Forced camp Berlin-Marzahn

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Petra Rosenberg , Chairwoman of the State Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin Brandenburg e. V., gives a short speech at the memorial stone.

The National Socialist regime euphemistically referred to a compulsory camp as the Berlin-Marzahn resting place , to which around 1200 " gypsies " in Berlin-Marzahn were committed between 1936 and 1943 . The first wave of arrests with around 600 men, women and children took place on July 16, 1936. A common name was Zigeunerrastplatz Marzahn . The camp served the "concentration", i. H. the spatially easier control and selection according to racial ideological criteria, exploitation through forced labor and preparation for deportation to concentration camps and the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp .

History of the camp

Police guarding the forced camp (a photo from the Racial Hygiene Research Center )

prehistory

In 1934, if not earlier, the Berlin Welfare Office and the police developed a plan to concentrate the "Gypsies" in a camp supervised by the police. From the turn of the year 1935/36 the Race Political Office and the NSDAP also supported the plan. In Berlin-Wedding , the district mayor, Rudolf Suthoff-Groß, is the driving force behind driving “Gypsies” out of their self-chosen quarters and the public space. The preparation for the 1936 Summer Olympics accelerated the plan. The Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, recommended (with his circular on "Combating the Gypsy Plague" of June 6, 1936) " to organize raids on gypsies from time to time in districts or for entire parts of the country " and subsequently granted the Berlin police chief von Helldorff the Order to hold a "country manhunt for gypsies". All those who were considered "gypsies" by the authorities, regardless of whether they lived in normal apartments or in caravans, were to be arrested and interned in a camp outside the Reich capital. There was no legal basis for this. Over 600 people were arrested in a major action on July 16, 1936 at rest areas, in rented apartments and houses. Accidentally arrested people who did not fall under the Nazi definition of gypsies were released shortly afterwards. In 1938 852 people were interned. The total number of internees can be estimated at 1200 for the period 1936–45, only 304 people could be identified by name, as the records are largely missing.

Establishment of the warehouse

From the mid-1930s onwards, a large number of internment camps for “ Gypsies ” were set up on the initiative of the local authorities. The Marzahn gypsy rest area was one of the first to be built in May 1936, on the edge of Rieselfeldern near the Marzahn cemetery (today in a trapeze west of the Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße S-Bahn station). An old barrack of the Reich Labor Service was set up on this unsuitable site to serve as accommodation for the inmates.

First internments

On July 16, 1936, mainly Sinti resident in Berlin and the surrounding area were arrested and taken to the Marzahn camp. Although at the beginning the aim was to “protect neighborly coexistence” and “ward off serious moral dangers, especially for the youth”, all people registered with the police station as “gypsies” and “mixed gypsies” were arrested during the action and locked up. The number was stated in the subsequent press release as over 600.

Some families were able to leave the camp in the following months. Some of them emigrated from Germany, but others only moved away from Berlin. The number of internees dropped to 400 at the end of 1937.

Intensification of the persecution

With the basic decree on the preventive fight against crime of December 14, 1937, the situation changed. Preventive detention could now be imposed on the categories of professional criminals , habitual criminals , people dangerous to the public or harmful to the public, for which the criminal police were responsible. Roma were generally considered to be “harmful to the community” and “ asocial ”. Subsequently, a large number of the men were deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the course of the "Actions against Asocials" in February and June during the "Arbeitsscheu Reich" campaign . As a result, the rest area was predominantly inhabited by women, children and the elderly. Since a large number of those who had come to the camp since August 1936 were "traveling" Sinti, in September 1937 the camp was overcrowded with 150 caravans .

Living conditions in the camp

Two men in the camp

The families suffered from miserable living conditions and were only allowed to leave the premises with permission from the police. The children were given school lessons on the premises.

The hygienic conditions in the camp were catastrophic. There were only two toilets and three water points for the people. The construction of wells was impossible because of the proximity of the sewage fields and the associated contamination of the water. The existing school was completely overcrowded and insufficiently equipped with a teacher. From the beginning of the war , many prisoners were used as slave labor in Berlin's industry. The Marzahn camp was not a concentration camp. Until its dissolution it was subordinate to the Berlin authorities, which, however, in the absence of controls and lack of investment, systematically promoted the impoverishment and endangerment of the Sinti and Roma.

