Labor Camps Bibliography

1. Birnbaum, Jacob. I kept my promise: my story of the Holocaust. Lexington, MA: Jason R. Taylor, 1995. xii, 210 pp.
Note: The author, Jacob Birnbaum, originally from Poland, spent three years in six different Nazi slave-labor camps. The book, used as a social studies text by some schools, includes maps of labor camps and a timeline.

2. Blocker, Joel. Europe: World War II slave labor victims demand compensation. Prague: Radio Free Europe, August 31, 1998.
Note: A class-action suit calling for compensation for slave labor has been filed in California against 16 German firms including Volkswagon, Daimler-Benz and Siemens. To ward off this type of litigation, many German companies have supported the idea of a "humanitarian" fund funded by private and public monies; at the same time, the firms deny legal responsibility, saying that the Nazis forced them to use slave labor.
Filed in Library at B9.

3. Borkin, Joseph. The crime and punishment of I.G. Farben. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1997. xi, 250 pp.
Note: A number of German chemical companies joined together during World War I; in 1925 these companies merged into a single corporation known as I.G. Farben. The corporation lined up with Hitler when he became chancellor, and although I.G.'s head Carl Bosch, a vocal anti-Nazi, pushed the industrial need for Jewish scientists before his death in 1940, I.G. led the industrial preparation for war. During the war, I.G.'s industrial complex built at Auschwitz, to exploit the supply of death camp labor for the production of synthethic rubber and oil, was so enormous that the complex used as much electricity as the city of Berlin. I.G. also made money from the sale of Zyklon B used in the gas chambers.

4. Breitman, Richard. Official secret: what the Nazis planned, what the British and Americans knew. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. viii, 325 pp.
Note: The author blames the Allies' strict suppression of information about Hitler's killings for the failure to save more Jewish lives and property and to punish many known war criminals,.

5. Civil affairs handbook: France. Section 2A: German military government over Europe - France. Army Service Forces Manual M352-2A. Washington: Army Service Forces, 1944. 65 pp.
Note: This wartime study compiled information about the harsh effects of German occupation on French banking, foreign trade, conscription of labor, and transportation. The French were also required to pay the costs of occupation and the Jews were subjected to both German anti-Jewish legislation and French anti-Jewish laws.

6. Davis, Douglas. "Behind the headlines: survivors recall Swiss policy of using Jews for slave labor". Online Global News & Analysis(January 5, 1998).
Note: A British TV documentary revealed that Jewish refugees in Switzerland were subjected to forced labor in a network of more than 100 work camps established by official decree in 1940.
Filed in Library at D10.
Online: http://www.jta.org/jan98/05-camp.htm.

7. Dobbs, Michael. "Ford and GM scrutinized for alleged Nazi collaboration: firms deny researchers' claims on aiding German war effort". Washington Post(November 30, 1998): A1.
Note: Ford Motor Co. has hired researchers and historians, as well as lawyers, to defend a civil case brought against them on behalf of a young Russian woman forced from her home to work at the Ford plant at Cologne where she lived in a labor camp.
Filed in Library at D3.

8. DuBois, Josiah E. The Devil's chemists: 24 conspirators of the international Farben cartel who manufacture wars. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952. 374 pp.
Note: The Nuremberg trial of industrial war criminals held by the Americans in May 1947, ended in May 1948. Twenty-four I.G. executives were indicted and charged with five counts including "slavery and mass murder". Although the court did convict the defendants most directly involved in the Aushwitz labor camp, Josiah E. DuBois, chief of the prosecution staff for the I.G. case, vowed to write a book about the Farben cartel when the court passed down sentences "light enough to please a chicken thief".

9. Favez, Jean-Claude. Une mission impossible? Le ICRC, les déportations et les camps de concentration nazis (An impossible mission? The International Red Cross, the deportations and the Nazi concentration camps). Lausanne: n.p., 1988.
Note: According to Favez, the International Red Cross in Geneva knew in 1942 about the systematic murder of European Jews. A Red Cross committee met to consider an appeal against this genocide; under the influence of the Swiss government, the committee did not follow through.

10. Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: the years of persecution. Volume I. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. xii, 436 pp. Vol. I.
Note: The liquidation of Jewish economic life in Nazi Germany was first tested by the Viennese model which called for a drastic restructuring of the economy through the emigration of the Jewish proletariat, the liquidation of unproductive businesses, the establishment of labor camps for the impoverished Jewish masses. By 1938, all Jewish economic existence was endangered in Germany: all Jews were ordered to register their property, lists of services forbidden to Jews were published, Jews were forbidden to practice medicine and law, and finally, a ban was announced on all Jewish business activity.

13. Gregor, Neil. Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. xii, 276 pp.
Note: Skilled Jews were forced to work at Daimler-Benz before final deportation; beginning in 1944, Daimler-Benz's production was relocated to decentralized underground caves dug out by concentration camp inmates as forced laborers.

14. Hackett, David A. The Buchenwald Report. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. 397 pp.

15. Hediger, Ernst S. "Nazi exploitation of Occupied Europe". Foreign Policy Reports 18, no.6(June 1, 1942): 66-79.
Note: This article, published months after Pearl Harbor, offers a wealth of information about economic issues related to WWII that are currently being looked at by Holocaust scholars. Hediger makes the point that the Nazi drive for power was the best prepared drive, in a military, economic and psychological sense, for world conquest ever conceived with the Nazis employing a pay-as-you-go war technique. Special economic units accompanied the military forces with the charge to obtain resources for the continuation of war through looting and reorganizing the conquered territories in order to pay the bills for new conquests. Occupation authorities were given quotas for workers to be transported to Germany with the workers' remittances paid for by the occupied country. The author predicts that the system of "streamlined looting" will reuslt in the total depletion of goods and financial bankruptcy of the conquered countries.
Filed in Library at H41.

16. Herbert, Ulrich. Hitler's foreign workers: enforced foreign labour in Germany under the Third Reich. New York: Cambridge University, 1977. 510 pp.
Note: Originally written in German in 1987, this book has been called a definitive work on the subject based on research in government and company archives, as well as interview collections. Herbert's account provides an examination of the twelve million foreigners who served the war economy, a third of Germany's workforce in 1944.

17. Holland, Kenneth. Youth in European labor camps. Washington: American Council on Education, 1939. xiii, 303 pp.

18. International Military Tribunal: Nurnberg, 1. Toronto, Ontario: Nizkor Project, 1996-1998.
Note: This webpage leads to the transcripts of the postwar Nurnberg Trials including the U.S. Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality's 1946 Nazi conspiracy & aggression which includes Chapter 8 on "Economic aspects of the conspiracy", Chapter 10 on The slave labor program", Chapter 11 on "The concentration camps", and Chapter 14: "The plunder of art treasures" with information on the Einsatzstab Rosenberg (ERR); the cooperation of Hermann Goering; General Government's confiscation laws and decrees; the nature, extent and value of property stolen; and legal references and list of documents relating to the plunder of art treasures.
Online: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt.

19. Klein, Gera Weissman. All but my life. New York: Hill & Wang, 1995.
Note: The Polish author survived Nazi work camps and a three-hundred-mile forced march during the winter of 1945.

20. Kogon, Eugen. The theory and practice of hell: the German concentration camps and the system behind them. New York: Berkeley, 1960. 328 pp.
Note: Kogon, a prisoner at Buchenwald, describes the death camp system from every possible angle.

21. Laver, Ross. "Money and morality: Volkswagen has always insisted that it was following orders from the Nazis to use slave labor". Maclean's (Canada) 111, no.37(September 14, 1998): 37.
Note: Investigation into the economic aspects of the Holocaust continues with Volkswagen's disclaimer for responsibility for using slave labor during WWII.

22. Laver, Ross. "Money and morality: Volkswagen has always insisted that it was following orders from the Nazis to use slave labro". Maclean's (Canada) 111, no.37(September 14, 1998): 37.
Note: Investigation into the economic aspects of the Holocaust continues with Volkswagen's disclaimer for responsibility for using slave labor during WWII.

23. Lochner, Louis P. Tycoons and tyrant: German industry from Hitler to Adenauer. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954. 304 pp.
Note: A study of industrial leaders and their contributions to the Nazi war effort including financial contributions to Hitler's movement. Chapter 12 is on forced labor and the spoliation of foreign plants.

