In 1943, the Dornier aircraft factory in Wismar, which had been destroyed by British bombers, was rebuilt in the immediate vicinity of the airfield built by the Wehrmacht. The skilled workers from Wismar were housed in the barracks of the airbase, as were ethnic Germans and foreign workers recruited from occupied Eastern European countries.
Since the labor pool was insufficient, the factory director negotiated with the leader of the labor deployment of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp about the provision of approximately 900 female prisoners.
The subcamp was established on September 1, 1944. The prisoners were initially Polish women arrested in connection with the Warsaw Uprising, as well as women from Soviet countries and other nationalities from the German-occupied territories.
From mid-February to the end of April 1945, transports arrived, primarily containing Jewish women and girls from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Romania, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, and other countries who had survived the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau. The number of prisoners grew to approximately 5,000. Malnutrition, disease, and brutal violence led to the deaths of approximately 1,000 prisoners.
On the morning of May 2, 1945, the guards left the camp in civilian clothes. On the afternoon of May 2, the Red Army occupied the airfield, the camp, and the town.