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Exhibition Reveals Scale of Nazi Forced Labor
23 May
Summary
- Exhibition details the Nazi regime's extensive slave labour programme.
- Twenty million people were exploited during World War II.
- Slave labourers accounted for one in four workers in Germany by 1944.
The Wiener Holocaust Library in London has opened an exhibition titled 'Nazi Slave Labour: Perpetrators & Victims,' focusing on the extensive forced labour programme of the Nazi regime. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated twenty million individuals were exploited as slave labourers, a crucial component of the German war economy. By 1944, these labourers constituted one in four workers in Germany.
The exhibition highlights how the system extended far beyond concentration camps, encompassing factories, farms, and major German companies. Eyewitness testimonies, photographs, and war crimes trial documents from the library's archives are featured. Organizers note that approximately two and a half million slave labourers died during the war.
Personal stories, such as that of Eva Clarke, who was born in a concentration camp days before liberation, are central to the exhibition. Her mother was forced to work in an armaments factory while pregnant. Portraits of UK-based survivors, photographed by Mike Stone, are also displayed, including those of Agnes Kaposi and Mala Tribich, who endured forced labour in various capacities.
