The Topography of Terror documents the Nazi crimes at the site of the perpetrators. The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), headed by Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer SS and Chief of Police, was the headquarters of Nazi terror.

The monitoring of millions of foreigners who had been forced into labour was one of the main activities of the Secret State Police (Gestapo): around two-thirds of all Gestapo arrests involved rebellious forced labourers or those who had attempted to escape.

The Gestapo usually placed arrested forced labourers in so-called labour education camps where they were imprisoned under concentration camp-like conditions for around two months and then returned to work.

The Polish Workers Decrees of 1940 and the Eastern Workers Decrees of 1942 subjected forced labourers from Poland and the Soviet Union to particularly racist treatment.

More on the Gestapo in the tour “Through the City of Camps”, stop 4