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The purpose of this project is to collect all of the profiles of displaced persons or Holocaust Survivors, who were residents of the Reinsehlen Camp Displaced Persons Camp. This camp was located at Reinsehlen Camp was located close to the village of Reinsehlen near the town of Schneverdingen, Germany.
History of the camp
Establishment
In February 1946, the British military government in Allied-occupied Germany told the local authorities of the county of Soltau to expect substantial numbers of refugees. Since Allied bombing raids on major cities had caused an acute shortage of housing even for the existing population, the additional influx of people put a massive strain on housing resources in the occupation zones. To accommodate some of these refugees, the military authorities provided the former airfield buildings at Reinsehlen. There was a total of around 60 buildings, including a large number of so-called Protektoratsbaracken, which measured 42 metres long by 12.5 metres wide. Importantly for a potential refugee camp site, Reinsehlen sported a water works and primitive sewage systems leading to a sump some two kilometres from the centre of the camp. However, the buildings had been totally stripped of all furnishings (including windows, doors and wiring) by Canadian and British troops and by German civilians. Local authorities provided a basic supply of ovens, beds and other furniture.
Operations
There was not much time for preparations. The first 200 refugees arrived on 10 March 1946. To help feed them, sections of the airfield were transformed into farmland and vegetable gardens. By May, the camp housed 420 people. Then a train arrived with over 1,500 refugees, most of them old people or women and children from Silesia. They came from a camp in Poland, where the food supply had been very inadequate. This influx caused massive overcrowding in the camp. There were not enough jobs in the area, so most of the camp's inmates became dependent on welfare handouts. Paratyphoid fever became a problem.
Over its period of operations from 1946 to 1950 the DP camp housed an average of around 1,500 people, making it one of the largest of its kind in Northern Germany. There was a continuous inflow of around 20 to 50 people per month — soldiers returning from captivity and Germans resettled from Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. Around 60% of the refugees hailed from Silesia, the others came mainly from Eastern Prussia, the Baltic states, Volhynia, Galicia or the Sudetenland. Initially, there were only around 100 able-bodied men, who mostly worked in agriculture or the timber industry. By 1947, businesses founded in the camp employed more than 300 people. The camp administration and hospital (see below) employed more than 70. A school and kindergarten for 350 children were set up. Church services were held in the former KdF-Hall. The Landkreis Soltau administered the camp, but the inmates elected a camp council and a Lagerleiter (administrator).
Hospital
When the DP camp became operational, a 150-bed hospital was established in the former officers' quarters of Reinsehlen airfield. Due to malnutrition and the prevalence of infectious diseases among many of the arriving DPs, medical care was a priority. In 1946, average daily occupancy was around 95 patients. As a result of the camp's overcrowding, typhoid fever, TBC and jaundice remained problems in the camp. Through 1950, care in the hospital was mainly run by around 15 Sisters of Saint Elizabeth, most of them expelled from Silesia. After the camp was closed in November 1950, the hospital continued to operate under its own administration. Eventually it became an outlet of the Kreiskrankenhaus Soltau. When the latter moved to new premises in 1968, the Reinsehlen facility was finally closed.
Dissolution
The British forces had seized the former airfield from the Wehrmacht in 1945. They then had ceded most of it to the German authorities for use as the DP camp, barring those areas used by the gliding club. However, by 1949 there was increasing interest in establishing a training camp for ground forces in the area. In August, the former Kdf-Hall, used for church services, as a school and cinema by the refugees had to be vacated within three days — it was wanted as a cinema for the training troops In late September, the British issued an eviction order to the German authorities, stating that the whole DP camp should be vacated within eight weeks. Offered alternative accommodations in Munster were deemed even worse than the facilities at Reinsehlen and rejected. After an intervention by Heinrich Albertz, the Lower Saxony Minister for Refugee Affairs, the closure of the camp was postponed until the end of 1950. This would allow time for the construction of new and appropriate housing, using funds supplied by the Landesregierung (regional government) of Lower Saxony.
Most of the refugees eventually resettled in Hambühren,[6] where ammunition bunkers in a former Wehrmacht depot were transformed into housing units with some active help by the camp inmates themselves. Around 200 people moved to Emmelndorf, today part of Seevetal, where a new housing development was built for them. Some 200 DPs moved to Schneverdingen.