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Forced Labour Camp Memorial Site at Neuaubing

The mass exploitation of people from all over Europe through forced labour was one of the major crimes of the Nazi regime. Eight barracks of a forced labour camp still exist in the Munich suburb of Neuaubing. There were around 30,000 such camps all over the German Reich. As the last surviving camp complex in southern Germany, this site is a high-ranking piece of historical testimony. The camp belonged to the German Railways (Reichsbahn) Repair Works (RAW) Neuaubing. Since 1945, it has had various functions including housing for railway employees and is now a domicile for tradesmen, artists and educational institutions. In 2011, Munich City Council decided to create a memorial site at the RAW, and in 2015, the city purchased the entire ensemble. An exhibition documenting the living and working conditions endured by the forced labourers will be housed in one of the barracks.

In Barrack 5 of the former Forced Labour Camp Neuaubing, an exhibition of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism is to be created. Visitors will be able to explore the site with an audio guide for schools even prior to the o

Porta Polonica

Forced Labour in the Service of the Reichsbahn

The Reichsbahn had a great demand for forced labourers, which rose even further as the war proceeded. There were two railway repairs works in Munich – in Freimann and Neuaubing – which manufactured and repaired armoured and hospital trains as well as passenger carriages for war operations. The work was physically and mentally arduous.

Most of the “foreign workers” at RAW Neuaubing lived in the camp in Ehrenbürgstraße. Armed railway employees brought the men, women, youths and children to the works in the morning and back to the camp in the evening. They had to work longer hours and for lower wages than German workers and had scarcely any protection or rights.

Since it was crucial to the war effort the RAW became the target of major bombing in July 1944. There were no air-raid shelters for the forced labourers. After the war, German Railways (now the Bundesbahn) continued to operate the works until 2001. In 2015, demolition work began on the site where a new housing development is currently being built.

The Faces of Forced Labour

The victims of forced labour fell virtually into oblivion after the war. Only years later did they become the focus of renewed scholarly and public attention. The Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism is placing the fates of Munich’s forced labourers at the centre of its concept for this new memorial site.

For a long time nothing was known about the forced labourers employed directly in Neuaubing. The first surviving contemporary witness, Ivan Hont, was found in Yevmynka in Ukraine in 2012. Since then, systematic research has enabled contact to be established with a number of other former Neuaubing inmates and their descendants in various countries.

The information and documentation thus obtained have served as material for the exhibition and will form part of the future information and educational programmes of the Forced Labour Camp Memorial Site. The biographies of many former forced labours will be presented in audio and film interviews.

For tours, educational programmes and contacts, please call

+49 89 233-67007 or send an e-mail to

bildung.nsdoku@muenchen.de

The free audio guide can be downloaded at

www.ns-dokuzentrum-muenchen.de/muenchner-zeitgeschichten