Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
24,3 (2010) 400-430
Keywords:
Jews
;
World War, 1939-1945 Conscript labor
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Economic aspects
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Jewish councils
Abstract:
Discusses Jewish labor work employment in so-called Oststreifen - a strip of the territory of conquered Poland annexed to Germany in October 1939 and added by the Nazis to the Reichsgau Ostoberschlesien. By the summer of 1940 all Jews who had lived in the Polish part of Upper Silesia before the war were resettled to this strip; the Judenrat, headed by Moshe Merin, was established in the region's main city of Sosnowiec. An SS agency led by Albrecht Schmelt developed the system of exploitation of Jewish labor in the area, which included camps, ghetto workshops under the Judenrat's supervision, labor batallions, and private companies. Interested in profit for Germany, as well as in his own enrichment, Schmelt established a system of Jewish labor which was relatively more tolerable than in other parts of occupied Poland, and cannot always be categorized as forced labor. Jews employed in his system lived in open ghettos, received some remuneration (albeit with large deductions), and had certain options in regard to where to work. Schmelt's organization had a retarding effect on the mass murder of Jews in Oststreifen, but did not thwart it.
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