Place of Remembrance of Forced Labor in the Volkswagen Factory

Volkswagen History

Place of Remembrance of Forced Labor in the Volkswagen Factory

"The use of millions of foreign workers as forced laborers was a prominent feature of the National Socialist wartime economy. Far from being an exception in this regard, Volkswagenwerk GmbH in fact relied on involuntary labor to a disproportionate extent. This was primarily a consequence of the company’s inability to build up a regular workforce of its own prior to the beginning of the Second World War. Neither the recruitment of Dutch workers nor extensive advertising campaigns in the less developed peripheral regions of the Reich, such as on the Lower Rhine and in the Lausitz (the area around Cottbus and Görlitz), yielded more than limited success.

Forced laborers assembling engines

The construction of the factory and the town would thus not have been possible without the recruitment of Italian workers, who were initially hired under an agreement between the German Labor Front (DAF) and the Italian Dopo Lavoro and later worked pursuant to international treaties.

However, most of the Italians were withdrawn after Italy entered the Second World War in the early summer of 1940. From then on, the factory was subject to chronic labor shortages, which it tried to overcome by making use of foreign forced laborers."
(from the introduction by Hans Mommsen)