Forced labour in a hidden factory near Hildesheim owned by the Bosch corporation
Shadow factories
The Bosch factory near Hildesheim was one of two major “alternative plants” (Ausweichswerke) owned by the Stuttgart-based Bosch group. Bosch was a market leader in the production of fittings for motor vehicles and aeroplane engines, making it a key player in the provision of armaments for the German Reich. Its injection pumps, starter motors and magnetos in particular were indispensable for the war preparations being organised by the National Socialists. For this reason, representatives of the new government already contacted Robert Bosch in 1933, the year the party took power. Due to its proximity to France, the area around Stuttgart, where the Bosch group operated its main factories, was considered too difficult to defend militarily. The company was therefore asked to build new production sites in a safer region in the German interior.[2]
Bosch agreed, and in the following years founded two secret armaments factories in the interior. It began by building a factory with the cover name Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH in Kleinmachnow outside Berlin, where electronic aeroplane equipment was produced for the German air force (Luftwaffe).[3] Two years later, Bosch decided to operate an alternative plant in Hildesheim. This factory, which bore the innocuous name Elektro- und Feinmechanische Industrie GmbH (ELFI) was also used exclusively as an armaments production site.
Bosch was not the only company to build alternative plants during the initial years of NS rule. According to a report produced by an American in 1943, the National Socialists began pursuing a policy of duplication and decentralisation of armaments companies right from the beginning. “Construction of additional factories was not permitted if plants were already in existence, particularly if these were situated in the vulnerable western regions of Germany.”[4] Rather, companies that were of key importance to the armaments industry were required to build alternative facilities elsewhere. These “shadow factories”, as they were called by the Americans, were built under utmost secrecy and in close collaboration with the NS authorities.[5]
Production was already underway in 1935 at Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH (DLMG). Bosch was also instructed to build an alternative plant far away from the borders of the German Reich in order to build engines for the army. Therefore, in the spring of 1937, the German army ordinance office (Heereswaffenamt) approached the company once again. However, while Bosch had built DLMG from its own funds, the company was now offered an extremely attractive funding model for the alternative plant in Hildesheim, which relieved the financial burden on the company and minimised its risks: the “Montan schema”. According to this plan, a private company received an order from the relevant army office of the supreme army command to build an armaments factory funded by the Reich. The owner of the new plant was the Verwertungsgesellschaft für Montanindustrie GmbH, a trust company of the army ordinance office. This trust company rented out the finished plant facilities to the private company commissioned by the army. In turn, the private company founded an affiliate and pledged to install and operate the new factory using the necessary knowledge and skills. In this way, the army ordinance office ensured that private industrial groups producing goods that were important for the military would continue to operate the factories even if this did not appear to be profitable in the long term. In addition, these factories were given preferential treatment when it came to disbursing labourers, raw materials and energy. By the end of the war, 119 of these operations had been established.
In order to protect the hidden factory from discovery by reconnaissance aircraft, ELFI, like the DLMG, was built in the forest. The buildings were relatively small and were made to look like a group of houses. With their modern lanterns and saw-toothed roofs, the bright, well-ventilated red brick halls conformed to the latest building standards at the time. One of the former forced labourers described the factory:
“It was located in the deepest part of the forest, and was built in such a way that a small forest grew out of every roof. There weren’t any trees, but there were shrubs. And together with the big trees, these shrubs acted as a camouflage. That’s why the factory was never hit, even though there were bombing raids. The site was kept beautifully. I hope the factory is still standing today; I don’t know what the site is used for now. But the Germans surely wouldn’t have destroyed something so beautiful.”[6]
In fact, Bosch still uses the red brick halls from the 1930s as a production site today. The former “workforce building” (Gefolgschaftshaus) is now home to the factory canteen.
During the course of the war, the plant was expanded and at the end of 1942, it was renamed Trillke-Werke GmbH after a nearby stream. The factory was given its own railway line, with which the strategically important sets of equipment were delivered to the companies that produced tanks. There was a particularly intense increase in production in the forest near Hildesheim after the invasion of the Soviet Union and the initiation of the “Adolf Hitler Tank Programme”, which aimed at doubling the planned tank production targets to date. From October 1943 onwards, the Trillke plant had a monopoly in the sector, arming all the new tanks used by the Wehrmacht with starter elements and other electrical fittings.[7]
From any number of countries
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.
“No moral guilt”?
The Trillke plant withstood an air raid on Hildesheim without any damage occurring, even though the British Royal Air Force had photographed the site during a reconnaissance mission in February 1945. On 7 April 1945, troops from the 9th US Army reached the plant and liberated it. Immediately on the following day, the company dismissed all the forced labourers.[19] They were left to fend for themselves. There was looting and acts of revenge.
Many of the former forced labourers continued to live in the camps as “Displaced Persons” until they were able to return home or emigrate. The “eastern workers” who had been forced to work at ELFI/Trillke were forcibly “repatriated” back to the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet authorities suspected them on principle of collaborating with the Germans, they were subjected to interrogation in so-called “filtration camps”. Large numbers of them were sentenced to forced labour in Soviet camps, and many of them were still subjected to discrimination decades later. Forced labourers from the pre-war Polish territories were allowed to “choose” whether to return home, emigrate to another country or remain in Germany. Nearly all of the former forced labourers at Bosch who were interviewed suffered for the rest of their lives from health problems caused by the conditions in the camps. Many no longer had the possibility of completing their studies, and they were forced to abandon their life and career plans.[20]
After the end of the war, the Trillke plant was initially only permitted to conduct repair works. However, as early as 29 June 1945, the factory was granted permission by the British occupying powers to resume the production of electronic fittings for motor vehicles.[22]
The American military government and the British attempted to decentralise the German economy. As one of the largest armaments companies in Germany, the Bosch group was directly affected; the company was required to relinquish all plants located outside of Stuttgart. At the beginning of 1952, after lengthy negotiations and with the aid of the Ministry for Economic Affairs in Bonn, an acceptable solution was finally found for the company.[23] In April 1952, the Trillke-Werke GmbH was erased from the commercial register. From then on, the plant was registered as Robert Bosch GmbH/Werk Hildesheim.[24] Seven years later, around 10,000 people were working for Bosch and its affiliate company Blaupunkt in the forest near Hildesheim.[25] The adjustments made to the group’s policy to conform to the National Socialist regulations and the shift in production focus to armaments had paid off.
For a long time, the former forced labourers were denied compensatory payments. Right up until 2000, Bosch refused to pay reparations and denied any share of responsibility. When in 1998/99, class actions were submitted in the US against German companies, the group participated in the founding of a reparations fund. To sum up the negotiations, Hans Merkle, who at that time was the honorary chairman at Robert Bosch GmbH, proposed the following statement: “In the employment of forced labourers [there is] no moral blame, although a material obligation on the part of German industry does exist”.[7] After the EVZ Foundation was established, Bosch also paid into the fund. As Irena Matuszak, a former forced labourer at Trillke, commented:
“The compensation? Originally, we were told that we would receive 15,000 marks – at that time, we still had the Deutschmark. Then, everyone would have been satisfied. Later, the amount became less and less. And then we were paid in instalments, so that nobody benefited. That was no gratification.”[26]
Angela Martin, February 2025
