The Nazi Concentration Camps

Hard labour was compulsory 038 – Camp Inspector Eicke on compulsory labour, summer 1934 Read document in SS camps like Dachau from the start, even for many sick prisoners 039 – The Dachau prisoner Ludwig Bendix pleads for medical help in 1937 Read document . Forced labour brought practical benefits for the SS, as prisoners had to build and maintain their own camps. Above all, the SS saw hard labour as a way to punish prisoners. Often there was pointless labour 040 – The political prisoner Harry Naujoks on pointless labour Read document , designed only to torment inmates.

Slave Labour in Sachsenhausen (1937)

Archiv des Föderalen Sicherheitsdienstes der Russischen Förderation, Moskau, Archiv Gedenkstätte und des Museums Sachsenhausen

Slave Labour in Neuengamme (1941-2)

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme

From the late 1930s, SS economic ambitions grew. Early on, prisoners were forced into gruelling work at brickworks 041 – The German political prisoner Arnold Weiss-Rüthel on the SS brick works near Sachsenhausen in 1940 Read document and quarries 042 – The Austrian Gypsy Adolf Gussak recalls the Mauthausen quarry Read document . Later, more and more prisoners were exploited for the war effort 043 – Order by WVHA leader Oswald Pohl to all camp commandants, 30 April 1942 Read document . The SS set up hundreds of satellite camps during the war, with the eager collaboration of German industry 044 – SS officer Karl Sommer on “renting out” Ravensbrück prisoners Read document . SS leader Heinrich Himmler claimed that his slaves produced vital armaments 045 – Heinrich Himmler on armaments production in camps, June 1944 Read document . In reality, they made no major contribution to the war effort.

Countless prisoners were worked to death during the war. Work brought great pain, not freedom, as the cynical SS slogan (“Arbeit macht frei”) at the gates of Dachau, Auschwitz and other camps proclaimed. Prospects were particularly bleak for prisoners in construction 046 – The Jewish survivor Ladislaus Ervin-Deutsch on night shifts in a Kaufering satellite camp Read document . By contrast, the smaller number of prisoners in production 047 – Slave labour in Nuremberg, 1944 diary entries by Ágnes Rózsa Read document enjoyed slightly better conditions. Overall, the main product of SS slave labour was not armaments, or bricks, or stones, but the suffering and death of prisoners.