Arbeitseinsatz
| Arbeitseinsatz | |
|---|---|
 Mainly female slave labour at a German rifle factory,occupied Poland.An estimated 2,500 German companies employed forced labour during World War II[1] | |
| Location | German-occupied Europe,forced labour predominantly fromNazi occupied Polandand the Soviet Union |
| Period | World War II(1939–1945) |
Arbeitseinsatz(German:for 'labour deployment') was aforced labour category of internmentwithinNazi Germany(German:Zwangsarbeit) duringWorld War II.When German men werecalled upfor military service, Nazi German authorities rounded up civilians to fill in the vacancies and to expand manufacturing operations. Some labourers came from Germany but exponentially more fromroundupsin theGerman-occupied territories.Arbeitseinsatzwas not restricted to the industry sector and to arms producing factories; it also took place, for example, in the farming sector, community services, and even in the churches.
Labour categories[edit]
There were many affected populations who could be grouped by various (often overlapping) variables such as geographic,ethnic,religious, political, and health categories. They included Germanpolitical prisonersof theSA,Gestapo,andSS;foreigncivilianmen and women from occupied territories of Eastern Europe (Ostarbeiter);prisoners of war;institutionalized people (mentally or physically disabled people,or medical and psychiatric patients); and various ethnic, religious, orethnoreligiousgroupings (for example,Jews,Sinti,Romani,Yeniche,andJehovah's Witnesses). They lived in various kinds of camps, calledlabor camps(Arbeitslagerin German) andconcentration camps(Konzentrationslager[KZ] in German).Nazi concentration campswere often meant not only for forced labor but also extermination. In 1945 about 7.7 million workers in the German industry were of non-German origin. Many of them were very young, and about half of them were women.[2]
Archival photographs[edit]
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Paramilitary police with workers, Riga, 11 July 1941 (Wehrmacht photo) -
SovietPOWsclear the way for Wehrmacht column, Minsk, July 1941 (Wehrmacht photo) -
"Jews must work", Tunis, December 1942, (Wehrmacht photo) -
French mechanics atSiemensin Berlin, 1943 -
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14-year-old prisoner at the Wehrmacht Automotive Repair Works, Berlin, January 1945 -
Ostarbeiterin from Kiev performing domestic labor, January 1945 (SS image) -
Stairs of Death in the quarry of theMauthausen concentration camp
Notes[edit]
- ^"List of 2,500 firms that employed forced labourers".ta7.de(in German). New Germany. 16 November 1999. Archived fromthe originalon July 19, 2011 – via Internet Archive.
- ^Ulrich Herbert."The Army of Millions of the Modern Slave State".Deported, used, forgotten: Who were the forced workers of the Third Reich, and what fate awaited them.Universitaet Freiburg. Archived fromthe originalon June 4, 2011 – via Internet Archive.
First published in theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,16 March 1999. Extract from Ulrich Herbert,Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich,Cambridge University Press, 1997.