A former camp for forced laborers in Neuaubing

For our new memorial site in Neuaubing we are looking for photos, documents, or objects connected with Nazi forced labor in Munich and the surrounding area. Do you know any former forced laborers? Do you have any testimony or do you know of any reports about forced labor in factories, private households, or public space? If you do, we would be grateful if you would send them to departure.nsdoku@muenchen.de!

Trains for the eastern front

Munich’s western suburbs were one of the centers of the city’s war industry. At the end of April 1945 there were more than 7,000 foreign forced laborers in the districts of Aubing, Neuaubing, and Langwied, which had become part of Munich in 1941/1942. This number considerably exceeded that of the local German population. The forced laborers employed here were housed in more than a dozen collective accommodation complexes and camps.

The two largest local companies were the aircraft manufacturer Dornier-Flugzeugwerke and the Reichbahn’s Railway Maintenance Workshops (RAW). Dornier produced fighter planes. At RAW Neuaubing railway cars had been maintained, repaired, and converted since the beginning of the twentieth century. During the war, the Reichsbahn was of central importance for transporting troops and war material. Many trains came directly from the front to Neuaubing to be repaired. Special models for war use, such as hospital trains and so-called Ostloks (trains equipped with protection against frost), were also made in Neuaubing.
 

As the war continues the number of forced laborers increases

More than half of the RAW workforce were forced laborers from various European countries, at least 1,300 people altogether. They were divided up according to nationality and accommodated in camps in and around the workshops.  

Originally the camp was intended for civilian forced laborers from the Soviet Union; later Poles, Italians, Dutch, and possibly French laborers were accommodated there as well. Among them were many women, children, and adolescents.

How was the former forced labor camp used after 1945?

From 1949 at the latest the Deutsche Bundesbahn, as German Railways was called postwar, used the camp buildings as a hostel for apprentices. From the 1970s onward it was increasingly used for commercial purposes. In the 1980s a kindergarten and a recreational farm for children and adolescents opened there, and tradespeople and artists set up studios and workshops. These diverse postwar uses were largely responsible for the fact that the camp buildings were preserved more or less in their original state. At the same time, the site’s original function became obscured and forgotten. The Railways Maintenance Workshops located about 1km further south were finally closed in 2001. 
 

The Neuaubing camp becomes a memorial site

Since 2000, the history of the site has gradually been rediscovered as planning began for a new development in the adjacent district of Freiham. In the coming years, this development, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, will provide housing for around 30,000 people. The planning originally included the former camp complex, prompting an investigation into the history and historical significance of the site.

A historical evaluation carried out in 2008 confirmed that the site had indeed been used as a forced labor camp. The City of Munich initially bought one barrack in 2014 and then purchased the whole site the following year. A preservation order was put on all the buildings in 2017. In 2018 the city council decided to refurbish the site taking into account the preservation order and nature conservation requirements. It also decided to retain the site’s social and cultural uses permanently. The Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism will open a branch there in 2025. This will include a memorial site to keep alive the memory of forced labor in Munich.