Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp

When Berlin -Marzahn resting place called the National Socialist regime a labor camp, were imprisoned in the pursued as Roma and Sinti 1936-1943 Reich Citizenship in Berlin- Marzahn. A common name was Gypsy resting place Marzahn. The camp served the " concentration ", that is, the spatially facilitate control and the selection according to racial-ideological criteria of forced labor exploitation and preparation for the deportation to concentration camps and extermination camp Auschwitz -Birkenau.

History of the Camp

Prehistory

In preparation for the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin decided the Berlin police and the Welfare Administration in cooperation with the NSDAP Gau persons resident in Berlin, which was defined as "Gypsies" to remove from the cityscape. The Reich Minister of the Interior recommended (with its circular on "Combating the Gypsy plague" of 6 June 1936), " from time to time district wise or for all parts of the country raids to hold on Gypsy", and issued later in the Berlin Chief of Police Helldorf the order, a " Landesfahndungstag by gypsies " perform. All those who were regarded by the authorities as "Gypsies", whether living in conventional dwellings or in the caravan, were arrest and internment in a camp outside the capital. A legal basis did not exist for it.

Establishment of the camp

From the mid- 1930s, a large number of internment camps for Gypsies to municipal initiative .. was one of the first of the Gypsies resting place Marzahn was created in May 1936 on the outskirts of sewage near the Marzahn cemetery (now the west in a trapeze of the S-Bahn station Raoul - Wallenberg -Straße). In this unsuitable terrain an old barracks of the Reich Labor Service was set up, which was to serve the detainees as accommodation.

First internments

Were on July 16, 1936 in Berlin and around the settled Roma, mainly from the group of Sinti, arrested and brought to the camp Marzahn. Although at the beginning the goal of " protection from neighborly coexistence " and the " defense of serious moral hazards, particularly for young people " should be arrested all registered at the Gypsy service of the police as "Gypsy " and " Gypsy half-breed" people during the action and imprisoned. The number is specified in the subsequent press release with more than 600.

In the following months, some families were able to leave the camp. Some of them emigrated from Germany, others moved away but only from Berlin. The number of people fell at the end of 1937, up to 400

Intensification of persecution

The reason for adopting crime prevention on 14 December 1937, the situation changed. Now, a preventive detention could be imposed against the Nazi thus defined categories of professional criminals, habitual criminals, public or community Harmful Dangerous for which the criminal was responsible. Roma were sweeping and basically as a " common harmful" and " anti-social ". In a further consequence, a large part of the men was deported in the course of " action against anti-social elements " in February 1938 and in June at the action " work-shy Reich" in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. As a result, the rest area was inhabited mostly by women, children and the elderly. Since a large part of since August 1936 in the camp Come Out " propelled " were Sinti, the camp was in September 1937 with 150 caravans crowded.

Living conditions in the camp

The families suffered miserable housing conditions and were allowed to leave the premises only with permission from the police. The children gave one school on the premises.

The hygienic conditions in the camp were catastrophic. For the people there were only two toilets and three water points. The construction of wells was impossible because of the proximity of the sewage and the associated contamination of the water. The existing school was completely overcrowded and poorly equipped with a teacher. From the beginning of the war many prisoners were used as forced laborers in the Berlin industry. The camp Marzahn was not a concentration camp. It was under until its dissolution in the Berlin authorities, however, in the absence of control and lack of investment of impoverishment and vulnerability of the Sinti and Roma systematically rendered feed.

As the date of the dissolution of the camp March 1, 1943 is likely. Up to this day the Auschwitz Decree Heinrich Himmler was implemented after all " Gypsies, Roma Gypsy and not deutschblütige members gypsy clans of Balkan origins" select the relevant directives and in an action of a few weeks duration to a concentration camp, which was restricted in January 1943 to the concentration camp Auschwitz- Birkenau. By 1947, however, individual families were housed in the warehouse yet.

Racial research and deportations

Presumably in Marzahn (literally " in a camp near Berlin '), the physicians and researchers race Gerhart stone by studies for his from the leading Nazi racial theorists and Erbhygieniker Otmar von Verschuer supervised dissertation. Stone was also evidence of the Prussian police to optimize the measures of persecution.

The internees were from the staff, headed by the criminal biologists and tsiganologues Robert Ritter Racial Hygiene and population biology Research Centre ( RHF ) categorized a "gypsy clan archive" as a comprehensive database of the Central European Roma. The data formed in the course essential for the deportation of more than 20,000 Roma to the so-called Auschwitz decree also stone work will find the entrance.

One of the first 1943 to the "Gypsy camp at Auschwitz " deported groups were among the inmates of this camp, there were only two of the RHF back as " purebred " checking in families.

• Also See: Memoirs of a German Sinto to the persecution
• See also: Porajmos

Commemoration

• Images from the remembrance

Memorial stone from 1986, reminiscent of the former labor camp

Panel next to the memorial stone

Participants in the annual memorial event (June 13, 2010)

1985 turned to the author and civil Reimar Gilsenbach that for the inclusion of minority engaged in the GDR in the national memory, to the state Erich Honecker with the requirement to install in the locations of the two labor camp in Marzahn and in Magdeburg plaques. As a result, the Central Committee of the SED decision to build monuments there. For the implementation of the relevant district lines had to take care. The sculptor Jürgen Raue was awarded the contract for Marzahn. On September 12, 1986, a memorial stone was on the park Marzahn cemetery, on the right of the extended main path in the back part of the cemetery to the starting Raoul Wallenberg Street, inaugurated. Participants in the opening ceremony were the Berlin Sinti, members of the FDJ, Pastor Bruno Schottstädt the protestant church Marzahn / North as well as representatives of the Ecumenical Forum Berlin -Marzahn. The press of the GDR reported it in image and text. It was the first assessment of the history of persecution of the Roma by government representatives of the GDR. Already on June 29, 1986 where a memorial service of the Protestant Church at this memorial site was preceded by.

" From May 1936 until the liberation of our people by the glorious Soviet army suffered in a labor camp near this place hundreds of Sinti. Honor the victims. "

In addition, a plaque was placed, explaining the circumstances of the camp closer.

" On a former sewage farm north of the cemetery facing the Nazis before the Olympic Games in 1936 a " gypsy resting place "a, were forced on the hundreds Sinti and Roma live. Crammed into grim barracks permanent camp residents a miserable existence. Hard work, disease and hunger took their toll. Random people were abducted and arrested. Humiliating " racial hygiene investigations " spread fear and terror. In the spring of 1943, most of the " Date Fixed » deported to Auschwitz. Men and women, old people and children. Only a few survived. "

Since 1986, an annual organized by the World Forum in Berlin -Marzahn and the Land Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin -Brandenburg eV organized memorial service instead. A Place at the site of the former camp was named after Otto Rosenberg. His daughter Petra Rosenberg speaks every year at the memorial service at the stone.

In December 2011, was inaugurated at the initiative of the National Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin -Brandenburg on the grounds of the former slave camp, a place of memory and information. In ten panels installation will be informed about the history of forced camp Marzahn, reminiscent of the fate of the people interned there.