Documentation Center Nazi Forced Labor

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Listed barracks from 1943 for slave labor . In the picture in the subsequent use as a bowling alley.
Barracks of the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center
Interior view of barrack 13

The Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center is located in the Berlin district of Niederschöneweide in the Treptow-Köpenick district . It documents the fate of the forced laborers during the National Socialist era and is the only one of its kind in Germany.

history

Most of the 32,000 m² site between Britzer, Köllnischen and Rudower Strasse belonged to the Deutsche Reichsbahn . It was overgrown with pine trees and served the residents as a recreational area. A much smaller piece, around 1,000 m², was owned by the two Jewish brothers Kurt and Willy Mannheimer. In 1939 a home for the Hitler Youth was to be built on the site . However, due to the dense adjacent residential development, this consideration was again abandoned. In July 1939, GEHAG planned the construction of two-room apartments, but this plan was not implemented despite the construction site being released. Instead , the Mannheimer brothers were expropriated and their corner property on Britzer / Köllnische Strasse was transferred to the state's asset management team in June 1942. Due to the ongoing acts of war, there were now other plans for the forest. In 1943, planning began for the construction of a residential camp. It should consist of 13 symmetrically laid out stone barracks and offer space for over 2000 foreign forced laborers . It was hoped that the dense tree vegetation, some of which still exist today, would provide some protection against air attacks. In addition, the barracks were made of stone rather than wood, as was previously the case. Some were given an air raid shelter, although this was not permitted under current guidelines. It was planned under the name 'Lager 75/76' by the General Building Inspector for the Reich capital , title Albert Speers , and an authority subordinate to him. The designation 75/76 indicates that, strictly speaking, there are two warehouse buildings that were connected to one another via the middle supply building. The architect was Hans Freese , at the time a full professor at the Technical University in Charlottenburg and later rector of the Technical University of Berlin .

Around 500 Italian military internees and civilian workers lived in six barracks of the ' Italian camp', as well as probably ' Eastern workers '. In the other half of the double camp, two barracks temporarily served as a concentration camp subcamp for female prisoners who had to work at the Pertrix battery factory ( VARTA ).

After the Second World War, the camp area was briefly used by the Red Army ; later, in 1946, among other things, a GDR serum institute moved into the western area on Britzer Strasse. One barrack was demolished and others were used for different purposes. After the fall of the Wall , large parts of the surrounding industrial companies collapsed and were wound up. This arose for the district the question of how the area should be developed in the future in view of the advancing de-industrialization. In 1993, during investigations in preparation for renovation, it was found that the largely preserved remains of a forced labor camp from the Nazi era are located in Niederschöneweide. In 1995 the first open-air exhibition took place on the site. Since then, various initiatives and individuals have campaigned for the establishment of a documentation and memorial site. Since 2004 they have been members of the Documentation Center Support Association for Nazi Forced Labor. As of 2006, the Documentation Center for Nazi Forced Labor has been a department of the Topography of Terror Foundation jointly sponsored by the State of Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany . In 2014, the eastern half of the camp on Köllnische Strasse housed a physiotherapy facility with a sauna, a daycare center and a bowling club.

memorial

Documentation Center memorial plaque

Since July 2001 the facility was marked with a memorial plaque. As the last of around 3000 forced laborers' accommodations in Berlin, the entire 3.3 hectare ensemble has been a listed building since 1995 .

The Topography of Terror Foundation has been overseeing the project since April 2005 . As part of the memorial concept, six of the eleven barracks that still exist today were structurally secured. Two of these were expanded as lecture, exhibition and seminar rooms as well as a library and archive. The handover of the keys for the Documentation Center Nazi Forced Labor in Berlin-Schöneweide on August 24, 2006 was the beginning of a continuous and intensive preparation and presentation of facts on the subject of forced labor at this authentic location. In addition to changing exhibitions, lectures, readings and discussions with contemporary witnesses have taken place in the premises since then. Historian Christine Glauning heads the documentation center .