March 1, 1943 is likely to be the date when the camp was closed. Up until this day, Heinrich Himmler's Auschwitz decree had been implemented, after all "mixed gypsies, Roma gypsies and non -German-blooded members of Gypsy clans of Balkan origin" had to be selected according to the respective guidelines and sent to a concentration camp in a campaign lasting a few weeks in January 1943 was restricted to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . Until 1947, however, individual families were still housed in the camp.

Race research and deportations

Presumably in Marzahn (literally: "in a camp near Berlin") the physician and racial researcher Gerhart Stein carried out investigations for his dissertation supervised by the leading National Socialist hereditary hygienist and racial theorist Otmar von Verschuer . Stein also gave advice to the Prussian police to optimize the prosecution measures.

The internees were categorized by the employees of the Racial Hygiene and Population Biological Research Center (RHF) , headed by the forensic biologist and tsiganologist Robert Ritter , for a “Gypsy genealogical archive” as a comprehensive database of the Central European Roma. The data subsequently formed an essential prerequisite for the deportation of more than 20,000 Roma after the so-called Auschwitz Decree , and Stein's work was also included here.

In the winter of 1942, 70 children were deported from the camp to Litzmannstadt and from there to Auschwitz.

The inmates of this camp were among the first groups deported to the " Auschwitz Gypsy Camp " in 1943; only two families who were assessed by the RHF as "thoroughbred" remained.

Commemoration

  • Images of commemoration

  • Otto-Rosenberg-Platz at the Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße S-Bahn station

  • Memorial stone from 1986, which commemorates the former forced camp

  • Plaque next to the memorial stone

  • Participants in the annual memorial event (June 13, 2010)

In 1985 the author and civil rights activist Reimar Gilsenbach , who campaigned for the inclusion of the minority in national commemoration in the GDR , turned to the Chairman of the State Council, Erich Honecker, with the demand that memorial plaques be installed at the locations of the two forced camps in Marzahn and Magdeburg. As a result, the Central Committee of the SED decided to erect memorials there. The respective district management had to take care of the implementation. The sculptor Jürgen Raue received the order for Marzahn. On September 12, 1986 , a memorial stone was inaugurated at the Marzahn Park Cemetery , to the right of the extended main path in the rear part of the cemetery to the Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße exit. Participants in the inauguration event were Sinti from Berlin, members of the FDJ , pastor Bruno Schottstädt of the Protestant parish Marzahn / North and representatives of the Ecumenical Forum Berlin-Marzahn. The GDR press reported on it in pictures and text. It was the first appreciation of the history of persecution of the Roma by state representatives of the GDR. This was preceded by a memorial event by the Evangelical Church at this memorial site on June 29, 1986.

“From May 1936 until the liberation of our people by the glorious Soviet Army, hundreds of Sinti people suffered in a forced camp not far from this site. Honor the victims. "

- Inscription of the memorial stone

A memorial plaque was placed next to it, which explains the circumstances of the camp in more detail.

“In the run-up to the 1936 Olympic Games, the Nazis set up a“ gypsy resting place ”on a former sewage field north of this cemetery, on which hundreds of Sinti and Roma were forced to live. Crammed together in gloomy barracks, the camp residents eke out a miserable existence. Hard work, illness and starvation claimed their victims. People were arbitrarily abducted and arrested. Humiliating "race hygiene examinations" spread fear and horror. In the spring of 1943, most of those "arrested" were deported to Auschwitz. Men and women, old people and children. Only a few survived. "

- Inscription on the plaque

Since 1986 there has been an annual event organized by the Ecumenical Forum Berlin-Marzahn and the State Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg e. V. organized commemorative event. A place on the site of the former camp was named after Otto Rosenberg . His daughter Petra Rosenberg speaks every year at the memorial event on the stone.

In December 2011, on the initiative of the Berlin-Brandenburg State Association of German Sinti and Roma, a place of remembrance and information was inaugurated on the site of the former forced camp. Ten display boards provide information about the history of the Marzahn forced camp and remind of the fate of the people interned there.

