The Mittelsteine concentration camp was a Nazi Arbeitslager or slave-labour camp functional on the territory of Nazi Germany during the latter part of the Second World War , now at Ścinawka Średnia in south-western Poland .
63-443: It was originally established in 1942, but was operated formally for 250 days (8 months and a week) between 23 August 1944 and 30 April 1945 (the latter being the date of its liquidation) as an all-female subcamp of Gross-Rosen . The detainees at the camp included primarily women of Jewish background deported from Hungary and Poland . The number of inmates averaged at 300, or 400, while towards
126-499: A company store , owned by their employers. A specific kind of truck system, in which credit advances are made against future work, is known in the U.S. as debt bondage . Many scholars have suggested that employers use such systems to exploit workers and/or indebt them. This could occur, for example, if employers were able to pay workers with goods which had a market value below the level of subsistence , or by selling items to workers at inflated prices. Others argue that truck wages were
189-753: A bid to wrest Luftwaffe secrets out of him, even as a bidding war raged among the British and the French intelligence agencies as to who would make the most attractive offer to entice him to their side. These events took place at precisely the time when the Nuremberg Tribunal — of which the United States was one of the four constitutive powers — was defining in the strict sense as war crimes, in Article ;6(b) of its 1945 Charter, violations of
252-624: A class of persons previously established by the Veterans and Certain Victims of Repressions Act of 24 January 1991 (Dz.U.1997.142.950). Subcamp (SS) Subcamps , officially Arbeitslager der Waffen-SS , were outlying detention centres ( Haftstätten ) that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe . The Nazis distinguished between
315-663: A convenient way for isolated communities, such as during the early colonial settlement of North America, to operate when official currency was scarce. By the early 20th century, truck systems were widely seen, in industrialised countries, as exploitative; perhaps the most well-known example of this view was a 1947 U.S. hit song " Sixteen Tons ". Many countries have Truck Act legislation that outlaws truck systems and requires payment in cash. Though most closely associated with Medieval Europe, governments throughout human history have imposed regular short stints of unpaid labour upon lower social classes. These might be annual obligations of
378-719: A debt, or transportation to a desired country. While historically unfree labour was frequently sanctioned by law, in the present day most unfree labour now revolves around illegal control rather than legal ownership, as all countries have made slavery illegal. As mentioned above, there are several exceptions of unfree or forced labour recognised by the International Labour Organization : Some countries practise forms of civil conscription for different major occupational groups or inhabitants under different denominations like civil conscription , civil mobilization , political mobilisation etc. This obligatory service on
441-648: A few weeks or something similarly regular that lasted for the labourer's entire working life. As the system developed in the Philippines and elsewhere, the labourer could pay an appropriate fee and be exempted from the obligation. A form of forced labour in which peasants and members of lower castes were required to work for free existed in India before independence. This form of labour was known by several names, including veth , vethi , vetti-chakiri and begar . Another historically significant example of forced labour
504-831: A joint study of historians featuring Zhifen Ju, Mark Peattie , Toru Kubo, and Mitsuyoshi Himeta, more than 10 million Chinese were mobilised by the Japanese army and enslaved by the Kōa-in for slave labour in Manchukuo and north China. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java , between 4 and 10 million romusha ( Japanese : "manual labourer") were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there
567-508: A private enterprise under the name of Raftom, and has since fallen victim to unscrupulous real-estate speculators and is being dismantled. There is no evidence of any official attempts to preserve or commemorate this major Holocaust site. The Mittelsteine concentration camp has been formally recognized by the government of the Third Polish Republic as a place of martyrdom by the decree ( rozporządzenie ) of
630-579: A voluntary basis. Although personal benefits may be realised, it may be performed for a variety of reasons including citizenship requirements, a substitution of criminal justice sanctions, requirements of a school or class, and requisites for the receipt of certain benefits. During the Cold War in some communist countries like Czechoslovakia , the German Democratic Republic or the Soviet Union
693-577: Is a term to define the recruiting, harbouring, obtaining and transportation of a person by use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjecting them to involuntary acts, such as acts related to commercial sexual exploitation (including forced prostitution ) or involuntary labour. The archetypal and best-known form of unfree labour is chattel slavery , in which individual workers are legally owned throughout their lives, and may be bought, sold or otherwise exchanged by owners, while never or rarely receiving any personal benefit from their labour. Slavery
