Barrack Camp of the Reich Railway Facility Neuaubing (Ehrenbürgstraße)

During the Second World War, there were between 400 and 500 collective accommodations in Munich for the estimated 150,000 forced laborerswho were deployed in the metropolitan area during this period. Many of them were taken to Munich from the areas occupied by the Nazi regime throughout Europe. The program initiated in 1939 for the deployment of foreign workers was a central tool of the Nazi war machinery. During the Second World War, more than 13 million foreign forced laborers were deployed in the territory of the Greater German Reich. Without these workers, the domestic economy would have collapsed and the Nazi regime would not have been able to wage the war for so long. One of the few surviving reminders of this mass crime is a barrack camp in the western Munich district of Neuaubing, which was once built and administered by the German Rail Company. 

Neuaubing, which was only incorporated into Munich in 1942, developed during the Nazi era with its two large companies, the Dornier aircraft factory and the Reich Railway Facility (RAW), into a center of armaments production and forced labor. A total of around 7000 foreign forced laborers were deployed in the communities of Aubing, Neuaubing, and Langwied during the Second World War, around 2000 of them at the Dornier factories in the production of fuselages for fighter planes and around 1600 at the RAW. The RAW was one of two railway repair facilities in Munich. It was considered 'important for the war effort' during the Second World War, as a functioning railway operation was essential for the transport of troops and materials, among other things. 

The camp on today's Ehrenbürgstraße, which has different names in the sources,  was initially opened in 1942 as accommodation for so-called  'Eastern workers,' i.e. civilian forced laborers from the Soviet Union . May 1, 1942, the day on which camp commander Josef Eichhorn officially took up his new post, can serve as an approximate date. A short time later, the first 150 people from the Soviet Union were registered, who possibly still had to help build parts of the barrack camp. 

In accordance with the regulations in effect at that time, Soviet civilian laborers had to be accommodated separately not only from Germans but also from other employed foreigners due to racial reasons. The forced laborers from other countries who had to work at the RAW were therefore initially housed at other locations in and around the factory. Later in the war, however, other groups were also housed there for capacity reasons - demonstrably Italian military internees (IMIs) and Polish forced laborers. It is likely that the RAW camp was full or even overcrowded in the last year of the war, not least because workers had to be accommodated who had been transferred from other camps near the front line.

While the original plan was to build a total of eleven lightweight barracks with a total capacity of around 620 beds - six accommodation barracks, one workshop barrack, one medical barrack, one utility barrack, one bathing/washing barrack, and one guard barrack - only five functional buildings and four accommodation barracks were actually built by the end of the war . The last camp barrack was only completed at the beginning of 1945, with a highly improvised structure. The camp was located about ten minutes' walk north of the factory and the railroad line to Herrsching. The site was surrounded on three sides by fields and a rubble dump.  To the west, it directly adjoined the settlement on Gößweinsteinplatz, which was built in 1938-1939 as a typical National Socialist workers' settlement.

The forced laborers at the camp were deployed in the nearby Reich Railway Facility (RAW) for heavy work in the maintenance of passenger and freight cars, but also for clean-up work after Allied air attacks. Armed guards led the columns to their workplaces in the morning and brought the forced laborers back to the camp in the evening. The camp staff used violence to discipline the camp inmates. Death certificates document nine deaths in the camp. The camp personnel were recruited from the ranks of the staff of the Neuaubing Reich Railway Facility (RAW). Thus far, 15 people are known: a camp leader, his deputy, a guard leader, six guards, an interpreter, a paramedic, a kitchen manager, a technical manager, a gardener, and an office worker.

After the end of the war, the railway briefly made the buildings available for refugees, and later employees of the German Railways lived there. The area has been used commercially since the 1970s, mainly by artists, craftspeople, and social organizations. Despite structural changes, the original building layout has been largely preserved. 

Since 2017, the site, including all eight remaining barracks, two anti-shatter bunkers, and the remains of the existing fence, have been the subject of historic preservation. In 2014, the Munich City Council acquired the site with the aim of permanently preserving the socio-cultural uses and commemorating the history of Nazi forced labor. For this purpose an annex of the Nazi Documentation Center will be established there. Two barracks and parts of the outdoor area will be used for exhibitions, educational events, and other events in the future. The historically accurate renovation of the entire premises is due to be completed by 2027.