Wearing the Letter P: Polish Women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany, 1939-1945

By Sophie Hodorowicz Knab

In this unflinching, detailed portrait of a forgotten group of Nazi forced labor survivors, author Sophie Horodowicz Knab reveals the personal stories of hundreds of Polish women who were forced to leave their homes to work in Nazi German factories and farms during World War II. From sexual assault, starvation, and illness to tremendous physical and psychological trauma, the atrocities these women suffered have never been fully explored until now.

Required to sew a large letter "P" onto their jackets, thousands of women, some as young as age 12, were taken from their homes in Poland and forced to work in Hitler’s Germany for months and years on end. As mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters, female Polish forced laborers faced a unique set of challenges and often unspeakable conditions because of their gender. Compelled to learn more about her own mother’s experience as a forced laborer, Sophie Hodorowicz Knab embarked on a personal quest to uncover details about this overlooked aspect of World War II history. She conducted extensive research in archives in the U.S., London, and Warsaw for over 14 years to piece together facts and individual stories.

Knab explains how it all happened, from the beginning of Nazi occupation in Poland to liberation: the roundups; the horrors of transit camps; the living and working conditions of Polish women in agriculture and industry; and the anguish of sexual exploitation and forced abortions—all under the constant threat of concentration camps. Knab draws from documents, government and family records, rare photos, and most importantly, numerous victim accounts and diaries, letters and trial testimonies, finally giving these women a voice and bringing to light the atrocities that they endured.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books
• Release date: Sep 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9780781887021

Sophie Hodorowicz Knab

Sophie Hodorowicz Knab is a noted Polish-American lecturer and author whose books include Polish Herbs, Flowers & Folk Medicine, Polish Customs, Traditions & Folklore, Polish Country Kitchen Cookbook, and Wearing the Letter P: Polish Women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany, all published by Hippocrene Books. She is a contributor to the Polish American Journal and resides in Grand Island, New York.

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Introduction

IN THE TRIAL OF WAR CRIMINALS before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the Nazi defendants were charged with formulating and executing a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit War Crimes. This plan involved, among other things, the practice of total war including methods of combat and of military occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war.¹ This included the murder and ill-treatment of civilian populations of or in occupied territories, deportation for slave labor and other purposes of the civilian populations, murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, killing of hostages, the plunder of public and private property and the conscription of slave labor. Their actions against civilian populations were not justified by military necessity. They imprisoned civilians without due process of law, and tortured and murdered them. They caused the wanton destruction of towns and villages, plundered both public and private property, and persecuted individuals based on racial and political motivations. They conducted a deliberate and systematic genocide of civilian populations in order to destroy certain groups and classes of people along national, racial, ethnic, or religious lines, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies.²

The Nazis and the National Socialist Party adhered to the notion that the German people were a race of superior humans that had the right to enslave or eliminate inferior beings. In their elaborate racial classification system, the Poles were considered Untermensch (subhuman). During the six long years of German occupation, the citizens of Poland were subject to inhumane acts and unspeakable atrocities. The Germans herded the Jews into ghettos where they slowly starved to death. They were exploited for slave labor in concentration camps where they died from abuse, hunger, physical illness, and overwork. The Nazis systematically murdered millions of Jews from Poland and other countries in the infamous gas chambers of Auschwitz, Belzec, Majdanek, and Treblinka that they had built on Polish soil. The Siti and Roma Gypsies fared no better. Considered racially and socially inferior elements, they were interned in ghettos and then sent to extermination camps.

What was the fate of the non-Jewish population of Poland? In his talk to his commanding generals in August of 1939, Hitler stated he had ordered his Death Head Units to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language … Poland will be depopulated and colonized with Germans.³ By the summer of 1940 with AB-Aktion,⁴ a campaign to eliminate Polish intellectuals and upper classes, the Germans rounded up Polish journalists, scientists, professors, lawyers, doctors, and clergy—anyone who was suspected as a source of potential resistance and anti-Nazi activity. They were jailed or sent to the nearest concentration camp where they died, or were taken to outlying areas such as the Kampinos forest near Palmiry outside of Warsaw where they were shot in the back of the head and then buried in mass graves.

