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The Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre in the Berlin district of Schöneweide is located on the historic site of an almost completely preserved forced labour camp. It was one of more than 3,000 such camps in Berlin alone, and one of the only ones to have survived. The camp, GBI Camp 75/76, was set up in the middle of a residential area in 1943 by the General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital (GBI), headed by Albert Speer. The site consists of 13 accommodation barracks and a central supply building. The camp was designed for more than 2,000 forced labourers, but was never fully occupied. More than 400 Italian forced labourers, including military internees, and civilian forced labourers from various countries were housed here. In the final months of the war, two of the barracks were used to house female concentration camp prisoners who were forced to work at the nearby Pertrix battery factory.

After 1945, the Red Army used some of the barracks as a paper store for the Soviet Military Administration. Shortly after the war, a vaccine company, which later became the Vaccine Institute of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), moved into the six barracks that now make up the Documentation Centre. The Vaccine Institute closed down after 1989, and this part of the camp’s historic site stood empty for more than ten years after 1995. The other barracks are still used as a workshop, sauna, kindergarten, car showroom and bowling alley.

Civil society actors, including the Berlin History Workshop, began working on the creation of a place of remembrance in the 1990s. In 2004, the Berlin Senate decided to establish a documentation centre dedicated to the history of Nazi forced labour. In 2005 to 2006, with the support of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ), an international Founding Advisory Board was set up to determine the initial stages of work on the Documentation Centre. In 2006, the Documentation Centre, part of the Topography of Terror Foundation, was officially opened on the site of the former camp. Since then, permanent and temporary exhibitions have been held to inform the public about the people who were forced labourers. The everyday life of the civilian forced labourers is documented through biographies, photographs, memories, documents and objects on display. There is also a digital archive of personal testimonies from contemporary witnesses.

The Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre offers a wide ranging of educational programme. Free guided tours, seminars, workshops, project weeks and educational holidays provide a deeper understanding of various aspects of the subject, with approaches adapted to different groups. Since 2015, the International Youth Encounter Centre has been housed in one of the former barracks, where young people from all over the world meet for project weeks organised in cooperation with international partners.