Forced Labor under National Socialism

For the first time, Nazi forced labour is documented in its pan-European dimension as a racist social crime.

The exhibition tells the complex story of forced labor under National Socialism and its aftermath in the decades since 1945. It shows that forced labor was a mass phenomenon: During World War II, more than twenty million people had to perform labor for National Socialist Germany in occupied Europe and the German Reich. And it retraces the integration of forced labor into the racist social order of the Nazi state from the very beginning: The propagated “people’s community” and the forced labor of those excluded from it were two sides of the same coin.
This volume documents the main strands of the exhibition and presents numerous long-unknown historical photos and documents. The accompanying scholarly essays provide more in-depth insights into the research on the history of National Socialist forced labor and the Weimar “Gauforum,” the building now housing the Museum of Forced Labor under National Socialism.