Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938 1944, Wolf Gruner (New York: Cambridge University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006), xxiv + 322 pp., cloth $75.00

Abstract

Wolf Gruner argues for four basic theses in Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis. First, forced labor was a central feature of Nazi persecution of Jews—one that most historians have strangely neglected or underestimated.1 It was not only a dominant feature of the Jewish experience prior to deportation, but also sufficiently important to the economic interests of the persecutors that it affected how they implemented their other policies of racial persecution. Second, the enforcement of Jewish forced labor was not primarily the prerogative of the SS. Rather, it was a striking example of the broad division of labor and widespread participation in the exploitation and persecution of Jews by various state institutions, regional and local authorities (especially labor offices and municipalities), and myriad private employers. At times, relations between the various beneficiaries and practitioners of forced labor were characterized by conflicting interests, but just as often there was compromise and cooperation. Third, a comparison of forced labor policies in Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, Silesia, the Warthegau, and the General Government reveals that forced labor was imposed on Jews in various ways in different places and at different times within the German empire. It is a complex historical subject that demands a nuanced and differentiated approach and cannot be characterized by sweeping and simplistic generalizations such as “destruction through labor.” Fourth, Jewish labor was exploited primarily for economic reasons, not just as a means of harassment and enervation paving the way to destruction. Systematic forced labor began long before the decisions were taken for a policy of extermination and, despite that policy, continued until the end of the war. Paradoxically, Gruner concludes, “Tens of thousands of Jews survived the Holocaust because they were exempted from genocide due to economic interests and labor shortages” (p. 294).