Polish forced labourers in Witten, 1940–1945

In the town of Witten, in the south-east of the Ruhr region, up to 25,000 people from different countries, including several hundred Poles, were forced to work for the National Socialist regime during the Second World War. The majority of the workforce in the town was made up of forced labourers, who were used mainly for the production of weapons. In 1944, a satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp was even created to accommodate the concentration camp inmates in the Annen cast steelworks (Annener Gußstahlwerk).
It would be many years before work began on examining and integrating this period of the town’s history. It was not until the mid-1980s that the local population slowly began to engage with and discuss the exploitation of the workforce in the town under the National Socialists, and to consider ways in which the victims should be remembered.