“Here you must work impeccably, otherwise you will be beaten and sent for selection”. Jewish Laborers in the City of Radom: Poland 1942-1944
“Here you must work impeccably, otherwise you will be beaten and sent for selection”. Jewish Laborers in the City of Radom: Poland 1942-1944

Summary/Abstract: Radom was the principal city of the Radom district, one of the four districts of the Generalgouvernement established by the Germans in late October 1939. When Polish property and assets were requisitioned by Germany, most Polish military industrial plants in the district were handed over to German and Austrian corporations, which operated them for the Reich's benefit. From the spring of 1942, the Wehrmacht experienced a shortage of armaments and weapons, which compounded by the dire condition of the labour market, made Jews a kind of potential economic reserve. In the summer of 1942, concurrently with the physical annihilation of the Jews of the Radom district, the Wehrmacht, the police and the SS in the Generalgouvernement had worked out an agreement, whereby tens of thousands of fit and able Jews would be incorporated into the labour market. From August 1942 onwards, residential shacks designed to house Jewish slave labourers, were built near essential plants and factories throughout the Radom district, to become later factory slave labour camps. Using survivors' testimonies, diaries and memoirs, this article seeks to document the enslavement of the Jews in the two labour camps established in the city of Radom itself – Szwarlikowska and Szkolna, and examine the impact of the terror regime within these camps on the daily lives of their Jewish inmates.

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