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#1733084726805756-499: Is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution , detention , or violence , including death or other forms of extreme hardship to either themselves or members of their families. Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery , penal labour , and the corresponding institutions, such as debt slavery , serfdom , corvée and labour camps . Many forms of unfree labour are also covered by
819-401: Is estimated that in the last 50 years more than 50 million people have been sent to Chinese laogai camps. A more common form in modern society is indenture, or bonded labour , under which workers sign contracts to work for a specific period of time, for which they are paid only with accommodation and sustenance, or these essentials in addition to limited benefits such as cancellation of
882-585: Is executed only in a handful of communities in Germany and currently none in Austria. Beside the conscription for military services, some countries draft citizens for paramilitary or security forces , like internal troops , border guards or police forces . While sometimes paid, conscripts are not free to decline enlistment. Draft dodging or desertion are often met with severe punishment. Even in countries which prohibit other forms of unfree labour, conscription
945-481: Is generally justified as being necessary in the national interest and therefore is one of the five exceptions to the Forced Labour Convention , signed by the most countries in the world. Community service is a paying job performed by one person or a group of people for the benefit of their community or its institutions. Community service is distinct from volunteering, since it is not always performed on
1008-626: Is mandatory to join the so-called Militia Fire Brigades , as well as the obligatory service in Swiss civil defence and protection force. Conscripts in Singapore are providing the personnel of the country's fire service as part of the national service in the Civil Defence Force . In Austria and Germany citizens have to join a compulsory fire brigade if a volunteer fire service can not be provided, due to lack of volunteers. In 2018 this regulation
1071-778: The Pacific War (such as the Burma Railway ). Roughly 4,000,000 German POWs were used as "reparations labour" by the Allies for several years after the German surrender; this was permitted under the Third Geneva Convention provided they were accorded proper treatment. China's laogai ("labour reform") system and North Korea 's kwalliso camps are current examples. About 12 million forced labourers, most of whom were Poles and Soviet citizens ( Ost-Arbeiter ) were employed in
1134-680: The Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland of 20 September 2001 promulgated in the official statute book , the Dziennik Ustaw (Dz.U.2001.106.1154), as a legal technicality resorted to for the purposes of including former Mittelsteine inmates within the category of persons eligible for special care and protection of the Polish State as veterans and/or victims of Nazi or Communist repressions —
1197-452: The SS designated such prisoner task forces as "details" or Kommandos ; the generic term being the "works details" ( Arbeitskommandos ) of a camp. For example, in Dachau concentration camp there was a "Crematorium Works Detail" ( Arbeitskommando Krematorium ), which was put together from a group of concentration camp prisoners; they were separately accommodated and were to have no contact with
1260-528: The Spanish Empire , or the work of Indigenous Australians in northern Australia on sheep or cattle stations ( ranches ), from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. In the latter case, workers were rarely or never paid, and were restricted by regulations and/or police intervention to regions around their places of work. In late 16th century Japan, "unfree labour" or slavery was officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labour persisted alongside
1323-610: The United Kingdom , the so-called Bevin Boys , had been conscripted for the work in coal mines . In Belgium in 1964, in Portugal and in Greece from 2010 to 2014 due to the severe economic crisis , a system of civil mobilisation was implemented to provide public services as a national interest. In Switzerland in most communities for all inhabitants, no matter if they are Swiss or not, it
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#17330847268051386-414: The main camps (or Stammlager ) and the subcamps ( Außenlager or Außenkommandos ) subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps. Within a concentration camp , prisoners were forced to carry out various tasks. The work could even be pointless and vexatious, without any useful output. Based on military language
1449-450: The "camp senior" ( Lagerältester ) or "block senior" ( Blockältester ). Today the camps are known as subcamps (in German either as KZ-Außenlager or Nebenlager ). Sometimes the colloquial abbreviation "KZ" is used, but this can also refer to a main camp. In the hierarchy of the Nazi camp system, subcamps were subordinated to a concentration camp that, for example, held the prisoner records and
1512-656: The 14th century, Mittelsteine/Ścinawka Średnia was before the Second World War a highly industrialized village. The hamlet was, for example, the site of a major power plant that supplied electricity to the electrified Silesian grid (the Elektrischer Bahnbetrieb in Schlesien ) of the German railway system (see picture below) considered one of the most valuable assets of the Reich. It was a major railway junction already in
1575-471: The 19th century. Mittelsteine was thus a natural choice for the location of various industries. Today, the border crossing between the Czech Republic and Poland at Otovice – Tłumaczów is just 8.5 km (5.3 mi)away; while the nearest town in Germany, Zittau , is 179 km (111 mi) away. The camp consisted of three barracks located by the north-western side of the exit road leading out of
