-movement. It was the headquarters until 1939 of the Order of the Star. As part of the Nazi-regulations that were issued after May 10 1940 all religious movements were dissolved and their assets became Nazi property. In this way the camp came into Nazi hands, but it lasted until June 1941 that they put it to use as a prison-camp. The person that was in charge of the liquidation of the assets of the Krishnamurti-movement was Werner Schwier who worked for the Referat Internationale Organisationen, his boss was Fritz Schmidt who was Generalkommissar zur besonderen Verwendung, who reported directly to Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Werner Schwier was formerly Bereitschaftsführer der Ordensburg Vogelsang of the Nazi party NSDAP, he taught there racial sciences. The Ordensburg Vogelsang was one of main educational institutions of the NSDAP. The others were the Ordensburgen Sonthofen and Krössinsee.

Werner Schwier

Karel Lodewijk Diepgrond

Schwier appointed a Dutch policeman, Karel Lodewijk Diepgrond, as Lagerführer of Camp Erika and he recruited about 48 guards. Most of the personel working at Camp Erika were unemployed men who were told that the camp was to be used for 'asocial Jews'. Diepgrond was born in 1896 in Amsterdam, was a member of the NSB and worked in 1940 for the SD (SicherheitsDienst) in Amsterdam. He was the youngest of 11 children, married in 1922 with Maria Snelders with whom he had 2 children. In 1943 he remarried the ex-wife of his older brother Bastiaan, Lina Bleil, in Ommen. They had one child together.

Grave of Salomon Roet at the Jewish cemetery in Ommen.

While the regime in Camp Schoorl could be called 'mild', this was not the case at Camp Erika. One of the Jewish survivors wrote after the war; “Erika was the most horrible camp I stayed during the war. In no other camp I was so systematically physically abused, every day, as in Ommen”. During the war only 8 Jewish men stayed at Erika. Two of them died there, the're buried at the Jewish cemetery at Ommen, Salomon Roet and Marcus Lelyveld.

A guard at Camp Erika, with a prisoner.

It's estimated that about 170 men died at Erika and another 150 in one of it's subcamps. In the German villages Heerte and Wesseling there were 2 subcamps of Erika. The men that were imprisoned here had to work in one of the nearby factories. The hygienic conditions in these camps were appalling. In Camp Erika and it's subcamps the prisoners were forced to do very hard work with a constant threat of being beaten, to stand long hours on roll-call, very little to eat and very little time to eat. The beatings were so bad that people died because of it or were heavily injured. Most of the times the guards used their rifles butt to beat the prisoners. In many cases they had to ask Diepgrond for a new rifle because they broke their rifles on the prisoners. The guards also used to shoot at the prisoners without any warning, trying to escape, going to the toilet in a place they weren't allowed to, just for the fun of it. The guards had a band around their arms with the letters KK on it, they were called the Kontrolle-Kommando.

An overview of Camp Erika. The tents were also in use, summer and winter.

In the last year of the war they also had the task to search in the surrounding area of Ommen for people that were in hiding, members of the Dutch resistance or other people that were accused of falsifying documents. One of the most notorious guards in this period was Herbertus Bikker, 'the executioner of Ommen'. After the war he was sentenced to death, but that was soon changed to life-imprisonment. In 1952 he managed to escape to Germany, together with Klaas-Carel Faber and others, where he died in 2008.

Herbertus Bikker.

One of the persons that was executed at Camp Erika was a member of the resistance group NV, Jaap Musch. He was one of the leaders of this group and is buried on the cemetery at Ommen.

Grave of Jaap Musch at Ommen.

After the war Karel Lodewijk Diepgrond was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment but released in 1957. He died 05-06-1985 in the village of Soest, just east of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Werner Schwier managed to escape to Belgium and later to Germany where he died in 1971. He was never prosecuted.

Sources:

• Knackers achter prikkeldraad, Kamp Erika bij Ommen, 1941-1945; by Guusta Veldman, 1993
• www.oudommen.nl: website with info and photographs of Camp Erika
• stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl; Stadsarchief Amsterdam: City-archives of Amsterdam; information on the family Diepgrond
• www.hans-dieter-arntz.de; website with lots of info about the Ordensburg Vogelsang
• www.kamparchieven.nl; website about all the Dutch camp archives