On August 30, 2010 the so-called 'Barrack 13' was opened to the public. It marks the eastern edge of the camp area. It was built as one of the first buildings. In it, especially in the air raid shelter, there are still many original traces, u. a. Inscriptions from previous inmates have been preserved. The green camouflage is still partially visible from the outside. The unplastered bricks, the washroom and the toilet room have also been preserved in the original. The wash well from Barrack 4 is in one of the rooms. The wooden furniture is no longer there. According to contemporary witnesses, it consisted of nine bunk beds, nine double wardrobes, a table, a few garden chairs, a cast iron stove and a bucket. A sparse incandescent lamp served as lighting. After the Second World War, this barrack was used as a material store and for various workshops. For a while, VEB Kühlautomat Berlin maintained a training workshop there. Antiques and building materials have been stored there since 2003. Some partition walls were torn out on the ground floor, but these were put back in during the repairs. Gaps between the partition and the original building indicate that these are not the original walls. As a carefully restored architectural testimony taking into account the requirements of the preservation of historical monuments, it complements the educational and socio-political mandate of the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center. The opening took place with the participation of diplomatic representatives from Italy and Poland as well as a former Polish slave laborer who had to work in the nearby S-Bahn main workshop in 1944/1945 .

Barracks 5 and 6 were converted into an international youth meeting place with several seminar rooms, a new library, event room and space for special exhibitions following a donation from the Quandt family.

Barrack 4 was partially expanded with funding from the Foreign Office in order to show a permanent exhibition on the fate of the Italian military internees.

Permanent exhibitions

On May 8, 2013, the first permanent exhibition “Everyday Forced Labor 1938–1945” was opened in Barrack No. 2. On November 28, 2016, the second permanent exhibition “Between all chairs. The History of the Italian Military Internees 1943–1945 ”.

Everyday forced labor 1939–1945

The permanent exhibition “Everyday Forced Labor 1938–1945” presents the history of forced labor during National Socialism as an omnipresent mass phenomenon. It shows the everyday life of the men, women and children abducted to work - in the camp, at work and in contact with Germans. It illustrates how much the life of the slave laborers was shaped by the racist hierarchy of the Nazi regime.

Between all stools. The history of the Italian military internees 1943–1945

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were initially allies in the " Berlin-Rome Axis ". With the armistice of Cassibile on September 8, 1943, Italy left the alliance. The German Wehrmacht then took the Italian soldiers and officers prisoner. About 650,000 Italians were transported to the German Empire and the occupied territories. With the establishment of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI) in 1944, the prisoners were declared " military internees ". In spite of the new fascist alliance and regardless of international law, they could be used as slave laborers in armaments. The permanent exhibition tells the story of the Italian military internees. It spans the range from the German-Italian alliance partnership in the Second World War to dealing with the issue in the present. The individual chapters are devoted to central aspects of capture, transport, forced labor, the end of the war and memory.

Special exhibitions

A story of displacement and survival. Holocaust and Forced Labor in Galicia

August 30, 2019 - February 2, 2020

80 years ago, on September 1, 1939, the Second World War began with the German invasion of Poland . In the district of Galicia , which was occupied German first Soviet and in 1941, there were over 500,000 Jews. Almost all of them were murdered by the Germans. The exhibition shows the German occupation policy towards the Jewish population in Galicia: individual pogroms , the formation of ghettos, deportation to the Bełżec extermination camp and forced labor in camps. There, the Germans exploited the Jewish workforce, thousands perished at work - at the same time, a job could temporarily protect against deportation to death. The depiction follows the fate of the Holocaust survivor Józef Lipman and the rescue attempts of individual helpers, in particular by Berthold and Else Beitz as well as Donata and Eberhard Helmrich . They were able to save some people from death.

For the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center, the traveling exhibition was expanded to include a few aspects that deepen the connection between the Holocaust and forced labor in Galicia. An exhibition by the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace and the Israeli organization Drohobycz-Boryslaw .

HISTORY_N. A participatory installation by Jolanda Todt

August 21, 2019 - September 29, 2019

The installation GE-SCHICHTE_N by the artist Jolanda Todt invites visitors to deal with the German occupation in Poland 1939–1945 - to literally touch history. The work of art consists of 60 concrete panels on which various materials are applied: modern photographs, historical documents and excerpts from an interview with contemporary witnesses. Each concrete slab opens up a different approach to history. The fragments can be combined with individual prior knowledge and associations. Only by carefully analyzing the materials will visitors find out that there is also a personal story hidden in the story. The more the visitors deal with the material, the narrower the framework within which the information can be interpreted.

Lost memory. Places of Nazi forced labor in the Czech Republic

May 16, 2019 - August 18, 2019

80 years ago, in March 1939, German troops occupied the Czech Republic . The so-called Sudetenland had already annexed the German Reich in 1938. 400,000 Czechs were deported to Germany for forced labor. At the same time, the Nazi regime set up numerous forced labor camps in the occupied area. The exhibition shows 18 places of Nazi forced labor on Czech soil, including the Theresienstadt ghetto , the Leitmeritz satellite camp and an armaments factory in Prague. Forced labor is presented in all its breadth: as part of the Holocaust, the concentration camp system, the murder of Sinti and Roma, and the exploitation of civilians and prisoners of war. The exhibition describes the places on the basis of historical photographs and objects, testimonies from contemporary witnesses and current pictures.