After incorporating vast territories of western Poland into the Third Reich, anyone who was not of German blood, or Poles who had German blood but refused to become a German by signing the Volkslist [German People’s List; a racial classification system that graded an individual as to desirability to belong to the German race] were evicted from their homes. The aim was to eradicate all Poles and Jews and make the area purely German. The Germans emptied entire Polish cities, forcibly expelling citizens from their homes and transporting them for forced labor in Germany or to the newly-established region of central Poland called the General Government (or Government General) where they experienced homelessness, hunger, unemployment, and a completely uncertain future.

In the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or additional living space, Zamość and the surrounding Lublin region in southeastern Poland became a nightmare of unprecedented proportions. Entire villages were emptied and sent to transit camps, where individuals were subjected to racial examination that determined their fates. Children and infants with Aryan features were considered racially valuable and were taken from their parents to be raised as Germans, losing their Polish identities forever. Children and infants who were determined not racially valuable were sent to specially designated barracks in the camp where they often perished due to lack of care, heat, and food or died when shipped in cattle cars in freezing temperatures to some unknown village in the General Government. The establishment of food production quotas for Polish farmers and the food rationing system instituted by the Nazis left the people starving. Villages suspected of harboring partisans were torched, the citizens slaughtered. Poles harboring Jews were automatically shot. No one, not a one, had recourse to the law, to a fair hearing in court. And amidst all the chaos, all the death, destruction, and inhuman acts, the Germans were carrying out a policy of economic exploitation, a policy to keep Hitler’s war effort going at top speed: everyone had to work for the interest of the Third Reich.

One of the first actions by the German Ministry of Labor for Poland was the decree that all individuals age sixteen and over must register for work. In some regions of the Incorporated Eastern Territories in the autumn of 1940, the sixteen-year-old age requirement was lowered to fourteen.⁵ Any young Pole who was not working or in technical school within two weeks of turning fourteen had to register at a local German labor office. Polish girls, previously required to work at age sixteen, were also affected by the new age limit. By June 1941, the age lowered again. Every individual age twelve or older had to be registered in the labor office.⁶ By 1943, each Polish child on reaching their twelfth birthday had to report to the local labor office and receive work papers, the same as an adult. Essentially, every member of a Polish family from twelve years on had to be registered and/or employed. The upper age limit was soon changed to sixty-five for men and fifty-five for women and towards the end of the war, changed to seventy for men and sixty for women.

Working for the Reich became compulsory. Industrial and agricultural workers were needed in Germany. The German army converted the status of Polish prisoners of war to civilian workers and sent them to work in agriculture and later in industry.⁷ Based on a previous history of Poles working as seasonal laborers in Germany, the Nazis began a recruitment campaign for volunteers to work in the Reich. Even with prevailing hunger to the point of starvation, lack of work, and a completely unknown future, there were not enough takers. Lists began to be made of specific individuals who were to report on a certain day for the purpose of being sent to work in Germany. Failure to appear brought fines and retaliation against their families, shootings, and threats of concentration camps. When this method failed to bring in the needed number of workers, the people of Poland were rounded up while sitting at the movies, coming out of church, or walking down the street. Entire city blocks and entire country villages were surrounded, the victims held in temporary arrest until everyone could be examined as a potential worker for Germany. Those who met the criteria were forcibly and promptly shipped to German territories against their will.

The German war economy was achieved by the impressment and deportation of millions of individuals against their will from their homelands into Germany, where they were forced to work for the benefit of the German Reich. Historians have struggled to differentiate the various degrees of forced labor that occurred during World War II. Recognized as less-than-slave laborers are Soviet and Polish Jewish prisoners of war who were forced to work in SS-run factories. Concentration camp prisoners and inmates are recognized as slave laborers. Then there are the millions of men and women who were involuntarily taken from their homes in cities, small towns, and farms and forced to fill in the gaps left by German men who were being drafted into the German army. These are known as civilian forced laborers. They worked in private homes, restaurants, small farms or large estates, and in agriculture-related fields. They worked in industry for small firms and large industrial complexes as well. Historians agree that these civilian forced laborers, especially those of Slavic origin, were also slave laborers as they had no say, no voice, and no civil rights.⁸

By August 1944 there were 1.7 million civilian Poles (excluding prisoners of war) registered as workers in the territory of the Greater German Reich.⁹ They would come to be known as zwangsarbeiter (forced laborer), zivilarbeiter (civilian workers), ausländische arbeitskräfte or fremdarbeiter (foreign worker) in German. In Polish, they were known as przymusowe robotniki.

