Description
Book Synopsis By 1944 a large part of Eastern Europe had already been liberated by the Red Army, and the Allied forces were continuing to move in from the west after success at Normandy. Yet, in Lower Silesia, Germany more than sixty new forced labor camps were established, adding to the approximately forty camps that already existed. The inmates were Jews from Hungary and Poland who had been deported from the Lodz ghetto or who had been included on the infamous "Schindler’s List." These camps became satellites of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and were the last to be liberated. Throughout their existence, the Gross-Rosen camp and its satellites had a special relationship. This is why, although the process of genocide was proceeding at top speed, some Jews were diverted from the gas chambers and sent to work at Gross-Rosen. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the main provider of inmate slave laborers for the Gross-Rosen armaments, munitions, and other factories owned by giant private enterprises, such as Krupp, I.G. Farben, and Siemens. Jewish inmates were also used in the construction of Hitler’s secret headquarters in the local Eulen Mountains and the secret underground tunnels used to store weapons. This book adds greatly to our knowledge of the complexity of German policy toward the Jews and forced labor. It not only describes the daily life of Jewish slave laborers but also traces Reich economic policy and the big corporations that used forced labor.
Trade Review “[The book] makes several important contributions to scholarship in the field of Holocaust studies…[Readers] will find a wealth of valuable information made accessible to the English reader for the first time.” · American Historical Review
“Bella Gutterman has discovered many primary sources and original documentation that we had not known about previously… adding considerably to knowledge of stages in German policy formation regarding forced labor, deepening our understanding of the tension between the desire to treat the prisoners as directed by Nazi ideology and wider discussion of the increased need to take advantage of their labor.” · Dina Porat, Head of the Stephen Roth Institute, Tel Aviv University
Table of Contents Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Forced labor in Nazi Germany and the Nazi-occupied areas
Chapter 2. The forced-labor system in Eastern Upper Silesia: The establishment of organization Schmelt (1940–1944)
Chapter 3. Forced-labor camps for Jews in Lower Silesia and the Sudetenland (1940–1944)
Chapter 4. Phases in the development of the Gross-Rosen main camp (May 1940–October 1943)
Chapter 5. The first subcamps of Gross-Rosen
Chapter 6. Deploying the network of camps
Chapter 7. Labor camps in the Sudetenland
Chapter 8. Code Riese: The Führer’s secret operation in the Eulen mountains
Chapter 9. Administration of the Gross-Rosen labor-camp complex
Chapter 10. Survival in the Gross-Rosen labor camps
Chapter 11. Women in the Gross-Rosen labor camps
Chapter 12. Cultural and spiritual life in the Gross-Rosen labor camps
Chapter 13. The last to be liberated
Chapter 14. Liberation
Conclusion
Notes
Camps, labor details, and labor subdetails for Jews in the Gross-Rosen Network
Sources
Index
