In July 1934, the Thiel brothers, a watch and detonator manufacturer from Ruhla, acquired a 22-hectare plot of land in the Mühlhausen city forest in northern Thuringia to expand production and accept further armaments orders. After completion, the newly founded company "Gerätebau GmbH", a subsidiary of the Thiel brothers GmbH, began producing detonators in December 1937.
As early as the end of 1940, Gerätebau GmbH was planning to use concentration camp prisoners, but this was not yet feasible due to a lack of accommodation options. From 1942 onwards, both the conscription of German specialists and special forces for military service and the expansion of the armaments industry throughout the Reich led to the increased use of Eastern European and Russian forced laborers, who were housed in the B camp of Gerätebau GmbH in the city forest. Up to 696 female, Jewish prisoners between the ages of 15 and 33 were forced to work there. To distinguish the camp inmates from the foreign workers, they were marked with red paint on their backs. Four years later, the company again applied for the allocation of concentration camp prisoners and the hiring of guards. On September 3, 1944, 300 predominantly Polish and Hungarian Jewish women from Buchenwald arrived at the Mühlhausen II subcamp (code name Martha II). Two days later, eight female guards from the Ravensbrück concentration camp arrived, reinforced by 15 more on September 19. In October 1944, another 200 women from the Auschwitz concentration camp arrived at the subcamp.
In 1947, the Soviet occupying forces blew up the factory halls and prisoner barracks. Remains of the production hall foundations can still be seen today. (Source: Wikipedia)