The Poles were the first foreign workers required to wear an identifying mark in the Third Reich. It was a purple letter P sewn against a yellow background. Its purpose was to easily identify the worker as a Pole who, in the eyes of the German master race, was an inferior person.¹⁰ It was a mark of discrimination that subjected the wearer to countless rules and regulations that amounted to the complete loss of his or her civil rights and oftentimes to cruel and inhumane behaviors on the part of their employers.

Over half of the Polish civilian forced laborers in Germany were female, their average age around twenty.¹¹ As civilian forced laborers, Polish girls and women were torn from home, often at a very young age. They were isolated, insulted, neglected when sick, and suffered extreme hardships. From forced labor some were sent to concentration camps. Some were euthanized in German-run hospitals. They were physically abused and sexually exploited with no rights or recourse to the law. They were forced to have abortions so that they could keep working for the Reich. If they birthed a healthy child, they were forced to leave their newborn infants at one of the German-run children’s homes where the child quickly died from planned neglect and purposeful starvation. These crimes became a major point during the Nuremberg Trials. They were also dealt with in other subsequent war crimes trials held after Nuremberg by the British and American military occupation armies. Poland held its own trials against the Nazi perpetrators of crimes against the people of Poland beginning with the Supreme National Tribunal in 1946.

The subject of Polish forced labor during World War II was taken up by Polish historians such as Czesław Łuczak, Władysław Rusiński, and Czesław Madajczak shortly after the war. In the 1960s and 70s Polish historians began collecting and publishing memoirs of forced laborers, such as Ludzie z Znakiem P by Julian Bartosz, Z Litera P edited by Ryszard Dylinski, Marian Flejsierowicz, and Stanisław Kubiak, and Ze Zankiem P by Bohdan Koziełło-Poklewski and Bohdan Łukaszewicz, to name only a few. Roman Hrabar, Zofia Tokarz, and Wiktor Lemiesz have written extensively about the Germanization of Polish children and the special circumstances of the women in forced labor. The Polish periodicals Biuletyn Głownej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, and Przegąd Lekarski also documented the varied atrocities committed on Poland and its people.

The plight of millions of civilian forced laborers, not just from Poland but those throughout all of Europe, failed to receive much attention in postwar literature. Among early writings in English about Germany’s forced laborers were The Exploitation of Foreign Labor by Nazi Germany by John H. Fried, published in 1945, and Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany by Edward Homze published in 1967.

It took nearly four decades after the war ended for the subject of forced laborers to gain momentum in academia. Leading the way was the scholarship of German historian Ulrich Herbert. His groundbreaking book titled Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des Ausländer-Einsates’ in der Kreigwirtschaft des Dritten Reichs, written in 1985 and translated into English by William Templer in 1997 as Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich, stirred a real, concentrated interest in Germany and the United States in the stories of forced laborers. Herbert points out that in the early postwar years, the crimes against foreign workers and the entire foreign labor deployment in the Third Reich came to be overshadowed by the reports of mass murders in Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, and other concentration camps.¹² At the time, forced laborers were not even perceived as victims of Nazism, and in fact, did not exist as a separate group of war victims until the late 1980s.¹³

Since then there have been numerous books, monographs, and oral histories devoted to forced laborers. In his book’s introduction Herbert points out that there were still so many things that remain unexplained about the foreign workers who were forced to labor for the Third Reich during World War II. Among the numerous areas that still required research he listed the special situation of foreign women.¹⁴ In their anthology Experience and Expression: Women, Nazis, and the Holocaust, Elizabeth Baer and Myrna Goldenberg recognized the need to portray the experiences of women from various religious and ethnic backgrounds and also highlighted the importance of analyzing information about Jewish and non-Jewish women by nationality.¹⁵ That recognition, that the experiences of women of all nationalities and backgrounds at the hands of the Nazi’s was important and needed to be told, really encouraged and sustained me during all the years of my research.