Philibert and Fifi. Caricatures and drawings of a French slave laborer

November 23, 2018 - April 28, 2019

Even before his deportation to Germany, the French artist Philibert Charrin (1920–2007) dealt with National Socialism in his caricatures: Hitler portrayed him as a warmonger, Goebbels as a loudmouth. In April 1943 the French Vichy government forcibly sent him to the German Reich to do forced labor in Austria near Graz as an earthworker. With the help of his drawings, Charrin dealt with the work, the Austrians and the other forced laborers in a humorous way - always accompanied by the stick figure "Fifi", which can be found on almost all drawings. Many of his caricatures mock the alleged “master people” or refer to resistance and sabotage by the slave laborers. Some of the drawings show their everyday life and living conditions. These statements are mostly encoded by skillful representation or wit. What all drawings have in common is the humor with which Charrin depicts that time despite the harsh living conditions. The exhibition belongs to the Nazi Documentation Center of the City of Cologne .

Batteries for the Wehrmacht. Forced labor at Pertrix 1939–1945

November 13, 2015 - October 28, 2018

Pertrix, a subsidiary of AFA ( Akkumulatorenfabrik AG ) belonging to the Quandt Group , manufactured dry batteries and flashlights for the Wehrmacht and supplied fuse batteries for combat aircraft to the Air Force. Batteries were a central product of the war industry and one of the Quandt Group's most important sources of income. In the course of the war, the Pertrix employed all groups of forced laborers: Berlin Jews in "closed work", prisoners of war and Italian military internees, Western European civil workers, Eastern workers, Poles, concentration camp prisoners. According to the documents, around 2000 people from 16 nations were employed at Pertrix, most of them women. The exhibition highlights the role of the company in the German arms industry and within the group. The dangerous work in the battery factory is reported on the basis of original objects and interviews with contemporary witnesses.

Forced labor in Berlin 1938–1945

August 24, 2006 - May 3, 2007 and since June 11, 2009 - May 5, 2013

An exhibition by the Berlin regional museums

Who were the people who had to do forced labor in Berlin, where did they come from and under what conditions did they have to live and work? Who were the beneficiaries and who organized and administered the forced labor? What was the post-war fate of the survivors? What traces did the massive use of forced labor leave in the Berlin urban space and in the memory of the Berlin population? This exhibition, which was drawn up in 2002 on the basis of regional research by eleven regional museums and institutions, investigates these and other questions. In 2005, this exhibition was expanded to include the subject of forced labor in the Berlin-Brandenburg operations of the Flick Group due to current events.

Building blocks. History and Perspectives of the Documentation Center Nazi Forced Labor

August 24, 2006 - January 27, 2013

The “Building Blocks” exhibition provides information on the history of the former forced labor camp in Berlin-Schöneweide from 1943 to 1945, which today is still unique as a whole. Built by the “General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital” Albert Speer, it was one of around 3,000 collective accommodation for forced laborers in Berlin. Italian military internees and civilian workers, female concentration camp prisoners and civilian workers from various European nations were housed here. They had to work in one of the numerous factories of the Schöneweide armaments center. The exhibition also documents the history of the origins of the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center, which was only made possible through many years of civic engagement, and its functions as an exhibition, archive and learning location. You can see photographs, documents, plans and original objects.

Forced Labor and Aryanization. Warnecke & Böhm - An example

September 27, 2011 - January 27, 2013

The company Warnecke & Böhm - factories for lacquers and paints had its headquarters in Goethestrasse in the Berlin district of Weißensee. By 1945 Warnecke & Böhm had become one of the leading suppliers of protective coatings for the armaments industry in the German Reich. The company employed a large number of forced laborers between 1939 and 1945, including Jews living in Berlin and foreign civilian workers. The history of forced labor by Jews at Warnecke & Böhm also includes the “ Aryanization ” of the company and thus the ousting of co-owner Heinrich Richard Brinn after 1933. He was later committed to forced labor in Berlin, deported and murdered.

