“As a foreigner, he is suspected of being an escapee.” Forced labor and Nazi justice in Potsdam (1940-1945)

From 22 November 2024 to 15 June 2025, the new special exhibition on forced labor and Nazi justice in Potsdam (1940-1945) will focus on the crime of forced labor committed by Germans in Brandenburg and throughout Europe under National Socialism. It uses the life stories of forced laborers imprisoned in Lindenstraße to demonstrate the devastating consequences of racist ideology and politics and thus contributes to raising public awareness of those affected by Nazi forced labor.

80 years after the end of the war, there are few reminders of an inhumane system in Nazi Germany: the exploitation of 8.4 million civilian forced laborers from all over Europe. Forced labor under the Nazi dictatorship between 1940 and 1945 was also omnipresent in today’s state of Brandenburg and in Potsdam. The foreign civilian and forced laborers are a group of prisoners at the Lindenstraße detention center that has received little attention to date. Several hundred men and women from at least 20 nations are documented as prisoners of the Potsdam court prison. The German occupying forces had recruited, forced or coerced them, along with millions of others, to work in Germany and transported them to places where they were supposed to make up for the war-related labor shortage. Little is known to the general public about the civilian forced laborers who were deployed in the province of Brandenburg and imprisoned in Lindenstraße prison for various reasons.

Based on new research, the special exhibition presents a prison register of the foreign workers detained in Lindenstraße for the first time. At the heart of the exhibition are 18 representative biographies of detainees, which take a closer look at the persecution and sentencing practices of the police, Gestapo, public prosecutors’ offices and courts in what is now the federal state of Brandenburg. At the same time, their lives are used to illustrate forms of recruitment as well as working and living conditions in Potsdam and other selected locations in the state of Brandenburg. The social and political background of Nazi forced labor is also reflected in context modules.

One of the forced laborers affected was Walter Dubois, born in Berlaimont/France in 1921. He worked as a metalworker at the Sebaldushof plant of Metallwarenfabrik Treuenbrietzen GmbH from March 1943 and lived in the company’s “foreigners’ camp”. He was responsible for setting up and operating three machines for the production of cartridge cases. After he had produced around 30,000 rejects in January 1944 and ignored the advice of the Polish control worker, he was arrested by plant security. On February 8, 1944, the management reported him to the Gestapo in Potsdam for sabotage. From February 10 to March 4, 1944, he was held in police custody in Treuenbrietzen and then on remand in the Jüterbog court prison. Dubois confessed and stated, among other things, that he had been unable to concentrate. He had never been on vacation and was worried about his parents.

On August 2, 1944, the criminal division of the Potsdam district court sentenced Walter Dubois to six months in prison for the production of defective cartridge cases. Taking into account his pre-trial detention in Jüterbog, the sentence was served after a further six days in the district court prison in what is now Lindenstraße in Potsdam. His labor was more important, as he was sent directly from prison to “Eastern deployment”. The secondment of German and foreign workers for the “fulfilment of state tasks” was based on the Emergency Service Ordinance of 15 October 1938. At the beginning of August 1944, civilian workers from Potsdam factories as well as prisoners and ex-convicts from the Lindenstraße prison were also called up for “long-term emergency service” with the approval of the employment office. They were sometimes deployed for several months in the construction of defense facilities in East Prussia and Pomerania. Walter Dubois’ whereabouts are unknown.

With this exhibition, the Lindenstraße Memorial Foundation is once again commemorating the inhumane and racist exploitation enterprise and the history of the relationship between Germans and foreign workers in a more comprehensive way than has previously been done at the site. At the same time, it also addresses another part of the history of the building.

English guided tours of the special exhibition will take place on March 6, 2025 at 3 pm and on May 18, 2025 (International Museum Day) at 2 pm.
Registration is requested at info[at]gedenkstaette-lindenstrasse.de