Wearing the Letter P: Polish Women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany, 1939–1945 is based on my readings and translation of material written by leading Polish historians, as well as extensive use of postwar trial testimonies housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland; the holdings of Polish periodicals at the Library of Congress; the War Records at the National Library in London, England; the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej archive in Warsaw; and the oral histories of the online archive Forced Labor 1939-1945: Memory and History maintained by the Freie Universität, Berlin. After hearing so many of my own mother’s stories, it was natural for me to gravitate to other oral histories and memoirs. I tried to write a book that answered all of the questions that my own mother, Józefa Zalewska Hodorowicz, a Polish civilian forced laborer in Germany during World War II, couldn’t or wouldn’t address. I wanted to understand how it all happened right from the occupation of Poland to the time of liberation: the recruitment and roundups; the horrors of transit camps; the living and working conditions of Polish women in agriculture and industry; what it meant to wear the letter P that marked them as a Pole and all the discriminatory practices that it heaped upon them; the problems of sexual exploitation, pregnancy, forced abortions, and child care under the Nazis; the constant threat of being sent to concentration camps, as well as the things that sustained and saved these women—the letters and packages from home, the unexpected kindness of strangers, and the solidarity among their own kind. I tried to write the book I could never find. I did it not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout America, Canada, Australia, and England who had a family member who was a forced laborer in the German Reich and whose personal stories are tied to this period in history. I know I’m not alone in trying to understand. I’ve met other children of Polish forced laborers and survivors of World War II. We find each other and keep trying to put the pieces together.

Most importantly I tried to write a book that would give a voice to the hundreds and thousands of Polish women whose sufferings and deaths as civilian forced laborers during World War II had not been recognized during their lifetimes.

It was an unbelievably complicated period in history. Any mistakes or flaws here rest with me.

CHAPTER 1

Recruitment and Roundups

MELANIA ZALEWSKA:

I will always recall the words of my father when he was saying goodbye to me: Remember, always be brave and proud, remember that you are a Pole.¹

ALMOST FROM THE FIRST MOMENT Hitler came into power, the leaders of the Third Reich and the Nationalist Socialist Party began to prepare for the conquest of Europe and the creation of a Thousand Year Reich. In their plans, territories to the east of Germany were annexed for the purpose of increasing the living space or lebensraum of the German master race. Adhering to a policy that the German people were a race of super humans, they believed they had the right to displace, enslave, or eliminate inferior beings. Plans for the future of Europe were discussed by Hitler and his top officials even before the invasion of Poland in September 1939: Poland shall be treated as a colony; the Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German world Empire.² The racial hierarchy of the Nazis placed Poles near the bottom of the scale. Below them were Jews and Gypsies. The Poles were termed Untermensch or subhuman creatures, deemed racially worthless and in addition considered hostile to Germany. For Germans, the Poles were destined to become their slaves, their workers, and essentially, a people to be weakened and destroyed. The Nazis began implementing policies based on these racist views immediately after the military defeat of Poland.

On October 8, 1939, Germany annexed the western territories of Poland—territories that had been lost to them under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Western Poland had been a bone of contention with the Germans since the end of that war. It was a region where many ethnic Germans, called volksdeutche, still resided. Over the decades they had become integrated into the life and culture of Poland and often spoke both German and Polish. The new region was renamed the Incorporated Eastern Territories. These newly incorporated Polish territories were formed into new administrative units that included two provinces. The first administrative unit was comprised of northern Poland and the former Free City of Danzig which included the cities of Danzig, Sopot, Oliwa, Nowy Dwór Gdańsk, and Nowy Staw. This area was renamed Danzig-West Prussia (Gau Danzig-Westpruessen), and placed under the direction of a civil administrator named Albert Forester. The other administrative unit was comprised of Great Poland and its cities of Poznań and Łódź. It was renamed the Warta Region (Reichsgau Warteland or Warthegau; in Polish: Kraj Warta) and came under the direction of Arthur Greiser.

Also incorporated into the Third Reich was the district of Katowice (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz) with its wealth of mining and industrial centers in southwestern Poland. It was incorporated into the German province of Silesia under the leadership of Josef Wagner and then his successor Fritz Bracht. The other district consisted of Ciechanów (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau) and was incorporated into East Prussia (Ostpruessen), an existing exclave or province of Germany with its capital city of Königsberg. This region was separate from mainland Germany and located along the southeastern Baltic Coast. This new German district was sometimes called South East Prussia and was under the leadership of Erich Koch.

