Consider the echoes of the past. Here, at the Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide: Baracke 13, those echoes resonate with a chilling clarity. This isn’t just a building. It’s a preserved fragment of a dark chapter in history.
Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide: Baracke 13 stands as a stark reminder of the forced labor that scarred Berlin during the Nazi era. Of the 3,000 forced labor camps scattered across Berlin, this is the only one that remains nearly intact. It serves as a crucial site for education and remembrance.
In 1943, amidst a residential area, Albert Speer’s organization erected this camp. It was designed to hold over 2,000 forced laborers. Though never fully occupied, it housed Italian military internees and civilian forced laborers from various countries. In the final months of the war, female concentration camp prisoners were also housed here. They were forced to work at the Pertrix battery factory nearby.
Baracke 13 is one of the first buildings erected on the site in 1943. From 1944 to 1945, Italian military internees and civilian workers lived here. Numerous inscriptions with names and dates, visible in the building’s basement, bear witness to their presence. These inscriptions are direct testimonies of the forced laborers who were imprisoned here.
After the war, the Red Army briefly used the barracks as a storage depot. Later, various workshops moved in. VEB Kühlautomat, a state-owned enterprise, maintained a training workshop here. From 2003, the building served as storage for antiques and building materials. Unlike the other barracks, this one retained the most traces from the Nazi era. In 2008, the Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit took over the building. It was carefully restored and preserved as a former accommodation barrack.
Today, Baracke 13 is accessible during guided tours and on special opening days. Inside, you’ll find more than just walls. Historical inscriptions in the basement tell stories. Quotes from forced laborers illustrate their daily lives in the camp. These lives were marked by confinement, hunger, poor hygiene, and despair.
The permanent exhibition “Everyday Forced Labor 1938-1945” at the Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide, highlights the widespread use of forced labor under National Socialism. Through objects, photographs, and media installations, it reveals the organization of mass forced labor. It also shows the daily life in the camp. It depicts life at work and the interactions with Germans. The exhibition further illustrates how forced laborers were treated differently based on racist ideology. Selected biographies trace the lives of men, women, and children deported from nearly all over Europe.
The Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit offers free tours, seminars, workshops, project weeks and educational leave to delve deeper into specific aspects. Since 2015, an International Youth Meeting Center has been located in a former barrack. Project weeks are held there in cooperation with international partners with young people from all over the world.
As you leave the Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide: Baracke 13, remember the human cost of forced labor. Remember the importance of preserving these stories. Let this place serve as a reminder of the past. May it inspire a commitment to justice and human rights in the present and future.