Forced Labour in Serbia Producers, Consumers and Consequences of Forced Labour 1941 - 1944
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Forced Labour in Serbia Producers, Consumers and Consequences of Forced Labour 1941 - 1944 edited by: Sanela Schmid Milovan Pisarri Tomislav Dulić Zoran Janjetović Milan Koljanin Milovan Pisarri Thomas Porena Sabine Rutar Sanela Schmid 1 Project partners: Project supported by: Forced Labour in Serbia 2 Producers, Consumers and Consequences . of Forced Labour 1941 - 1944 This collection of scientific papers on forced labour during the Second World War is part of a wider research within the project "Producers, Consumers and Consequences of Forced Labour - Serbia 1941-1944", which was implemented by the Center for Holocaust Research and Education from Belgrade in partnership with Humboldt University, Berlin and supported by the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" in Germany. ("Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft" - EVZ). 3 Impressum Forced Labour in Serbia Producers, Consumers and Consequences of Forced Labour 1941-1944 Published by: Center for Holocaust Research and Education Publisher: Nikola Radić Editors: Sanela Schmid and Milovan Pisarri Authors: Tomislav Dulić Zoran Janjetović Milan Koljanin Milovan Pisarri Thomas Porena Sabine Rutar Sanela Schmid Proofreading: Marija Šapić, Marc Brogan English translation: Irena Žnidaršić-Trbojević German translation: Jovana Ivanović Graphic design: Nikola Radić Belgrade, 2018. Project partners: Center for Holocaust Research and Education Humboldt University Berlin Project is supported by: „Remembrance, Responsibility And Future“ Foundation „Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft“ - EVZ Forced Labour in Serbia 4 Producers, Consumers and Consequences . of Forced Labour 1941 - 1944 Contents 6 Introduction - Sanela Schmid and Milovan Pisarri 12 Milovan Pisarri “I Saw Jews Carrying Dead Bodies On Stretchers”: Forced Labour and The Holocaust in Occupied Serbia 30 Zoran Janjetović Forced Labour in Banat Under Occupation 1941 - 1944 44 Milan Koljanin Camps as a Source of Forced Labour in Serbia 1941 - 1944 54 Photographs 1 62 Sabine Rutar Physical Labour and Survival. Supplying Miners in Yugoslavia 82 Sanela Schmid Serbian Civilian Workers in Nuremberg 1941 - 1945 110 Photographs 2 118 Tomislav Dulić Among the Hyperboreans: Yugoslav Prisoners in Norway 1942 - 1945 140 Thomas Porena The Repatriation Policy for Yugoslav Deportees From Germany in Yugoslav State Entities Between 1944-1947 (with focus on Serbia) 156 Authors 5 Introduction Sanela Schmid and Milovan Pisarri The work of foreigners in German (arms) factories and in agriculture was the main pillar of the national socialist wartime economy. Of the 31 million workers who worked for the German Reich in September 1944, 26% were foreigners. With the reversal of the war in the winter of 1941, when the entire German economy was reorganized, it was necessary to make racist ideas somehow conform to the problem of labour shortages. The newly elected economic representative Fritz Sauckel solved this problem by exploiting labour in the territories occupied by Germany. From the spring of 1942, millions of Soviet citizens were deported to Germany for forced labour,1 adding to those from many European countries that were already in the Reich. The declaration of the total war in February 1943 led to further radicalization in forced labour. Foreign workers who were already in the Reich were banned from returning home because of a lack of available experienced workers, caused by the uncertain military situation. When their contracts expired, the workers were obliged to remain in forced labour, and the recruitment of new workers was increased in occupied territories. In this way the last elements of voluntary work disappeared, if they ever existed. 2 At the same time, in 1943, almost all inmates of concentration camps, about a million, were 3 forced to work in the military industry. Among these people were also Serbs who came in various ways to work in Germany: some were recruited in Serbia, some sent from the Independent State of Croatia, some were prisoners of war or captured “rebels” deported to work in Germany or Norway. But keeping in mind the extent of the threat of forced labour, they represented a very small contingent. When the war ended in 1945, most of them returned to Yugoslavia and did not talk about what they experienced as foreign workers in Germany. On the other hand, Yugoslav society at the time was preoccupied with many other issues so that the fate of forced labourers was not of interest to anyone at that time. In Germany, the pioneering work on foreign workers conducted by Ulrich Herbert from 1985 was the first milestone in the historiographic analysis of this topic of National Socialism.4 A widespread and intense study began in the 1990s, and was initiated due to 1 Jens Binner, „Zwangsarbeit im Nationalsozialismus“, Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 13, no. 1 (2012): 36; Hans Christoph Seidel, „Der verspätete Ausländereinsatz. Arbeitseinsatz und Zwangsarbeit im Saarrevier 1935 bis 1945“, in Zwangsarbeit im Bergwerk: der Arbeitseinsatz im Kohlenbergbau des Deutschen Reiches und der besetzten Gebiete im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg, 1: Forschungen, ed. Klaus Tenfelde and Hans-Christoph Seidel (Essen: Klartext, 2005), 241. 