Historical story

Marzahn gypsy camp

The Nazi party tried to wipe out any ethnic group that threatened the purity of the Aryan race. According to National Socialist ideology, the Roma people are made up of untermensch -infrahuman-, so they tried to eliminate them wherever they were.

In 1936, the Berlin police carried out a cleansing of Gypsies from the capital. More than 800 were locked up in a makeshift concentration camp in the Marzahn neighborhood. The camp was made up of the gypsies' own caravans, as well as various wooden buildings and shacks erected by the prisoners. Around it, a barbed wire fence was erected where the police, along with dogs, watched over the inmates.

The camp was in operation until it was closed in 1943. The surviving gypsies were taken to the Birkenau extermination camp to be eliminated.

How to get there

The site of the former Marzahn gypsy camp is located in East Berlin. To get there we must take the S-bahn lines S7 to the Raoul-Wallenberg-Str. stop. To know the best combination to arrive you can consult the following LINK.

Visit the Gypsy Camp of Marzahn

The site of the Marzahn gypsy concentration camp now has an open-air exhibition with information about this ancient facility.


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