Elsa Knittel was one of the last to die on April 14, 1945, one day before the Daimler-Benz engine production plant for the armaments industry in Ludwigsfelde was closed down. She was only 30 years old. As with many other victims, we do not know exactly whether or where she was buried.

Ludwigsfelde was home to Daimler-Benz's largest forced labor camp in Germany.

In 1936, the Daimler-Benz AG large engine plant was built in the Genshagener

Heide near Ludwigsfelde. In 1944, when the armaments industry was in full swing, Daimler-Benz selected around 1,100 women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp between August and October 1944 and sent them to the factory. From November 1944, the women were housed in a cellar located directly next to the workplace, the so-called “Deutschlandhalle”. Here they had to carry out assembly work. The survivors did not see daylight again until the end of the war in May 1945.

It is unclear where those who died or were killed were buried. Mercedes-Benz still produces in Ludwigsfelde and is one of the largest employers there. Neither Mercedes-Benz nor the town of Ludwigsfelde have shown any interest in clarifying and acknowledging their own local history. Nothing at the site of the former camp commemorates the history or the people who had to perform forced labor and died here.

What we do know is that there is a so-called forest cemetery by the freeway, which is no longer recognizable as a cemetery. There are many indications that some of the prisoners who died and were killed were buried there. Paul and Philipp will take us from the train station through the former forced labor camp in Ludwigsfelde to the cemetery, where we will commemorate the dead. We invite you to join us in laying flowers and candles and remembering the dead who were forced to work and die for Daimler-Benz.

To make it easier to plan, please register for the memorial walk: gedenkspaziergang@posteo.de