Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis
Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938–1944

This book describes the implementation of forced labor for Jews in Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, and the various occupied Polish territories.

Wolf Gruner (Author)

9780521838757, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 April 2006

348 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.7 cm, 0.64 kg

"This informative book shows why Wolf Gruner is widely recognized as one of the ablest German historians of his generation. Drawing on an unparalleled command of the extant sources, he gives us the first detailed examination of how, why, and to what extent the Nazi system of exploiting Jewish labor metastasized. He also carefully delineates the relationship between this process and the development of the Final Solution. The resulting study significantly refocuses attention on the role of German economic interests and civilian institutions in the persecution of the Jewsh-and in the remarkable survival of some of them." -Peter Haynes, Professor of History and German and Theodore Z. Weiss Professor of Holocaust Studies, Northwestern University

Forced labor was a key feature of Nazi anti-Jewish policy and shaped the daily life of almost every Jewish family in occupied Europe. This book systematically describes the implementation of forced labor for Jews in Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, and the various occupied Polish territories. As early as the end of 1938, compulsory labor for Jews had been introduced in Germany and annexed Austria by the labor administration. Similar programs subsequently were established by civil administrations in the German-occupied Czech and Polish territories. At its maximum extent, more than one million Jewish men and women toiled for private companies and public builders, many of them in hundreds of now often-forgotten special labor camps. This study refutes the widespread thesis that compulsory work was organized only by the SS, and that exploitation was only an intermediate tactic on the way to mass murder or, rather, that it was only a facet in the destruction of the Jews.

1. Segregated labor deployment: central planning and local practice, 1938–45
2. German Jews in forced labor camps, 1939–43
3. 'Special service': forced labor of so-called Jewish mischlinge, 1942–5
4. Initiatives in Vienna: Austrian Jews in the segregated labor deployment program, 1938–45
5. The failure of deportation: forced labor of Czech Jews, 1939–45
6. Camps and ghettos: forced labor in the Reich Gau Wartheland, 1939–44
7. On the 'Führer's road': Polish Jews in the Old Reich, 1940–3
8. The SS organization schmelt and the Jews from Eastern Upper Silesia, 1940–4
9. The labor office versus the SS: forced labor in the general government, 1939–44.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], The Holocaust [HBTZ1], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]