Forced Labor
The Germans, the Forced Laborers, and the War
Female forced laborers at a car repair and maintenance garage under the management of Daimler-Benz in Minsk, September 1942. © Daimler AG, Archive and Collection
So-called "Adrema plates" used by the German authorities to manage the mass employment of forced laborers. © Buchenwald Memorial Collection, Weimar, Photo: Peter Hansen
Ukrainian extended family as agricultural forced laborers in Volzum (in the Wolfenbüttel district) 1943. © NLA National Archive Wolfenbüttel (privately owned)
Work books issued by the employment offices of the Third Reich for foreign forced laborers. © Buchenwald Memorial Collection, Weimar, Photo: Peter Hansen
Wladyslaw Kolopoleski was seven years old when he was abducted and taken to Pomerania to perform forced labor on a farm. His taskmaster beat him so severely that he had to have an operation on his head. © Archive, Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation, Warsaw
Title page of a Nazi propaganda brochure about employing foreign forced laborers in Germany, 1943. © Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial Collection, Nordhausen Photo: Peter Hansen
Title page of a Nazi propaganda brochure about employing foreign forced laborers in Germany, 1943. © Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial Collection, Nordhausen Photo: Peter Hansen
In Germany during World War II, forced laborers were exploited on nearly every building site and farm, in every industrial enterprise, and even in private households. Over 20 million men, women, and children were taken to Germany and the occupied territories from all over Europe as “foreign workers,” prisoners of war, and concentration camp inmates to perform forced labor.
The exhibition “Forced Labor. The Germans, the Forced Laborers, and the War” provides the first comprehensive presentation of the history of forced labor and its ramifications after 1945. The historical exhibits and photographs explore the relationship – defined by racism – between Germans and forced laborers, offering insight into its many varying manifestations. They also show how forced labor was part of the Nazi regime’s racist social order from the outset: The well-propagated concept of the included – the “Volksgemeinschaft” or people’s community – functioned in tandem with the forced labor of the excluded.
Exhibition opens
27 September 2010
When
28 September 2010 to 30 January 2011
Where
Old Building, 1st level
Website
Link to the site (produced by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation)
www.ausstellung-zwangsarbeit.org
This exhibition was created by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation at the Jewish Museum Berlin, initiated and sponsored by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.”