The population of these newly gained territories amounted to about 10 million people including 8.9 million Poles, 607,000 Germans, 600,000 Jews, 11,000 Ukrainians, and 21,000 citizens of other nationalities.³

Incorporated into Germany, this area was a key site for gaining lebensraum or living space for the German people. The area intended for the most intensive settlement and colonization by old and new German settlers was the Warthegau, also called the Warta Region, but was to include all parts of the newly gained territories of Poland. The Poles and Jews who resided there were considered a great inconvenience, an obstacle to the Germanization of the country and a political danger.⁴

The Germans began a ruthless campaign to make the region entirely German. The Polish nation with its history and culture would cease to exist. All the names of the cities and streets were Germanized. Nur für Deutsche (Only for Germans) and Zutritt nut für Deutsche (Access only for Germans) was written on signs leading to parks and on park benches as well as movie theaters, libraries, and museums. Für Polen und Hunde Eintritt verboten (Poles and dogs not allowed entry) was written on storefronts forbidden to Poles.

In all areas incorporated into the Reich, there were strict injunctions about Poles being served at particular times in grocery stores or pharmacies. Germans were to have first choice at all shops. Polish societies were dissolved and forbidden. Schools, colleges, museums, and libraries were closed. Polish newspapers and periodicals were forbidden, as was publishing Polish books. Religious services in Polish were forbidden, religious holidays abolished, and church associations or societies were banned. The Roman Catholic Church was suppressed throughout Poland because of its previous history in leading nationalist forces to fight for Poland’s independence. Catholic clergy were killed or imprisoned. Churches were closed and many of them were converted into warehouses. Seminaries and convents were closed. All traces of the Polish character of the country were removed. Loudspeakers mounted on street posts constantly glorified the Reich and its leader. Everywhere one looked on the streets were posters plastered with announcements (Bekanntachtung) of Poles being hunted by the German police.

No Entrance For Poles!

Photo credit: Poland in Photographs, 1939-1944. Poland, German occupation. Collections of the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Curfews, which limited the Poles’ ability to move around freely, were instituted. In the summer all Poles were required to be at home between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. In the winter the curfew hours were 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. People were beaten or fined if found on the streets during curfew time. Personal rights were curtailed. Marriages were not allowed for men until they reached twenty-five years of age; women had to be twenty-two. After 1943, the age was changed. Men had to be twenty-eight years old, women twenty-five. Poles were forbidden to own such items as radios, cameras, or skiing equipment. During inspections, other personal items were confiscated such as leather book bags, tall boots, and musical instruments. They also took fur coats, sweaters, and warm clothing. By 1943 people in the Warta Region were forbidden to send packages by mail or rail without police permission. Correspondence was controlled, especially if addressed to any Polish workers who had been sent to Germany to work. From 1941 into 1942, the use of a bus, train, or bicycle in the Warta Region required the Poles to have special permission from the police. Bicycles belonging to Poles were marked with a white strip on the back fender. In the trams, separate compartments were designated for Poles and during the busiest times of the day the Poles were forbidden the use of trams altogether.

Trolley designated for Poles with letter P in Warsaw near main thoroughfare of Nowy Świat, taken by an unknown German during the occupation.

Photo credit: Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie

A special set of penal laws and penal procedures made for Poles and Jews, in effect since the beginning of the occupation, was formalized in Poznań on December 4, 1941.⁵ It stated that "a Pole or Jew shall be sentenced to death, or in less serious cases to imprisonment, if he manifests anti-German sentiments … by making anti-German utterances, or by removing or defacing official notices of German authorities or offices … unlawful possession of firearms. Penalties provided for imprisonment, fine, or confiscation of property for not less than three months and not more than ten years in a penal camp … the death sentence may and shall be imposed if the offense points to particularly objectionable motives or is particularly grave for other reasons; the death sentence may be passed upon juvenile offenders."⁶ In essence, any Pole or Jew in the Eastern territories could be prosecuted and any kind of punishment inflicted for any attitude or action directed against Germans.⁷ It was no longer permissible for a Pole or Jew on whom sentence had been passed by a German court to lodge an appeal against the sentence. The Pole or Jew had no right to complain or to ask for retrial and all sentences could be executed immediately. All legal rights were closed. At every opportunity Poles and Jews were made to remember that they were ruled by Germans, that they were meant to serve, and that they were inferior.

