Magdalena's moving letters: forced labor uncovered at Bosch!

Magdalena's moving letters: forced labor uncovered at Bosch!

Magdalena was only 15 years old when she and her family were deported from their homeland to Stuttgart during the Second World War. As the Stuttgart News reports, she had to do forced labor under inhumane conditions at Bosch in Feuerbach. They recorded their experiences in a moving letter that provides insight into the terrible experiences that many women, men and children from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus had to endure during this time.

These fates are part of a much larger story. During World War II, more than 20 million people were forced into forced labor in Germany, a system closely linked to the arms industry and total war. According to that Weser courier An international traveling exhibition in Hamburg, entitled "Forced Labor. The Germans, the Forced Laborers and the War", addresses the entire history of forced labor and its consequences until after 1945.

The mechanisms of forced labor

From 1940 onwards, the German Reich was forced to conscript men and women from invaded countries to cover the labor shortage. Foreign workers became a central part of the German war economy. In August 1944 alone, six million civilian forced laborers were working in German industry Federal Agency for Civic Education reported. Over a third of these forced laborers were women, who often suffered from brutal conditions.

The living conditions that the forced laborers had to endure were extremely precarious. People from the Soviet Union and Poland, for example, were particularly discriminated against and often lived in overcrowded accommodation. Forced labor was a clear part of the racist social order of the Nazi state. In the caves of industrial exploitation, forced laborers often found little more than the opportunity to survive.

Long-term consequences and culture of remembrance

It was only decades after the end of the war that awareness and recognition of the injustice towards forced laborers began. Many of them are trying to bring the memories of their pain and suffering into the public eye. Magdalena and others like Kevin Schmidt, who has read Magdalena's letters and documented her personal perspectives, play an important role in preventing forgetting.

The Hamburg exhibition shows over 450 photographs and 500 documents, many of which are on public display for the first time. Remembering this dark time is important not only for the victims, but also for society as a whole. Because only by understanding the past can we ensure that such atrocities never happen again.

The fight for compensation and recognition for the forced laborers is still not over today. Over 4.7 billion euros have been paid out to 1.7 million survivors by the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” Foundation, but debates about the past continue.