The focus of the exhibition is on the personnel files of former Jewish forced laborers at Warnecke & Böhm. These files comprise a total of 352 files, copies of which have been preserved in the archive of the New Synagogue - Centrum Judaicum Foundation since 1991. Only in the course of the preparations for the exhibition was it possible to track down the original files, which had previously been believed to be lost. The personnel files document how the “closed labor deployment” of Jewish forced laborers was organized by a number of official and internal offices in the sense of “proper administrative action”. You will receive job assignments, personnel forms, registrations and de-registrations at the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, company ID cards, stamp cards, payroll and tax statements, occupational accident protocols, health certificates, requests for leave, requests for exemption, but also complaints, objections and claims from forced laborers. In view of this bureaucratically organized system of disenfranchisement, harassment, health hazards and even outright violence, the personnel files also document the efforts, the courage and strength of Jewish forced laborers, to object to the treatment at Warnecke & Böhm and, in particular, to object to the discretion that the the company owned to use in their favor.

61 Jewish forced laborers from the Warnecke & Böhm company survived the Nazi dictatorship. The others - 306 people - were murdered in concentration and extermination camps.

Mrs. Zhuk and her granddaughter - photo exhibition by Roland Stelter

September 21, 2010 - November 13, 2011

The photo exhibition was made possible by forum bmp and other private and public sponsors.

Maria Zhuk Born in 1924 in the village of Begatsch / Ukraine. 1932/33 Golodomor famine period. 1937 forced collectivization. 1939–41 father in the Gulag. 1942 as a forced laborer in Germany. 1943 Ravensbrück concentration camp, 1944 Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Silvia weapons factory. 1945 return. Mother killed in bombardment, father suicide in 1945. Second hunger period. Enemy of the people, surveillance by the NKVD / KGB. 1947 marriage. The man in the army for seven years, dies in 1995. 1948 Birth of the first of four children. Publication of various memoirs in Soviet and Ukrainian newspapers.

Yanina Lazarenko Born in Chernigow in 1976. 1995 model in Kiev. 1997 studies at the Institute for International Relations. 1999–2001 several times longer in Western Europe. 2002–03 Moscow. 2005 life in the open air in Crimea. 2006–07 project manager in Moscow for Elle, Psychology and Departures. 2008 daughter's birth. 2009-10 single mother in Kiev.

To forget. Repressed. Reconciled. Places of Nazi forced labor in the Dahme-Spreewald region

June 18, 2010 - September 11, 2011

An exhibition by the Dahme-Spreewald Cultural Landscape Association

In the Dahme-Spreewald region, too, forced labor was part of a huge armaments machine that could only function as long as thousands of foreign forced laborers were deployed here. Aircraft were built in Schönefeld, locomotives and torpedoes in Wildau, and the ammunition required for this was produced in Army Ammunition No. 6 in Töpchin. The forced laborers were employed in medium-sized industry as well as in urban service companies and private households. A special section of the exhibition is dedicated to the forced labor of the Jewish prisoners in the Königs Wusterhausen satellite camp.

Rift through life. Memories of Ukrainian female forced laborers in the Rhineland

June 11, 2009 - June 6, 2010

An exhibition by the Rhineland-Palatinate Regional Association

Following a program of visits by the Rhineland Regional Council in March 2006 for former forced laborers from Ukraine, the opportunity arose to get another project off the ground. Many of the survivors were no longer able to travel, but were very interested in making contact. The project made it possible to travel to them, record their life stories and document them in a traveling exhibition along with accompanying publication and CD-ROM. The forced laborers who could be visited in Ukraine were, as "Eastern workers", patients in what was then the regional women's clinic and midwifery training facility in Wuppertal Elberfeld. Ten life stories are presented that reflect very individual fates. Most of them had to go through the birth of their first child under the conditions of forced labor, two are daughters of forced laborers who were born in Wuppertal.

In total commitment. Forced labor of the Czech population for the Third Reich

May 29, 2008 - May 31, 2009

In the context of Nazi occupation policy, the exhibition deals with the gradual development of Nazi forced labor in the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”. It shows the mobilization of the Czech population up to the forced recruitment of entire age groups. The exhibition documents the work and the living conditions of the Czech forced laborers as well as the system of work and punishment in the labor education camps. The slave labor of the concentration camp inmates and the specific situation of the Czech Jews and Roma are also presented in detail. Around 250 mainly personal documents and photographs can be seen, some of which are being shown for the first time in Germany. Particularly noteworthy are the unique pictures by the Czech photographer Zdeněk Tmej from the years of his forced labor 1942–1944. One chapter of the exhibition is specifically dedicated to the forced labor of the Czechs in Berlin. A film with excerpts from interviews with survivors and thematic memorabilia complete these testimonies.

