Eight barracks of a former forced labor camp have been preserved in western Munich. The buildings are testimony to the mass deportations and exploitation of forced laborers under the Nazi regime. Between 1939 and 1945, some 13.5 million men, women, and children from all over Europe were employed as forced laborers in the German Reich alone. If one includes the territories under German occupation, that figure rises to an estimated 25 million.
During the Third Reich, the Neuaubing camp was one of more than 400 collective accommodation complexes for forced laborers within the Munich city limits. It was built by the Reichsbahn—German Railways—in 1942 and until 1945 accommodated up to 1,000 laborers who were forced to work at the nearby Railway Maintenance Workshops (RAW). Originally the complex was intended for civilian forced laborers from the Soviet Union, who included many women, children, and adoles-cents. In the course of the war, people from Poland, Italy, and possi-bly the Netherlands and France were housed there as well.
After 1945, the history of the camp gradually became forgotten. Only since the 2000s have civil society initiatives worked to make the history of the site more visible again. Today, the eight former barracks are mainly used as studios and workshops, but there is also a kindergar-ten and a recreational farm for children and adolescents on the site. The plan is to permanently retain the current uses of the site and to open an annex of the Munich Documentation Center alongside them as a memorial site staging exhibitions and educational events.
The future annex at Neuaubing will allow a more extensive examina-tion of the topic of Nazi forced labor, offering more background infor-mation and providing the potential to take new and innovative ap-proaches to the culture of remembrance. The variety of actors and the diverse uses of the site mean that it will continue to change in the fu-ture while at the same time preserving the various stories it has to tell and remaining readily identifiable as a special historic location that members of the public can visit. The opening of the annex is planned for 2025, and regular tours are already taking place there now.
The digital history project Departure Neuaubing: European Histories of Forced Labor is intended to accompany the development of the site. It uses artistic and narrative formats to make the history of Nazi forced labor and its impact up to and including the present day accessible.