The overall plan was to exterminate, enslave, and/or expel most non-Aryans living in the conquered territories, and resettle the evacuated empty areas with Germans and people of German origin. The Germans inaugurated a racial register—an elaborate classification of persons deemed to be of German blood that contained provisions for the rights, privileges, and duties of the persons in each classification. The racial classification system would also decide who would be enslaved, exterminated, expelled, or resettled.

The plans to displace inferior beings with those of German blood were developed by members of Hitler’s Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt / RSHA), an agency whose task was to combat all enemies of Nazi Germany. In a secret decree dated October 7, 1939, and signed by Hitler and his top officials, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler was entrusted with the task of executing the program. Named Reichskommissar für die Festgung Deutchen Volkstums (the Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood) he was given the following charge: The removal of foreign races from the Incorporated Eastern Territories is one of the most essential goals to be accomplished in the German East. This is the chief national political task, which has to be executed in the Incorporated Eastern Territories by the Reichsfuehrer SS, Reich Commissioner for the strengthening of the national character of the German people.⁸

Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler was also named head of the police system of the Third Reich, the leader of the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), and the leader of the Fifth Column (a network of Hitler’s secret sympathizers and supporters engaged in espionage, sabotage, and other subversive activities in foreign countries).⁹ Himmler’s job was to remove the harmful influences of foreign people—such racial undesirables as Jews and Poles or anyone who posed a danger to the Reich and its people. A central registration bureau was established and Poles who claimed German blood could sign on as volksdeutsche and become German folk.¹⁰ Anyone who signed up no longer belonged to the untermensch (the inferior Polish race), could avoid transport to Germany and receive better food and other privileges—but was also subject to conscription into the German army. The remaining Poles were seen as a great inconvenience, an obstacle to the Germanization of the country. Poles who refused to become Germanized were subject to eviction from their home, and confiscation of their lands and property. They were deported to the General Government, the newly-named region run by the Germans that consisted of what was left of Poland after the Germans took what they wanted from the west and the Soviets took what they wanted from the east. If the individuals were healthy and strong, they were sent to work in Germany as forced laborers.¹¹ The plan was to deport all able-bodied Polish workers to Germany to satisfy labor needs and prevent the propagation of a new generation of Poles.¹²

Poles in front of labor office in Łódź.

Photo credit: Wojskowo Biura Badań Historycznych Wojskowego Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej Warszawa

Labor offices

Historically, Poles worked in Germany as seasonal laborers, especially in agriculture, since the late 1870s. In 1913 in Lower Saxony around Braunschweig and Hildesheim, a region where sugar beets were a very big agricultural product, there were 14,979 Poles of Austrian and Russian citizenship (Poland was partitioned at the time by Russia, Prussia, and Austria) working in this area alone.¹³ Over the decades, German employers came to depend on the labor of Polish seasonal workers. There existed throughout partitioned Poland numerous labor employment offices and agents that recruited laborers for work in Germany. Typically at the end of harvest, the seasonal laborers went back to Poland and returned again the following season to accept work if they so desired. When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, there were approximately 300,000 Polish seasonal workers from Russian Poland working in agriculture. The German authorities refused to allow them to return home, making them stay at their place of employment. At the same time, the Kaiser also utilized millions of prisoners of war, including Poles, to meet German demand for workers.

After World War I, German authorities limited the recruitment of foreign labor due to the catastrophic unemployment rate that existed in Germany at the time. In 1932, Germany closed its borders to Polish migrant laborers.¹⁴ By 1936, however, the Germans were negotiating with the Polish government for seasonal workers, predominantly female, to be employed in agriculture. As Germany once again prepared for war by expanding industry and the promise of better wages, German agricultural laborers from rural areas fled into the cities for industrial jobs. Farms were left without laborers to bring in the harvests. Since Poland was suffering from extremely high unemployment itself, thousands of Poles poured into Germany seeking work. In 1937, a study by Polish sociologist Janusz Sobczak on the living and working conditions of Polish agricultural workers in Germany in 1937 indicated that two-thirds of the agricultural workers were female, that most were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, and were generally employed in Germany only for the duration of the harvest.¹⁵ In the spring of 1939, on account of increasingly strained political relations, the Polish government halted seasonal labor emigration to Germany.¹⁶