1638-646: The Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (C105), one of the fundamental conventions of the ILO. According to the ILO Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour (SAP-FL), global profits from forced trafficked labour exploited by private agents are estimated at US$ 44.3 billion per year. About 70% of this value (US$ 31.6 billion) comes from trafficked victims. At least the half of this sum (more than US$ 15 billion) comes from industrialised countries. Trafficking
1701-532: The Americas, Asia, or Europe, where their status as slaves was almost always inherited by their descendants. The term "slavery" is often applied to situations which do not meet the above definitions, but which are other, closely related forms of unfree labour, such as debt slavery or debt-bondage (although not all repayment of debts through labour constitutes unfree labour). Examples are the Repartimiento system in
1764-404: The German war economy inside Nazi Germany. More than 2000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including Daimler , Deutsche Bank , Siemens , Volkswagen , Hoechst , Dresdner Bank , Krupp , Allianz , BASF , Bayer , BMW , and Degussa . In particular, Germany's Jewish population was subject to slave labour prior to their extermination. In Asia, according to
1827-670: The Global Economy (1999), there are now an estimated 27 million slaves in the world. Blackbirding involves kidnapping or trickery to transport people to another country or far away from home, to work as a slave or low-paid involuntary worker. In some cases, workers were returned home after a period of time. Serfdom bonds labourers to the land they farm, typically in a feudal society. Serfs typically have no legal right to leave, change employers, or seek paid work, though depending on economic conditions many did so anyway. Unlike chattel slaves, they typically cannot be sold separately from
1890-406: The camp itself, were soon added Kommandos that worked outside the camp, for example the herb plantation detail ( Kommando der Kräuterplantage ) or the works details assigned to peat cutting. The SS increasingly deployed prisoners outside their concentration camp and made them build installations such as roads, ditches, barracks or SS recreation homes. Concentration camp prisoners were even used for
1953-522: The camp. The forced labour involved primarily work for the armaments and munitions manufacturer Totex, a subsidiary of Metallwarenfabrik Spreewerk GmbH , itself owned by the Deutsche Industrie;-Werke AG ( DIWAG ), and for other DIWAG munitions concerns located at Mittelsteine, and at the aviation-parts factory Fa. Albert Patin, Werkstätten für Fernsteuerungstechnik (whose location within
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2016-515: The concentration camp, were also called Außenkommandos . In several cases Außenkommandos developed into new, independent concentration camps: Mauthausen concentration camp began in August 1938 with the arrival of the first prisoner details from Dachau. Niederhagen concentration camp was also formed from a KZ Außenkommando. Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp was initially a subcamp of Buchenwald and later became an independent concentration camp. At
2079-462: The converted cotton mill ( die Baumwollspinnerei ) of Schiminsky & Co. (The factory is said to have been connected by a tunnel with the Kłodzko Fortress where a similar factory manned by slave labour was in operation.) Prisoners unable to work because of serious illness were removed from the camp to be executed off premises, as were those in advanced stages of pregnancy. In
2142-478: The death registers. Often the supply of food in subcamps was poorer than that of the main camp, quite apart from the condition of the sanitary facilities or sleeping arrangements for the prisoners. In subsequent Nazi documents, the subcamps are sometimes also referred to as works camps ( Arbeitslager ). The following articles list the subcamps under individual main camps of a particular concentration camp: Unfree labour Forced labour , or unfree labour ,
2205-483: The debate is thus unwarranted. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that at least 12.3 million people are victims of forced labour worldwide; of these, 9.8 million are exploited by private agents and more than 2.4 million are trafficked . Another 2.5 million are forced to work by the state or by rebel military groups. From an international law perspective, countries that allow forced labour are violating international labour standards as set forth in
2268-671: The decisions of the Nazis with regard to the Mittelsteine camp "followed no evident logic". However, the inexplicable dénouement may be linked to the fact that, with the advances of the Allied forces on the Eastern Front , the Nazis rapidly halted the secret production of the V-1 and V-2 rocket components at Mittelsteine, dismantled the specialized machinery used for the purpose and shipped it out of
2331-407: The discussion. These contributions maintain that, because Marxist theory failed to understand the centrality of unfreedom to modern capitalism, a new explanation of this link is needed. This claim has been questioned by Tom Brass . He argues that many of these new characteristics are in fact no different from those identified earlier by Marxist theory and that the exclusion of the latter approach from
2394-479: The end of the War the total swelled to nearly 1,000. The function of camp commandant or Lagerkommandant (a position sometimes denominated Zwischengeschalteter SS-Offizier or "SS liaison officer ") was performed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Paul Radschun . The Oberaufseherin or "senior overseer" (the highest female official) was Erna Rinke . The staff included 10–15 female guards . Among
