Moringen concentration camp

Three concentration camps operated in succession in Moringen, Lower Saxony, from April 1933 to April 1945.KZ Moringen, established in the centre of the town on site of former 19th century workhouses (German: Landeswerkhäuser), originally housed mostly male political inmates. In November 1933 - March 1938 Moringen housed a women's concentration camp; in June 1940 - April 1945 a juvenile prison. A total of 4,300 people were prisoners of Moringen; an estimated ten percent of them died in the camp.

History of forced confinement in Moringen goes back to an orphanage established in 1738 or 1732. In 1818 Kingdom of Hanover took over the property for a prison. By 1838 it housed a "police workhouse" for the "depraved and dangerous" men and women - tramps, prostitutes and beggars; by 1885, when Hanover was incorporated into the German Empire, it was renamed "provincial workhouse". In 1890 capacity reached 800 inmates although actual headcount fluctuated with economic conditions and unemployment. A women's wing was set up in 1909. The workhouse operated through the years of the Weimar Republic although the number of inmates shrank to around one hundred and the workhouse itself gradually became a social welfare facility rather than a prison. By the time of Nazi ascension to power, the place provided shelter to around 150 inmates; all Prussian workhouses, hit by the Great Depression, housed around one thousand.

Educator Hugo Krack (born 1888) became head of Moringen workhouse in 1930, managed it until 1954, and was the chief of KZ Moringen in the 1930s.

Arrests of political opposition in the beginning of 1933 and the resulting demand for prison space prompted Hanover administrators to relieve themselves of the costly, under-used Moringen facility. They struck a deal with police and the latter took control of most of Moringen workhouse; former workhouse inmates were confined to a few rooms, sealed off from the main, now "political" facility. This "welfare" section of Moringen facility operated in its original function almost until the end of World War II, providing temporary asylum to people unfit for work.

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