Marienfelde refugee transit camp

[citation needed] The Federal Emergency Law was officially adopted by the West Berlin authorities on 4 February 1952.

Considerations that guided the Federal Emergency department (Notaufnahmelagers des Bundes) to build it in this location were its proximity to Tempelhof Airport and to the railway lines of the Berlin S-Bahn,[citation needed] as well as its relatively safe distance from the Soviet sector.

[2] The camp operations started in August 1953, with ten housing blocks and a capacity of about 2,000 people, but it soon became over-crowded with waves of immigration after the East German Uprising on June 17.

[citation needed] Interrogation by Western Allied service agents for information about East Germany was frequent upon the refugees' arrivals at the camp.

[3] Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and mayor Willy Brandt visited the site on 20 August 1961 and were welcomed by a crowd of refugees.

[5] Up to today, it remains in use, processing ethnic Germans who are immigrating to Germany from the former Soviet Union as well as asylum applicants.