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]

 

The scale of the forced labour in Witten
 

The Annen cast steelworks were not the only place where forced labourers were made to work: they were also used on farms, in various different trades and in other factories producing armaments, or even in private households. The majority of the forced labourers were the so-called “Ostarbeiter” (“workers from the east”), who made up around 50% of all the prisoners working in Witten.[10] The forced labourers in Witten also included Soviet and Italian prisoners of war.[11] A far smaller number of the forced labourers who were made to work in Witten came from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Czechoslovakia.[12] 

A short time after the invasion of Poland, Polish civilian workers and prisoners of war were deported to Witten as labourers, and were mainly put to work on local farms.[13] The majority of the Polish forced labourers in Witten were civilians. The latest research has uncovered evidence of at least 391 Polish forced labourers who were made to work in different areas of industry in the area now covered by the town of Witten.[14] In addition, the names of 71 other Poles have been identified, who came to Witten on the first transport train in 1944, and who were made to work at the AGW factory. In the memorial volume for the victims of forced labour in Witten written by the historian Klaus Völkel, reference is made to 700 Polish civilian forced labourers as the lowest estimate.[15] Since Polish forced labourers were often made to work in private households due to their increased use on farms, we can assume that the real figure is higher.

Of the verified fatalities among the forced labourers in Witten, 51 of the victims came from Poland.[16] By the end of the war, approximately 5% of the total number of forced labourers in Witten had died.[17] 

 

Culture of remembrance over the course of time
 

During the first four decades after the end of the war, no systematic effort was made at all in Germany to examine and process the history of forced labour during the National Socialist period. The deployment of foreign forced labourers was hardly mentioned. The subject faded into the background and historical research focused on other aspects of National Socialism and the course of the war. It was not until the 1980s that historians increasingly began to be interested in the topic, and slowly, it took hold in the collective memory.

In Witten, too, the first decades after the end of the Second World War were characterised by a refusal to talk about the National Socialist history of the town. During that time, the history of the forced labourers in the town and the satellite concentration camp in Witten-Annen was ignored, and collective amnesia set in. For example, during the first years after the war ended, some of the former forced labourers returned to Witten, to come to terms with what had happened to them and to find out what had become of their tormentors. However, their quest for information was unsuccessful: the majority of the population of Witten could not or would not remember the events surrounding the satellite concentration camp. This was a very clear example of the desire to draw a line under what had occurred. However, according to the historian Ralph Klein, who has researched the forced labour in Witten during the National Socialist period, there can be no doubt that the local population were aware that there were forced labourers in their midst. In the words of the headline of a press article about Ralph Klein’s research paper, which was published in 2015, “Everyone knew”[18]. Klein points out that the population of Witten repeatedly came into contact with the forced labourers during the war, either through the work itself or on the way from the camps to the places where they were deployed:

“The locals were able to see the camp inmates, many of whom were colleagues, walk the around 600-metre route from the camp (...) to the main entrance of Ruhrstahl AG in Stockumer Strasse. The factory lay in the centre of the town district, close to the train station and the market square. The Evangelical and Catholic churches, the post office and the local school were close by. Stockumer Strasse was lined with restaurants, shops and residential buildings”.[19] 

For a long time, despite the knowledge of the existence of the forced labourers and the satellite camp, there was no discussion or reflection on what had happened during that time. Rather, the few steps that were taken in this direction were limited mainly to criminal proceedings, particularly against the camp leaders, which were dealt with at a bureaucratic and judicial level. Otherwise, from the summer of 1945, with the approval of the Witten building authority, the barracks of the former camp were converted into a kindergarten. In time, the buildings were torn down one by one, and the empty area was partly filled with residential buildings and parking spaces.[20] 

It was not until 1984 that a research project by year 10 of the Albert Martmöller Gymnasium grammar school in Witten reminded the local population of that aspect of National Socialist history. In response to the pupils’ work, the town of Witten decided to erect a memorial plaque as a reminder of the existence of the satellite camp and its prisoners:[21] 

“From September 1944 to April 1945, a satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp was located here. This memorial site is dedicated to the memory of the people who were incarcerated here and is intended as a reminder of the crimes committed against them”. (Fig. 3)

In 2013, two further panels were erected, containing information about forced labour under the National Socialists in the town (Figs. 4 & 5). Both the memorial stone and the information panels are situated on the remaining unused area of the former camp site, which was designated a site of special interest in 1992. (Figs. 1 & 7). To date, however, not least for financial reasons, the creation of a central memorial site has remained out of reach.

 

Natalia Kubiak, January 2020

 

Bibliography:

Grieger, Manfred: Das Außenlager >AGW<. KZ-Häftlinge im >Annener Gußstahlwerk< in Witten, in: Schulte, Jan Erik (ed.), Konzentrationslager im Rheinland und in Westfalen 1933-1945, Paderborn 2005, p. 205–214.

Klein, Ralph: Das KZ-Außenlager in Witten-Annen. Geschichte, städtebauliche Nutzung und geschichtspolitischer Umgang seit 1945, Berlin 2015.

Völkel, Klaus: „Hier ruhen 22 Genossen, zu Tode gequält...“: Gedenkschrift für die Opfer der Zwangsarbeit in Witten 1941-1945, Bochum 1992.

 

Press articles:

Kopps, Johanns: Historiker: „Alle haben davon gewusst“, in: WAZ, https://www.waz.de/staedte/witten/historiker-alle-haben-davon-gewusst-id10974757.html, last accessed on 06/01/2020.

Schild, Susanne: Häftling 81490 erinnert an das KZ in Annen, in: WAZ, https://www.waz.de/staedte/witten/haeftling-81490-erinnert-an-das-kz-in-annen-id8415234.html, last accessed on 06/01/2020.