Extermination through labour

Killing prisoners by means of forced labour

Extermination through labour (or "extermination through work", Vernichtung durch Arbeit) is a term that was adopted to describe forced labor in Nazi concentration camps whose inmates were held in inhumane conditions and suffered a high mortality rate; in some camps most prisoners died within a few months of incarceration. In the 21st century, research has questioned whether there was a general policy of extermination through labor in the Nazi concentration camp system because of widely varying conditions between camps. German historian Jens Christian Wagner argues that the camp system involved the exploitation of forced labor of some prisoners and the systematic murder of others, especially Jews, with only limited overlap between these two groups. The phrase was used again during the post war Nuremberg trials. Groups marginalized by the majority population in Germany included welfare dependent families with many children, alleged vagrants and transients, as well as members of perceived problem groups, such as alcoholics and prostitutes. While these people were considered "German blooded", they were also categorized as "social misfits" (Asoziale) as well as superfluous "ballast lives" (Ballastexistenzen). They were recorded in lists (as were homosexuals) by civil and police authorities and subjected to myriad state restrictions and repressive actions, which included forced sterilization and ultimately imprisonment in concentration camps. Anyone who openly opposed the Nazi regime (such as communists, social democrats, democrats, and conscientious objectors) was detained in prison camps. Many of them did not survive the ordeal. In Nazi camps, "extermination through labour" was principally carried out through what was characterized at the Nuremberg Trials as "slave work" and "slave workers",

Admission, registration, and interrogation of the detainees were accompanied by scornful remarks from SS officials. The prisoners were stepped on and beaten during roll call. Forced labour partly consisted of pointless tasks and heavy labour, which aimed to wear down the prisoners. Up to 25,000 of the 35,000 prisoners appointed to work for IG Farben in Auschwitz died. The average life expectancy of a slave laborer on a work assignment amounted to less than four months. The emaciated forced labourers died from exhaustion or disease or they were deemed to be incapable of work and murdered. About 30 percent of the forced labourers who were assigned to dig tunnels, which were constructed for weapon factories in the last months of the war, died. In satellite camps, which were established near mines and industrial firms, death rates were even higher as accommodations and supplies were often worse than in the main camps.

The Soviet Gulag is sometimes presented as a system of death camps, particularly in post Communist Eastern European politics. This controversial position has been criticized, considering that with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive. Alexander Solzhenitsyn introduced the expression camps of extermination by labour in his non fiction work The Gulag Archipelago. According to him, the system eradicated opponents by forcing them to work as prisoners on big state run projects (for example the White Sea–Baltic Canal, quarries, remote railroads and urban development projects) under inhumane conditions. Political writer Roy Medvedev wrote: "The penal system in the Kolyma and in the camps in the north was deliberately designed for the extermination of people." Political theorist Hannah Arendt argued that although the Soviet government deemed them all "forced labor" camps, this in fact highlighted that the work in some of the camps was deliberately pointless, since "forced labor is the normal condition of all Russian workers, who have no freedom of movement and can be arbitrarily drafted for work at any place and at any time." She differentiated between "authentic" forced labor camps, concentration camps, and "annihilation camps". In authentic labor camps, inmates worked in "relative freedom and are sentenced for limited periods." Concentration camps had extremely high mortality rates but were still "essentially organized for labor purposes." Annihilation camps were those where the inmates were "systematically wiped out through starvation and neglect." She criticizes other commentators' conclusion that the purpose of the camps was a supply of cheap labor. According to her, the Soviets were able to liquidate the camp system without serious economic consequences, showing that the camps were not an important source of labor and were overall economically irrelevant.