Party and SS departments used prisoners at the subcamp Berlin-Lichterfelde for labour. Inmates of this subcamp, managed by the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, were also put to work in the buildings of the Reich Security Main Office and the Gestapo.

They had to clear away rubble after air raids, defuse unexploded bombs, repair bomb shelters and dig splinter protection trenches. On May 7, 1944, 29 prisoners fell victim to an Allied air raid.

Fritz Sauckel, the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, was based at the Europa-haus, which was built in 1931. He organised the forced recruitment of around six million civil forced labourers (not including prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates). In the propaganda pamphlet “Europe is working in Germany. Sauckel mobilises the labour reserve” he presented his merits.