Barrack 13
(since August 2010)

Barack 13 was one of the first buildings of the camp, started to be built in 1943. Between 1944 and 1945 there were Italian military internees and civilian workers accommodated here. Numerous inscriptions with names and dates, which can be visited in the basement of the building, bear witness to this. They are the only direct testimonies of the forced labourers of this camp. After the end of the war, the Red Army used the barrack as a material storage. In the following years different workshops moved in. Among other things, the Volkseigene Betriebs (VEB) Kühlautomat owned a training workshop here. From 2003, the building was used to store antiques and building materials. Despite the different after-effects, this barrack shows the most traces of the Nazi period compared to the others. It was therefore taken over by the Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Center in 2008 and cautiously restored and preserved as an accommodation barracks. In addition to the historical inscriptions in the cellar, quotes by forced labourers illustrate their everyday life in the camp, which was characterised by narrowness, hunger, lack of hygiene and despair.

The exhibition is only accessible within the framework of guided tours and special opening days.