2457-763: The ensuing discussion concerned the extent to which different relational forms constituted obstacles to capitalist development, and why. During the 1960s and 1970s, unfree labour was regarded as incompatible with capitalist accumulation, and thus an obstacle to economic growth, an interpretation advanced by exponents of the then-dominant semi-feudal thesis. From the 1980s onwards, however, another and very different Marxist view emerged, arguing that evidence from Latin America and India suggested agribusiness enterprises, commercial farmers and rich peasants reproduced, introduced or reintroduced unfree relations. However, recent contributions to this debate have attempted to exclude Marxism from
2520-484: The general population, since they are unable or unlikely to report their conditions to the authorities. Unfree labour re-emerged as an issue in the debate about rural development during the years following the end of the Second World War, when a political concern of Keynesian theory was not just economic reconstruction (mainly in Europe and Asia) but also planning (in developing "Third World" nations ). A crucial aspect of
2583-471: The land, and have rights such as the military protection of the lord. A truck system, in the specific sense in which the term is used by labour historians , refers to an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment associated with small, isolated and/or rural communities, in which workers or self-employed small producers are paid in either: goods, a form of payment known as truck wages , or tokens, private currency ("scrip") or direct credit, to be used at
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2646-517: The latter stages of the camp's existence in 1945 a number of prisoners who fell ill were allowed to die without medical care in the camp's Revier or isolation ward. With the defeat looming in the last months and weeks of the War the Nazis liquidated the camp and transferred the prisoners to two alternative slave-labour sites according to the following selection process: the Hungarian nationals were sent to
2709-591: The laws and customs of war that included but were not limited to ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners... According to Polish press reports, the cotton mill that used to house the slave-labour factory, which until 1991 had been a running concern as a subsidiary of the (now defunct) state-owned Piast cotton mill (the Zakłady Przemysłu Bawełnianego "Piast" ) of Głuszyca , in 1992 became
2772-523: The most notorious of them are mentioned the names of the Auf;seherinnen Philomena Locker (sentenced after the War to seven years' imprisonment), Charlotte Neugebauer, and (first name unknown) Schneider. The camp was situated in the locality called Mittelsteine (renamed Ścinawka Średnia in 1947) in what was then the territory of the Third Reich , about 17 km (11 mi) to
2835-528: The north-west of Kłodzko (German: Glatz ), the nearest larger town, or 104 km (65 mi) to the south-west of the regional metropolis , Wrocław ( Breslau ) — in the territory of Lower Silesia . Despite its picturesque geographical location in the so-called Ścinawka Depression ( Obniżenie Ścinawki ) between the Table Mountains and the Stone Mountains and its history reaching back to
2898-411: The one hand has been implemented due to long-lasting labour strikes , during wartime or economic crisis, to provide basic services like medical care, food supply or supply of the defence industry. On the other hand, this service can be obligatory to provide recurring and inevitable services to the population, like fire services, due to lack of volunteers. Between December 1943 and March 1948 young men in
2961-520: The onset of war, the SS increasingly employed concentration camp prisoners in armaments factories . In some cases, the prisoners were accommodated in a hodge--podge of makeshift sleeping areas; in other cases, the SS forced them to erect the camp including the watchtowers and fences. Many such subcamps ( KZ-Außenlager ) were laid out in similar fashion to the concentration camps. There were also SS camp commanders ( SS-Lagerführer ) and prisoner functionaries such as
3024-477: The open in winter, in freezing temperatures. Dachau was the first concentration camp that Reichsführer-SS Himmler had built. It was already in existence in 1933 and developed into a prototype for subsequent concentration camps such as Buchenwald , which was completed in 1937. But even Dachau concentration camp was not geographically restricted to Dachau . In addition to the Kommandos that had to be formed within
3087-411: The other prisoners. Kommandos that were charged with forced labor were overseen by prisoner functionaries known as Kapos . Whether a prisoner was assigned to a physically easy or difficult Kommando affected their chances of survival. A Kommando assigned work that was inside a building, e.g. carrying out technical work, was more likely to survive than Kommandos who were made to work outside, in
3150-443: The owner of the chief among the slave-labour enterprises at Mittelsteine, the industrialist and inventor Albert Patin , instead of being prosecuted for war crimes after the War had ended, was brought in 1945 — together with his family which followed in 1946 — to the United States (initially to New York City ) and subsequently provided with housing at U.S. Government 's expense at Wright Field (near Riverside, Ohio ) in
