Forced labour in a hidden factory near Hildesheim owned by the Bosch corporation

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Of course, the company didn’t only need labourers to cope with these production increases. By the end of 1940, Bosch was already employing the first foreign workers. During that period, 59 French prisoners of war were taken to the company’s armaments factory near Hildesheim. The company management had sent a request for the male workers via the city labour office of the Fallingbostel prisoner of war camp (Stalag). The decision to use them for labour was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War signed on 27 July 1929, according to which prisoners of war were not permitted to be used as workers in war-related areas of industry. Even so, over the course of 1941, other prisoners of war from France and Belgium were brought to the Bosch factory near Hildesheim.[8] 

The managing directors of the company sent requests for foreign workers everywhere they could, from the city and regional employment office to the Reich labour ministry, the armament command unit, the armaments inspection body in Hanover right up to the supreme army command and the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production in Berlin.[9] By October 1942, nearly 40 percent of the workforce was made up of foreigners. In September 1944, the Trillke plant reported that 2,027 foreign labourers were employed in the factory; at times, they constituted around half of the 4,000 employees. Overall, around 3,100 forced labourers were deployed at the ELFI/Trillke plants.[10] 

The largest group were the eastern European workers (Ostarbeiter, “eastern workers”), men and women from the Soviet Union, followed by forced labourers from France and Poland. Around 90 Italian military prisoners and 31 Indians (British prisoners of war) were also brought to work at the Bosch plant near Hildesheim. The company also set up production sites in the prison grounds in Celle, where about 230 inmates laboured.[11] Prisoners from Celle were also deployed at the Trillke plant itself. In order to isolate them from the other labourers, they were forced to work in a kind of wire cage.[12] 

In accordance with the National Socialist regulations, forced labourers from Poland and the Soviet Union at the ELFI/Trillke plants received lower wages than Germans and foreign workers from western Europe. Furthermore, a portion of their meagre wages was deducted for their accommodation in the barracks and for their scant food rations. The prisoners of war received no payment at all; their wages, which were very low anyway, were transferred by Bosch directly to the Stalag labour camp from where they had been sent, after the company had deducted the costs of accommodation and food. 

As a rule, the forced labourers at the Bosch plant near Hildesheim were made to work ten- to twelve-hour shifts every day. They were given no leave and were only allowed a day off on Sundays. Most of them worked at the conveyor belt or on the machines. Many of the contemporary female witnesses from Poland and Ukraine who had been taken to work in the factory, who were interviewed in 2007 and 2008 for the project z.B. Bosch. Zwangsarbeit im Hildesheimer Wald (“e.g. Bosch. Forced Labour in the Hildesheim Forest”), said that they did not find the work particularly arduous. However, the long working hours, the shift work and the inadequate amount of food meant that the women suffered from hunger, fatigue and exhaustion. Only a very small number were given work clothing. Some reported suffering from burns and eye injuries due to the lack of protective clothes.[13]

They were monitored by the factory security guards. Contemporary witnesses from Poland and the Soviet Union report that punishments were meted out to workers, the mildest of which came in the form of punches and verbal abuse. The Polish worker Teodozja Adamek, for example, was sent to the Gestapo-run “workers’ education camp” (Arbeitserziehungslager) in Watenstedt for some trivial misdemeanor. There, the atmosphere was like that of a concentration camp: 

“The first thing we saw was a woman, a Frenchwoman, who was held on a leash tied to a post. She had to keep walking in a circle until she fell down exhausted. We had to undress immediately and were all sent to the shower. I was given overalls with a big number 21 on the back. That meant camp no. 21, where you had to spend at least 21 days as punishment. And what a punishment it was! If there was pouring rain during the night, we were called to assemble in the yard. We had just three minutes to get dressed and get there on time. Then we were made to stand for hours outside in the puddles.”[14] 

Max Clostermeyer, the commercial director of ELFI and member of the SS, had notices posted up in the factory when a member of the workforce was sent to a penal camp.[15] This created an atmosphere of fear and pressure to perform well among the labourers.

The foreign workers at ELFI/Trillke were housed in barracks, so that they remained isolated from the German population. The area of the camp where the Polish women lived was surrounded by a wire fence. The barracks were made of wood, and each had ten “living rooms” for 16 people. The “living rooms” were fitted with two-tier wooden bunk beds, a table, chairs and lockers, as well as a stove. In the winter, the women suffered from the cold, since they were given far too little fuel to heat the rooms. The sanitary conditions were poor: there was just one bucket and a bowl for washing, and no running water. The toilets were located far away. Vermin such as bed bugs, fleas and lice spread, bringing disease with them. The barracks housing the “eastern workers” were surrounded by a double fence and were guarded particularly closely. Here, hunger and disease were even more widespread.

Food was rationed in accordance with the National Socialist racial ideology. “Western workers” were given better food than the forced labourers from Poland. The food rations for the Soviet workers and Italian military prisoners were so meagre and of such poor quality that they were often reduced to eating scraps, and were even surreptitiously given bread by the underfed Polish labourers.[16] Even the management at Trillke admitted that the “eastern workers” were given only tiny quantities of food: “We have cases nearly every day in which Ukrainians who quite willing to work simply fall unconscious at the machines.”[17]

Most of the Polish forced labourers used their free time to attend church. Several Polish contemporary witnesses describe outings to Hildesheim, however. If they wanted to take the bus into town – which they were strictly forbidden to do – they removed their badges with the letter “P”. During the war, all Poles in Germany were made to wear a “P” on their clothing. This was intended to exclude them from the rest of society and mark them out as being “of lesser worth”. The Polish workers were also forbidden to enter a cinema, visit bars and restaurants or go to the hairdresser. The local council in Hildesheim also prohibited them from “walking along the central streets of Bernwardstrasse – Almstrasse – Hoher Weg – Altpetristrasse” on weekdays from 5 to 9pm and on Sundays.[18] They were also forbidden from entering the city parks, the Steinberg hill or Hildesheim forest, the cemetery and the city allotments between the hours of 12 midday and 9pm. 

The movements of the “eastern workers” were even more restricted. They were only permitted to leave the camp without supervision from 1943 onwards. They were only allowed to leave on public holidays, and were forced to wear the discriminatory “OST” badge at all times.