24. McLarin, Kimberly. "Holocaust survivor will share $2.1 million in reparations". New York Times(September 20, 1995): B5.
Note: Hugo Princz and 10 other Holocaust survivors settled for $2.1 million with Germany for their WWII suffering in Nazi concentration camps.

25. Munns, Roger. "Holocaust survivor sues for "back wages" from camp: man says German companies owe him for work he did for them in labor". Augusta Chronice Online(August 18, 1997).
Note: Article tells of a man who claims that German companies owe him for work he did for them in labor camps during the war. The companies include Krupp, BASF, Hoecht, Bayer and Daimler-Benz.
Online: http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/020302/fea_LB0514-2.000.shtml.

26. Murphy, Kevin. "Compensation urged for Nazi's victims in World War II, Holocaust". Kansas City Star(December 1, 1998).
Note: This article about the financial fallout of the Holocaust notes that researcher Miriam Kleiman's work in uncovering records about companies that used slave labor to produce Nazi war machinery has brought about a class-action lawsuit.
Filed in the Library at M14.

27. Murr, Andrew and Tom Masland. "The Swiss halo slips again: add Jewish camps to Switzerland's list of sins". Newsweek 131, no.4(January 26, 1998): 36+.
Note: During the Nazi era, the Swiss requested Germany to add the letter "J" to Jewish passports and did not extend Swiss banking-secrecy laws to cover Jews who had to reveal their account numbers, secret codes, and balances. Recent research show that the Swiss not only denied safe harbor and stole gold from Holocaust victims, but that the Swiss also maintained work camps for over 20,000 Jews, including resident Jews.
Filed in the Library at M5.

28. New, Mitya. Switzerland unwrapped: exposing the myths. London: I.B. Tauris, 1997. xii, 210 pp.
Note: Account includes information on Swiss banking and labor camps durng WWII.

29. Oral history interview guidelines. Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998. ix, 140 pp.
Note: The Holocaust museum collects nd produces video and audio-taped testimonies related to the Holocaust. These guidelines, providing direction in all aspects of conducting an interview, were created for the Museum's own interviewers.

30. Pool, James. Hitler and his secret partners: contributions, loot and rewards, 1933-1945. New York: Pocket Books, 1997. xiv, 415 pp.
Note: This is the tale of bizarre financial relationships during the Nazi regime involving Germany's top businessmen including financiers and industrialists, as well as foreign bankers and statesmen. The author describes how Nazis profited from looted art, labor camps, and stolen property.

31. Schorta, Susanne. Arbeitslager und Heime für Flüchtlinge und Emigrantinnnen in der Scweiz 1939-1945 (Labor camps and homes for refugees and female emigrants in Switzerland, 1939-1945). Berne, Switzerland: Universität, 1990.

32. Silverman, Dan P. Hitler's economy: Nazi work creation programs, 1933-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. 384 pp.
Note: The story of Germany's economic recovery from the Depression. These early work camps served as a model for Hitler's future labor programs as Germany moved from creating jobs to allocating labor.

33. "Slave driver - Albert Speer: his battle with truth by Gitta Sereny". Economist (London) 336, no.7933(September 23, 1995): 78.
Note: According to the reviewer, Sereny claims that Speer, responsible for the dreadful German slave-labor program, reconstructed his past following the war in order to define the limits of his knowledge about the extermination of the Jews.

This book review is filed at S4 in the Library.

34. Sofsky, Wolfgang. The order of terror: the concentration camp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Note: A German sociologist, Sofsky focused on Nazi concentration camps from 1944 to 1945, with an emphasis on the SS camp operators in this work which was first published in Germany in 1993. Basing his work on archival records and the testimony of survivors, the author concluded that the camps employed physical and psychological terror and violence in establishing a system of absolute power, a system without civilized social norms. The social dynamics and the physical design of the camps encouraged sadistic behavior on the part of the lower members of the power elite. Daily life was reduced to a struggle for survival.

35. Somerville, Sean. "Suing for reparations". Baltimore Sun(January 17, 1999): 1D, 4D.
Note: The success of lawsuits against Swiss banks has given new impetus to war-crimes class action suits. Along with the success of litigation, the flow of government records from archives making public tens of thousands of documents classified from WWII through the Cold War is working to make courts a popular political forum for groups with grievances.