Post-doc project: The Water Works' Camps in the Lublin District, 1940-1942. Hubs of the Persecution of Jews in the General Government?
Project duration
09.2019–12.2023
Project management
Description
While the National Socialist persecution of the Jews has repeatedly been described as a history of robbery, the concrete practices of an economy based on forced labour have only been researched to some extent. This study argues that the labour and financial policy of the government of the General Government did not follow an economic rationality, but rather that it formed the beginning of the Holocaust in Poland. This research project explores the non-industrial deployment policy of the General Government (GG) as a leitmotif of the persecution of the Jewish population in occupied Poland between 1940 and 1942. At the core of the investigation is an empirical study on publicly-funded construction projects which ex-ploited Jewish labor to drain farmland on behalf of the branch for water management (within the Department for Nutrition and Agriculture). Using previously undiscovered archival sources from about 60 camps across the Lublin district (with altogether ca. 170 camps across the entire GG), this project expands our knowledge of the use of forced labor through a comparison of the SS and the Wehrmacht. It details the lethal mistreatment of Jews at camps associated with Lublin’s water works, and also makes a critical causal link between these areas and the mass extermination camps at Sobibór and Bełżec.
Publications
- Wo Arbeit kein Weg war. Judenräte und Zwangsarbeit in den Städten des Generalgouvernements 1939 bis 1941, in: VfZ 71 (2023) H. 1, S. 1-35.
- Rural Hubs of Early Destruction: The Waterworks’ Camps in the Lublin District, 1940-1942, in: Yad Vashem Studies, 45 (2) 2017, S. 39-67.
- EHRI Document Blog (Oktober 2017): https://blog.ehri-project.eu/2017/10/23/water-works-camps/
Financing
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2019–2022)