The exhibition can be borrowed from the German-Czech Future Fund.

Bosch Group. Forced labor for an armaments factory in Kleinmachnow

January 31 - May 18, 2008

Dreilinden-Maschinenbau GmbH Kleinmachnow, a subsidiary of the Bosch Group, deployed over 2500 civilian slave laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners of various nationalities during the Second World War. The exhibition, revised by Angela Martin for the Documentation Center and designed by Hanna Sjöberg, documents the history of the company and the use of forced labor with numerous photographs, documents, plans and original exhibits. In-depth material can be found on lecterns. Quotes from interviews with survivors form a separate narrative thread from the perspective of the victims.

Preserve memory. Slave and forced laborers of the Third Reich from Poland 1939–1945

May 8, 2007 - January 20, 2008

The theme of this exhibition is the story of the 2.8 to 3 million Polish men, women and children who were forced to work in German war and agriculture during the Second World War. Display boards with photos and documents, original objects, biographies and a film illustrate the fate of these people.

The Polish version of the exhibition was developed by the “Polish-German Reconciliation” Foundation in Warsaw and has been shown in various Polish cities since 2005. In cooperation with the Documentation Center Nazi Forced Labor, an updated German version was created, which can be seen at other locations in Germany. It can be borrowed from the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation.

Guided tours and seminars

Admission to the exhibitions is free, free guided tours and seminars - also for school classes - are available on request. Public tours without registration are offered every Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. Barrack 13 is only accessible as part of a guided tour and all day on International Museum Day and Open Monument Day . A library, collection and archive can be used on request.

Future memory work

Thanks to a donation from the Johanna Quandt Foundation, two previously unused barracks were expanded in 2015. These were opened to the public on November 12, 2015. Barrack 5 now houses special exhibition, event and archive rooms as well as the library. An international youth meeting place was opened in Barrack 6.

literature

Web links

Commons : Documentation Center Nazi Forced Labor  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ epd / ank: Permanent exhibition opened for Nazi forced laborers . In: The world . May 7, 2013, accessed May 18, 2014.
  2. ↑ Gabriele Layer-Jung and Cord Pagenstecher: From the forgotten warehouse to the documentation center? The former Nazi forced labor camp in Berlin-Schöneweide. The GBI camp 75/76. In: Memorials circular. Support association for a documentation and meeting center on Nazi forced labor in Berlin-Schöneweide. No. 111, March 2003, pp. 3–13 ( zwangsarbeit-in-berlin.de ( memento of August 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; 149 kB]).
  3. ↑ zwangsarbeit-in-berlin.de ( Memento from December 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). -
    Gabriele Layer-Jung and Cord Pagenstecher: From the forgotten warehouse to the documentation center? The former Nazi forced labor camp in Berlin-Schöneweide. The GBI camp 75/76. In: Memorials circular. Support association for a documentation and meeting center on Nazi forced labor in Berlin-Schöneweide. No. 111, March 2003, p. 2 ( zwangsarbeit-in-berlin.de ( Memento from August 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; 149 kB]).
  4. ^ The university management of the Technical University of Berlin since 1946. Section: Rectors 1946–1970. In: tu.berlin, accessed June 23, 2020.
  5. ↑ Homepage. In: ns-zwangsarbeit.de, accessed on August 4, 2020. -
    The Topography of Terror Foundation. About us. In: topographie.de, accessed on August 4, 2020.
  6. ^ Campaign "Traces of Forced Labor". In: ns-zwangsarbeit.de, accessed on August 4, 2020.
  7. ↑ Treptow-Niederschöneweide redevelopment area. In: sanierungsgebiet-niederschoeneweide.de, December 31, 2016, accessed on August 4, 2020.
  8. ^ Ralf Drescher: Exhibition "Batteries for the Wehrmacht". In: Berlin Week . November 14, 2015, accessed August 4, 2020.
  9. ↑ Contact. Imprint. In: ns-zwangsarbeit.de, accessed on August 4, 2020.
  10. ↑ Uwe Aulich: I had to do what I was told. In: Berliner Zeitung . January 6, 2016, p. 16.
  11. ↑ Education. In: ns-zwangsarbeit.de, accessed on June 23, 2020.
  12. ↑ guided tours. In: ns-zwangsarbeit.de, accessed on June 23, 2020.
  13. ↑ exhibition. Barrack 13 In: ns-zwangsarbeit.de, accessed on June 23, 2020.

Coordinates: 52 ° 27 '10.6 "  N , 13 ° 31' 10.9"  E