Nazi Slave Labor

[Viktor]

The Slave Labor Program

 

[Susanna]

In "The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp," Wolfgang Sofsky claims the term "slave labor" is something of a misnomer in the sense that historically, slaves have sometimes been something of an investment. They have typically cost the owner something in terms of cost, food, lodging, and maintenance.

Conversely, to the Nazis, labor was a way of extermination. It often wasn't even productive labor. Sometimes prisoners were forced to build walls and then tear them down again, and then rebuild, and so on. Other prisoners were forced to attempt to dig trenches in Poland's frozen ground. No effort was made to safeguard the workers' health or even their lives; the intention was the opposite.

I highly recommend that book by the way; it is the only book I've seen that approaches the camps from a sociological perspective. For me, it answered a lot of questions I had about life for prisoners in the camps.