Language:
German
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
1999; Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts
Angaben zur Quelle:
11,1 (1996) 13-39
Keywords:
Jews History 20th century
;
Forced labor History 20th century
;
World War, 1939-1945 Conscript labor
;
World War, 1939-1945 Collaborationists
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The reference in the protocol of the Wannsee Conference to extermination of Jews through forced labor in roadbuilding is not a euphemism for the gas chambers but describes a program actually put into effect at about that time. Its object was to exploit the Jews and cause their death by exhaustion. When roads in the Ukraine were found inadequate for the Wehrmacht's needs, the SS, along with Organisation Todt and private firms, began constructing Highway IV. The laborers included tens of thousands of Jews from Ukraine and from Transnistria; the supervisors were Germans, but the guards were mostly collaborators from Ukraine and the Baltic States. The Jews - men, women, and children - were housed in crowded and unsanitary conditions, sometimes in stables, and inadequately clothed and fed. Their guards could shoot them at will, and there were frequent "selections" of the unfit. When the Germans retreated from Ukraine, they shot most of the surviving Jews. States that almost no documents are extant. This account is based mainly on testimonies from war crimes trials deposited in the Ludwigsburg archives.
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