Polish forced labourers in Witten, 1940–1945

From 1942/43 in particular, the National Socialist war economy demanded an ever-increasing number of workers to keep up with the rise in demand for weapons production. The National Socialist regime mainly drew on foreign forced labourers in order to fill the gap. Millions of people, from concentration camp inmates to civilian workers from abroad and prisoners of war, were forced to work for National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. According to current research, during the war, there were a total of around 24,900 forced labourers from all the occupied territories in the area now covered by the town of Witten.[1] On average, they worked for approximately 15 months in the town, and made up the majority of the workforce there. At the beginning of 1945, for example, the forced labourers constituted about 55 % of the total workforce in Witten. The different areas of work that they performed meant that a large-scale accommodation was needed. As a result, it is thought that between 230 and 250 forced labour camps of different sizes were established in the town during that period.[2] 

The satellite concentration camp in Witten-Annen
 

The largest camp in Witten, and the one that was probably most important for the production of weapons, was the satellite of Buchenwald concentration camp. It was set up in 1944 to house the concentration camp inmates working in the Annen cast steelworks (Annener Gußstahlwerk, or AGW) in the Annen district of Witten, which served the mining industry. On 17 September 1944, the first train for the AGW containing 700 prisoners arrived from Buchenwald concentration camp. There is evidence that there were 71 Poles among those camp prisoners whose names are known.[3] The camp was similar to many other satellites of concentration camps with regard to its structure, furnishings and living conditions. It consisted among other things of several barracks to house the prisoners and a muster ground, and was surrounded by a double layer of barbed wire to prevent the prisoners from escaping. The furnishings were extremely sparse and were largely limited to two-storey bunk beds. In addition, the washroom barracks had not been completed when the first inmates arrived, so that they had to wash in the open air.[4] In Witten-Annen, as elsewhere, they were subject to violence and harassment from the functionary prisoners and the SS guards and suffered from hunger and disease due to malnutrition, the cold temperatures and inadequate hygiene.[5] 

Work in the Annen cast steelworks
 

The Annen cast steelworks was regarded as the most important industrial operation in Witten-Annen and was one of a total of six factories belonging to Ruhrstahl AG.[6] It also played a big role in the production of arms during the Second World War. As well as cast steel parts for aeroplane construction, armour plates for warships and semi-finished products for weapons were produced there.[7] Above all, a large number of low-skilled workers were needed for the armament production operation. The workforce was made up of foreign forced labourers, who were made to work at rotary hearth furnaces or at milling and drilling machines under the supervision of German overseers.[8] Outside the production hall in which the camp inmates worked, SS guards stood watch and violently punished any misdemeanours such as a failure to obey orders or breaks from work that extended beyond the permitted time. Due to the heavy physical toil and the poor living conditions in the camp, accidents at work were not unusual. The work demanded of the forced labourers in the AGW was physically and psychologically draining – yet as the historian Manfred Grieger notes, from the perspective of many of the forced labourers “(...) it was not the armament production work itself, but the hunger, cold and demeaning repression by overseers, SS men and some of the functionary prisoners that caused the most hardship”.[9]