EXTERMINATION THROUGH LABOUR

'Extermination through labour'^[1] () was a Nazi German World War II principle that regulated the aims and purposes of most of their labour and concentration camps.^[2][3] The rule demanded that the inmates of German WWII camps be forced to work for the German war industry with only basic tools and minimal food rations until totally exhausted.^[4][5][6] As the slaves had no individual worth, they were of no use to the German war machine^[7] and were to be exterminated as soon as they were ''used up'', as the German WWII documents put it.^[8] Then they were transferred to extermination centres throughout occupied Europe.
In many sub-camps unrelated to the German war machine the principle was realised through pointless heavy work, most commonly digging ditches around the camp and then levelling them or excavating earth and transporting it on foot to the other side of the camp. In others, the political aims of the camps were paired with the policies of extermination through labour.^[9]

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See also

Notes

References

See also

★ Gulag, the system of officially "corrective labor" in the Soviet Union which often amounted to extermination through labor.^[10]

Notes

1. Often also translated as ''death through work'', ''extermination through work'', ''annihilation through labor'' or ''destruction through labor''
2. Mauthausen/Gusen; obóz zagłady (Mauthausen/Gusen; the Camp of Doom), Stanisław Dobosiewicz, , , Ministry of National Defence Press, 1977, ISBN 83-11-06368-0
3. The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, Wolfgang Sofsky, , , Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-691-00685-7
4. Z diabłami na ty (Calling the Devils by their Names), Władysław Gębik, , , Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1972,
5. Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity, Günter Bischof, , , Transaction Publishers, 1996, ISBN 1-56000-902-0
6. Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (Vocabulary of the National Socialism), Cornelia Schmitz-Berning, , , Walter de Gruyter, 1998, ISBN 3-11-013379-2
7. The Genocide of the Czech Jews, Miroslav Kárný, , , , ,
8. From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich, Gretchen E Schafft, , , University of Illinois Press, 2004, ISBN 0-252-02930-5
9. The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy, Paul B Jaskot, , , Routledge, , ISBN 0-415-17366-3
10. Islands of Slavery TIME magazine. June 24, 1974

References

★ Vernichtung durch Arbeit. Der Fall Neuengamme (Extermination through labour: Case of Neuengamme), Hermann Kaienburg, , , Dietz Verlag J.H.W. Nachf, 1990, ISBN 3-8012-5009-1

★ Arbeit für den Krieg (Work for the War), Gerd Wysocki, , , , 1992, ISBN

★ Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of History and Memory, Donald Bloxham, , , Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-19-820872-3

★ Annihilation through Labor: The Killing of State Prisoners in the Third Reich, Nikolaus Wachsmann, , , Journal of Modern History,

★ The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, various authors, , , Indiana University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-253-21529-3

★ The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them, Eugen Kogon, , , Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006, ISBN 0-374-52992-2