Between 1941 and 1945, a “camp for sick Eastern labourers unfit for work” was located in the area between the Bahnhofstraße, which ran from Blankenfelde to Lübars, and the Alter Bernauer Heerweg. The camp was filled with women and men from the Soviet Union who had been abducted from their homes to work as forced labour in Nazi Germany. Because their living and working conditions were so terrible, many forced labourers contracted tuberculosis of the lungs. Often under the age of 25, the forced labourers were then considered no longer fit for “employment,” and transported to the camp in north Blankenfelde. The original plan was to transport the inhabitants of the camp back to their homes, but the transports were soon cancelled. Catastrophic hygienic conditions, poor nutrition and a lack of medical care meant that many of those held here died, with at least 726 deaths documented to date.
For a short time after the war, the barracks were used for shelter by refugees. Between 1961 and 1989, the site was located within the border fortifications of the Berlin Wall. Until just a few years ago, the history of the camp and the fates of the people forced to live there in inhumane conditions had been suppressed and forgotten.
In 2009, inhabitants of Pankow and Reinickendorf started round-table discussions with the goal of working together to memorialise the history of the camp, eventually preparing the installation of this preliminary informative plaque. In April 2023, the site of the former camp for sick forced labourers in Blankenfelde was formally protected as a monument.