3213-701: The period's penal codes' forced labour. Somewhat later, the Edo period 's penal laws prescribed "non-free labour" for the immediate families of executed criminals in Article 17 of the Gotōke reijō (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711 Gotōke reijō was compiled from over 600 statutes that were promulgated between 1597 and 1696. According to Kevin Bales in Disposable People: New Slavery in
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#17330847268053276-680: The preexisting camp of Mährisch Weisswasser in Bílá Voda in the Sudetenland , while the Polish nationals were sent to the newly created camp at Grafenort in Germany (now Gorzanów in Poland) at a distance of 27 kilometres from Mittelsteine. As Bella Gutterman , the director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research , comments on these ultimate developments, by 1945
3339-454: The private purposes of senior Nazi officers: for Oswald Pohl 's country house of Brüningsau , for Himmler's Hunting Lodge and also for the country house of Hans Loritz , the commandant of Dachau. Even Eleonore Baur , a nurse at the concentration camp and acquaintance of Hitler, was given her own Kommando . Many of these works details were only established for weeks or months and their strength varied. Kommandos who stayed overnight, outside
3402-526: The region. Among the several memoirs published by former inmates during the post-War period , the most detailed description of the camp, according to experts, is that offered by Sara Selver-Urbach in her book Through the Window of My Home published in Israel in 1964. Selver-Urbach writes, in part, ...life in Mittelsteine was sheer hell, even if a lesser hell than elsewhere, and our portion of torments and suffering
3465-710: The state use of convict labour. Australia received thousands of convict labourers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were given sentences for crimes ranging from those now considered to be minor misdemeanours to such serious offences as murder, rape and incest. A considerable number of Irish convicts were sentenced to transportation for treason while fighting against British rule in Ireland . More than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australian colonies from 1788 to 1868. Most British or Irish convicts who were sentenced to transportation, however, completed their sentences in British jails and were not transported at all. It
3528-656: The term forced labour , which is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as all involuntary work or service exacted under the menace of a penalty. However, under the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930, the term forced or compulsory labour does not include: If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms: Unfree labour is often more easily instituted and enforced on migrant workers, who have travelled far from their homelands and who are easily identified because of their physical, ethnic, linguistic, or cultural differences from
3591-503: The village is today uncertain). Contemporary German accounts suggest the Albert Patin factory was located within 15 minutes' walk of the railway station. The inmates' slave labour was specifically related to the manufacture of component parts of the V-1 and V-2 rockets — components which were being secretly produced in the factory installed in
3654-505: The village towards Ratno Dolne ( Ger. , Niederrathen) — the present-day Voivodeship Route (or DW ) [REDACTED] DW 387 locally called the ulica Piłsudskiego — about 600 metres from the bridge on the River Steine (present-day Ścinawka ) in the direction away from the village centre on the right-hand side. The prisoners were marched under armed guard back and forth along village streets between their places of forced labour and
3717-511: Was a death rate of 80%. Also, 6.87 million Koreans were forcefully put into slave labour from 1939 to 1945 in both Japan and Japanese-occupied Korea. Kerja rodi ( Heerendiensten ) , was the term for forced labour in Indonesia under Dutch colonial rule . The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agricultural communes . The entire population
3780-564: Was common in many ancient societies , including ancient Egypt , Babylon , Persia , ancient Greece , Rome , ancient China , the pre-modern Muslim world , as well as many societies in Africa and the Americas . Being sold into slavery was a common fate of populations that were conquered in wars. Perhaps the most prominent example of chattel slavery was the enslavement of many millions of black people in Africa, as well as their forced transportation to
3843-451: Was forced to become farmers in labour camps . Convict or prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. The forced labour of convicts has often been regarded with lack of sympathy, because of the social stigma attached to people regarded as common criminals. Three British colonies in Australia – New South Wales , Van Diemen's Land and Western Australia – are examples of
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#17330847268053906-523: Was that of political prisoners , people from conquered or occupied countries, members of persecuted minorities, and prisoners of war , especially during the 20th century. The best-known example of this are the concentration camp system run by Nazi Germany in Europe during World War II, the Gulag camps run by the Soviet Union , and the forced labour used by the military of the Empire of Japan , especially during
3969-409: Was undoubtedly an indivisible part of that total, comprehensive system I have labelled "A Different Planet"... Another former inmate, Ruth Minsky Sender , who in her 1986 book The Cage vividly conveys the pervasive atmosphere of terror established at Mittelsteine by the random use of torture , speaks in the interviews of the suicides among the despairing inmates. However,
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