Jewish and Ethnic Victims of Forced Labour in Germany and the Occupied Territories (1939–45)

This chapter is devoted to Jews, Sinti and Roma, and to the ethnic Slavs trapped as forced labourers in the occupied territories. In the first phase of Jewish labour persecution in 1939, many were employed as manual labourers, working for public enterprises and private businesses, or in agriculture. These initial forced labourers were overtaken in numbers and significance after 1942 by the phenomenal expansion of the SS system of concentration camps. Detailed attention is given to race and gender and the badges attached to inmates, and to the hierarchy of forced labourers, with native Germans ranking above West Europeans and Slavs, and Jews, Sinti and Roma targeted for death.