A Jewish history professor whose expertise is the holocaust told me the Peat Bog Soldiers is not Jewish. The prisoners were communists, labor leaders, and left wing Christians sent to the camps early in the Nazi period because of their resistance or suspected resistance to the Nazi government. In the debate over whether the song originated in Borgermoor or Dachau, she favoured Dachau because it is surrounded by peat bogs where the prisoners were forced to work. The professor, daughter of holocaust survivors, loves the song: knowing there were people in Germany with the courage to oppose Hitler gives her hope.