When German troops crossed the Polish–German border on September 1, 1939, and initiated hostilities, German labor offices were not far behind. Immediately after the Wehrmacht there followed an administrative system that insured that the people of Poland became servants of the Third Reich. Among the first offices to begin operations after the military occupation were the labor offices. Their structure and operation was based on the labor offices in Germany. The clerks for the labor offices were recruited from the offices in the Third Reich and were sent out in groups numbering from three to fourteen individuals per office. The labor offices were aided by the volksdeutche, local police, and were often supported by military detachments of the Wehrmacht, and by members of the Fifth Column.¹⁷ The German Labor Office department wielded such tremendous power that it became one of the most feared and most hated organizations in German-occupied Poland.

In the Polish territories that were incorporated into Germany on October 8, 1939, as the Incorporated Eastern Territories, labor offices began to operate almost immediately. The entire annexed territories as a whole were divided among four main labor offices in the major cities of Katowice, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Królewiec, and charged with the responsibility of obtaining laborers from specifically designated areas.¹⁸ Each main labor office had its affiliate offices in smaller cities and on down to smaller towns. In those cities, such as Poznań, where a labor employment agency had existed before the onset of hostilities, the Germans took the office over as their own and installed their own German staff. The Polish administrators and clerks were either let go or were reduced to lower functions such as janitors, wagon drivers, or messengers. New offices were established in existing public buildings throughout their districts as needed. The first German labor office opened in the Upper Silesian district town of Rybnik on September 3, 1939.¹⁹ By the middle of October, there were already 115 such labor offices operating throughout the territories.²⁰ All labor rules or regulations in Germany set by the Ministry of Labor became immediately effective on everyone in the annexed territories.²¹

Announcement from Hans Frank of General Government dated 6th of June 1941 requiring everyone who completed 15 years of age, regardless of gender, to be in possession of identity cards with a photograph.

Photo credit: Muzeum Zamojskie w Zamościu

One of the first actions decreed by the German Ministry of Labor was that all individuals aged sixteen and over must register for work at the local labor office. In some regions of the annexed territories in the autumn of 1940, the age requirement was lowered to fourteen.²² Any young Pole who was not working or in technical school within two weeks of turning fourteen had to register at the local labor office. Girls, previously required to work at age sixteen, were also affected by the new age limit. By June 1941, the age range was changed again. Every individual aged twelve or older had to be registered with the labor office. By 1943, each Polish child in Danzig-West Prussia on reaching their twelfth birthday had to report to the closest labor office and receive work papers, the same as an adult. Essentially, every member of a Polish family from twelve years on had to be registered and/or employed.²³ The upper age limit was soon changed to sixty-five for men and fifty-five for women and towards the end of the war it was changed to seventy for men and sixty for women. In reality, no one was safe from required labor if they were able to stand on their own two feet.

An arbeitsbuch.

Photo credit: Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection, Greenslade Special Collection and Archives, Kenyon College

The outbreak of the war had left many Poles without gainful employment. This was especially true for all the various offices and institutions, most schools, and for managers of both privately-owned and government factories which were closed. The Germans immediately replaced staff in all the higher-up positions—administrative, intellectual, and white collar jobs previously held by Poles—with Germans. Unemployment increased significantly among the middle class and lower middle class, and among owners of independent properties and shops that were now forbidden to operate. Those who had, for either shorter or longer periods of time, fled from the advancing German army and bombardment and now returned to their homes were also without work. Initially, many of these Poles refused to serve the Germans in any capacity and were counting on a quick end to the war. As it became clear that the war would not be over soon and as financial reserves dwindled, the Poles were forced to look for work, especially those with families to feed.

Everyone who met the mandatory age requirement had to possess an employment or work book, an arbeitsbuch, which was issued at the labor office. An arbeitsbuch served as an identification book as well as proof that the person was gainfully employed by the Third Reich. It was something in the size and shape of today’s passport. It served as a form of communication between a German employer and the labor office. All pertinent data about the individual such as age, place of residence, marital status, education, and work experience was gathered by the labor office. There were also special sections that had to be filled out by the employer such as the employer’s name, the type of work being done by the employee, the employment start date, and similar information. At the start of work, the employee (Pole) handed the arbeitsbuch to the employer who would fill out the required information about when the employee began work, the required tasks, any changes occurring during the work period, and if there was a termination in