2 Carina Baganz, „Lager für ausländische zivile Zwangsarbeiter“, in Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Bd. 9: Arbeitserziehungslager, Ghettos, Jugendschutzlager, Polizeihaftlager, Sonderlager, Zigeunerlager, Zwangsarbeiterlager, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (München: Beck, 2009), 254. 3 Volkhard Knigge and Jens Binner, Zwangsarbeit - Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg: Begleitband zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung (Weimar: Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, 2010), 181. 4 Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter. Politik und Praxis des ‚Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Forced Labour in Serbia 6 Producers, Consumers and Consequences . of Forced Labour 1941 - 1944 big lawsuits from former forced labourers of the Jewish community and the debate over their compensation. In such a context, the Foundation “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” (“Remembrance, Responsibility, Future”) was founded which initially paid the compensation that the industry and the Federal Republic of Germany had made available for former forced labourers. When this task was completed, the Foundation continued to promote, among other things, scientific research into the subject of forced labour through various scholarship programs. Since then, numerous studies have been published on many aspects of forced labour, both in Germany and in the countries once occupied by Germany. The works related to Germany in particular show on the one hand an abundance of regional and local studies, and on the other studies dedicated to individual industries or companies. Many historians have explored the fate of the two largest groups of forced labourers, the so-called Eastern workers and Poles. Eastern workers were civil workers from the Soviet Union, (with the exception of the Latvians and the Estonians), who with 2.5 million people represented the largest, but most heterogeneous, labour force contingent. They were subject to particularly discriminatory regulations. The fate of Serbian forced labourers was barely addressed in Germany.5 For historical investigation, the question which first arises is the definition of the “forced labourer”. Mark Spoerer classifies forced labourers who were mainly foreigners into three groups: civilian workers from abroad, prisoners of war and inmates. Since the living conditions within individual groups could vary significantly, it seems necessary to set additional criteria for further division. He proposes the following criteria: “exit”, “voice” 6 and “probability of survival”. To be classified as a forced labourer, your work in Germany could have initially been voluntary and subsequently changed to forced labour. This was the case, for example, when a worker was prevented from returning home after his contract expired. In that case, he had no legal means by which to terminate his employment. The only thing left to him was to escape.7 Moreover, most foreign workers had very little influence over their working conditions, so they lacked a “voice”. For example, civilian Serb workers had representatives of the Government of Serbia who periodically checked their living and working conditions and played the role of partners in negotiations with German Dritten Reiches (Bonn: Dietz 1985). 5 See: Sanela Hodžić and Christian Schölzel, Zwangsarbeit und der Unabhängige Staat Kroatien: 1941- 1945 (Münster: LIT, 2013); Zoran Janjetović, „Arbeiterrekrutierung unter deutscher Militärverwaltung in Serbien 1941-1944“, in Arbeitskräfte als Kriegsbeute. Der Fall Ost-und Südosteuropa 1939-1945, ed. Karsten Linne and Florian Dierl (Berlin: Metropol, 2011); Sabine Rutar, „Arbeit und Überleben in Serbien. Das Kupfererzbergwerk Bor im Zweiten Weltkrieg“, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1, no. 31 (2005): 101-134. 6 Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unterm Hakenkreuz. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im deutsch besetzten Europa 1939-1945 (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), 13-19; Jochen Fleischhacker and Mark Spoerer, „Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers, and Survivors“, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33 (2002): 174. 7 Therefore, it is not surprising that the Gestapo reported monthly up to 45.000 cases of flight from work at the end of 1943. Binner, „Zwangsarbeit“, 37-38. 7 companies