1 of 3 In the corridors of a former workers’ camp: Hanna S. wants to know more about the fate of her ancestors — Photo: Luisa von Richthofen/DW In the corridors of a former workers’ camp: Hanna S. wants to know more about the fate of her ancestors — Photo: Luisa von Richthofen/DW
When her greataunt died, Hanna S. was eight years old too young to understand what her grandmother’s sister had gone through. Like 13 million other women, men and children, she had joined forced labor in Germany under the National Socialist regime. Many of them were deported from the occupied countries to the German Reich.
“I found out about my greataunt’s fate by chance,” says the spirited teacher with long brown hair. The native Belarusian is using her summer vacation to take part in a seminar in Berlin on the subject of forced labor during the Nazi era.
The information she has about her ancestor is just beginning, as “it wasn’t talked about much in my family,” explains the interviewee, who did not want to reveal her full name. “I think that’s a real shame. It’s the gap in the family history.”
For now, all she knows is that her greataunt had to bake bread, but she hopes to find out more. That’s why he came to the German capital, where the documentation center on forced labor under National Socialism is located.
The silence of the neighborhood
At the documentation center in southeast Berlin, Hanna S. and other history enthusiasts attend a tenday teachers’ seminar run by the peace organization Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (ASF). Another five participants also come from Belarus.
“The topic touches me, but it is also emotionally exhausting,” she admits, and later plans to research it herself in the center’s archives. As she speaks, the 30yearold teacher looks at the bare walls of a barrack, part of a camp that housed forced laborers from 1943 onwards and which is now preserved as an authentic memorial site.
The tree in front of the window already existed back then, as did the houses from whose windows the residents could see the camp, and how the workers went to the surrounding factories early in the morning and only returned in the evening.
You don’t need much imagination to imagine the cramped conditions, the cold and the unspeakable hygienic conditions in the barracks, which numerous contemporary witnesses would later report. There was no privacy, not even in the room where the toilets were at the end of the corridor.
2 of 3 It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine the inhumane conditions in the forced labor barracks — Photo: Nina Werkhäuser/DW It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine the inhumane conditions in the forced labor barracks — Photo: Nina Werkhäuser/DW
Forced labor “was everywhere”
The example of the then capital of the German Reich illustrates the enormous extent of forced labor under the Nazi regime. Berlin was not only the center of power, but also the location of large industrial and defense companies with a gigantic need for workers especially because many German men and women were on the front line.
The metropolis on the Spree alone exploited the labor of around half a million men, women and even children: They were “everywhere” in the capital, confirms historian Roland Borchers, who researches forced labor at the Documentation Center.
Even though almost nothing in Berlin’s cityscape today reminds us of this past, historians estimate that there were around 3,000 forced labor accommodations in the city: “There was one on every corner,” confirms Borchers. In addition to barracks, warehouses, attics and private apartments also served as collective accommodation.
2,000 of these are already documented in a publicly accessible database, which Borchers’ researchers constantly feed with new information because “we are always finding new accommodations.”
3 of 3 For the Belarusian Hanna S., the research into the fate of her greataunt has just begun — Photo: Luisa von Richthofen/DW For the Belarusian Hanna S., the research into the fate of her greataunt has just begun — Photo: Luisa von Richthofen/ DW
The victim’s perspective
During Nazi rule, every company could request forced labor from the large armaments factory to the bakery on the corner. “He had to go to the Ministry of Labor, present his demands and convince them of the importance of his company,” explains Borchers. “Then he was assigned a forced laborer.”
After the Second World War, the issue of forced labor exploitation received little attention for a long time. Processing only began in the mid1980s and continues to this day. And some aspects are still unclear, the historian emphasizes: In particular, little is known about the perspectives and experiences of the victims.
Hanna S. has seen how many families shy away from talking about the topic, be it out of shame or for other reasons. For them, this is another incentive to do forced labor during National Socialism “so that such atrocities do not happen again in the future.”