The association "Gedenkstätte Zwangslager Berlin Marzahn eV", which has been supporting the work of the regional association of German Sinti and Roma since 2017, opened its office on Monday, March 9, 2020 near the memorial. An office and a library will be set up, exhibitions, lectures and seminars will in future provide detailed information about the historical site and provide educational work.

literature

  • Ute Brucker-Boroujerdi, Wolfgang Wippermann: The "Gypsy Camp" Marzahn . In: Wolfgang Ribbe (Ed.): Berlin-Forschungen III , Berlin 1987, pp. 189-201.
  • Raimar Gilsenbach: Hitler's first camp for "foreign races". A forgotten chapter of Nazi crimes . In: Pogrom 17/122 , 1986, pp. 15-17.
  • Sybil Milton: Precursor to Annihilation. The gypsy camps after 1933 (PDF) in: VfZ , 1995
  • Ewald Hanstein : My Hundred Lives - Memories of a German Sinto. Recorded by Ralf Lorenzen . With a foreword by Henning Scherf. Donat Verlag , Bremen 2005, ISBN 978-3-934836-94-5 .
  • Otto Rosenberg : The burning glass . Knaur Verlag, 1998
  • Patricia Pientka, the forced camp for Sinti and Roma in Berlin-Marzahn. Everyday Life, Persecution and Deportation, Berlin 2013

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patricia Pientka: Life and Persecution in the Berlin-Marzahn Forced Camp 1936-1945. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial: The persecution of the Sinti and Roma under National Socialism. 2012 p. 55.
  2. ↑ Michael Zimmermann, Racial Utopia and Genocide. The National Socialist solution to the "Gypsy question" . Hamburg 1996, p. 85.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Benz: The Marzahn camp. On the National Socialist persecution of the Sinti and Roma and their ongoing discrimination . In: Helge Grabitz, Klaus Bästlein, Johannes Tuchel (eds.): The normality of crime. Balance sheet and perspectives of research on the national socialist violent crimes . (Festschrift for Wolfgang Scheffler on his 65th birthday). Berlin 1994, p. 260.
  4. ↑ a b Pientka 2012, p. 56.
  5. ↑ Pientka 2012, p. 56f.
  6. ^ Michael Zimmermann: Racial Utopia and Genocide. The National Socialist solution to the "Gypsy question" . Hamburg 1996. pp. 93-100.
  7. ↑ a b c David Koser et al .: Marzahn gypsy camp . In: Capital of the Holocaust. Places of National Socialist Racial Policy in Berlin , Berlin 2009, place 38, p. 157.
  8. ↑ Printed by Wolfgang Ayaß (arr.): “Community foreigners”. Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933–1945 . (PDF) Koblenz 1998, No. 50.
  9. ^ Michael Zimmermann: Racial Utopia and Genocide. The National Socialist Solution to the Gypsy Question . Hamburg 1996, p. 114.
  10. ↑ As evidenced by the expert opinion by Verschuer in the dissertation file. See: Peter Sandner: "Racial anthropological" research by the Verschuer student Gerhart Stein . In: Fritz Bauer Institute (Ed.): Elimination of Jewish Influence… In: Anti-Semitic Research, Elites and Careers in National Socialism . Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36098-5 , pp. 80-84.
  11. ↑ Peter Sandner: "Racial anthropological" research of the Verschuer student Gerhart Stein . In: Fritz Bauer Institute (ed.): "Elimination of Jewish influence ...". Anti-Semitic Research, Elites, and Careers under National Socialism . Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36098-5 , pp. 80-81.
  12. ↑ books.google.de p. 182.
  13. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Oh Django, sing your anger. Sinti and Roma among the Germans . Berlin 1993, p. 145.
  14. ↑ Michaela Baetz, Heike Herzog, Oliver von Mengersen: The Reception of the National Socialist Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR. A documentation on political education . Published by the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg 2007, p. 111 ff.
  15. ↑ Press release Marzahn-Hellersdorf District Office, December 17, 2007, online version
  16. ↑ Place of remembrance and information
  17. ↑ Klaus Tessmann: Educational work against forgetting , www.lichtenbergmarzahnplus.de, March 10, 2020

Coordinates: 52 ° 33 ′ 5 "  N , 13 ° 32 ′ 47"  E