GERMANY'S FOREIGN WORKERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 300, 23 March 1945, Page 12

GERMANY'S FOREIGN

WORKERS

ITH the Allies thrusting into the Reich from two sides, thousands of foreign workers in Germany, as well as prisoners of war, have already been liberated and the number will be increasing daily. What is likely to be the attitude of these "labour slaves’ towards their former masters? One answer to that important question is suggested in the following article from a recent issue of "The New Statesman."

mE do hope that, at long last, you are growing out of that damned Marxist solidarity stuff, particularly so faras foreign workers are concerned, The line you ought to take with them is to stress your pride in béing Germans." HUS shouted Dr. Ley, chief of the Nazi "Labour Front," at a mass meeting of German workers commanded to listen. It was in 1942, well over two years before General Eisenhower's timely appeal to the Nazi regime’s foreign labour slaves; but it was neither the first.nor the last time that the regime proved to be painfully aware of the danger of fraternisation between German and foreign workers, while all the time the ever more desperate shortage of manpower would demand further increase of forcibly-imported labour. As early as November, 1940 (and not counting close on a million Polish and French war prisoners working either in factories or on the land), there were 1.2 million civilians, about half of them Poles; doing forced labour. In 1941 the figure rose only by a few hundred thousands, but in March, 1942, there were 2.2 million civilian foreign workers and 1.6. million p.o.w. workers and an additional 300,000 Russian war prisoners employed ‘on road work, etc., close behind the fighting zone. In the summer of 1942 the figure rose only slightly, but in September a new conscription drive was started, and ever since the figure _ risen steadily to well over five milions in 1943 and to somewhere between in and twelve millions to-day. Favours to the Danes Working conditions and wages have varied and fluctuated very considerably. The worst treatment, at all times, has been the lot of the Russians and Poles. Danes once were among the more favoured, as can be gathered from this report of a Dane employed by the Junkers Works in Halberstadt: We work from 7.20 a.m. to 6.20 p.m. Most of us live in private houses. with German. families, where we only have to pay R.M. 15 per week for lodging, supper, and laundry. A meal at the works canteen can be had for 25 Pf. Wages are from 68 to 78 Pf. an hour, which after deductions leaves R.M. 30 to 35 a week, with the possibili of making an extra 33 per cent by piece work. Most of us can afford to send home R.M. 60 a month. When we get leave we pay half the fare (R.M. 51), the Company paying the other half. This was in 1942, however, whereas in recent months (particularly since the various risings in Copenhagen) the treatment of Danish workers has deteriorated. In the case of other nationalities, however, there has been recent evidence of special inducements and privileges, such as facilities for marrige (even by proxy), permission for food parcels, better wag ' and housing conditions, etc., all of which,

of course, is due to the ever more crying need for not too unwilling manpower, Fraternisation Frowned On As to fraternisation with German workers, the Nazi rulers Have, at all times, done their damnedest to stop it, Ever since 1941 this set of official rules has been displayed in every factory: The German workman is our brother. The foreigner is the enemy of our nation, A foreigner must not-under any circums stances be entrusted with control of German labour. ¢ It is strictly forbidden to talk to foreign workers, except in connection with the work being carried on. No works owner or foreman may invite foreigners to his home or sit at the same table with them. This and a great many similar orders and appeals have been consistently dis obeyed. To quote only some non-German evidence (out of masses available), here is Jiri Hronek in an official Czech publication: They are making frantic appeals to the German workers’ racial pride, and, when thig fails, the Nazis resort to threats and severe punishment for making contact with foreiga workers, Or this Daily Telegraph interview (March 4, 1942) by Peter Matthews with a Polish officer-cadet who, after his escape from camp, was helped on his way to freedom by a good many Germans providing him with food and shelter: The Nazis are afraid of fraternisation with foreigners, and very heavy penalties are imposed upon Germans for acts of kindness . . « despite this official attitude, however, many Germans regard the’ foreigners more as fellow-sufferers than as enemies, and they are surprisingly frank in their conversation . . . Prisoners keep themselves informed of the true state of affairs by getting accounts of the BBC »broadcasts from the Germans working beside them in field and factory... Or this interview with a Czech escaped from slave labour in Germany (Daily Telegraph, August 8, 1941): . » The Gestapo and §.S. are not only watching foreigners on forced labour, they watch the German workers too. In their own factories, indeed, the Germans are under observation like convicts. Discipline is very strict and, besides the technical supere visor, a kind of disciplinary officer, who i armed, is posted in every workshop. I have deliberately picked some fairly old examples from a time when the regime’s war effort was still prospering; but there is also more recent evidence, such as various papers of July, 1944, describing how the Kattowitz Court sentenced two women to 15 months and two years’ hard labour respectively for showing sympathy to a foreigner, or the Munchener Neuesten N. ichten of June 20, 1944, reporting sentences of one and a-quarter and two and a-quarter years respectively for a similar "crime." "Crimes" of Kindness The Court columns of the German press are indeed a constant source of

such evidence, and I could quote hun-. dreds of senterices passed on Germans for such "crimes" as giving a foreigner a cigarette or a glass of water, forwarding his mail, or allowing him to sit at table, or to appear in a family snapshot. No less. significant is the fact that all these years the official Party organs had to keep lashing out against "uncalled-for friendliness and stupid sentimentality towards enemy aliens" (Volkischer Beobachter of March 12, 1944), or this warning in the same paper of December 29, 1943: There are many who are so obliging towards the foreigners that they simply will not keep the natural aloofness that ought to be kept. Significant too is the case where a Polish worker, whom his Nazi employer was cheating of a separation allowance due to him, had the courage to lodge a complaint with the proper ministerial department. The German official sent this note to the Nazi employer: The Pole is entitled to his separation allowance exactly like anyone else doing a job of work in Germany. You have no right to make your own tariff regulations. Next Friday I will check up to see whether you have properly met your obligations towards the Polish worker. The chances are that by that time both these brave men, the Polish worker as well as the German official, were on the way to a concentration camp, because the Nazi employer had simply passed the letter on to Himmler’s own Schwarze Korps, which published it with the vulgarly derisive comment to be expected from that paper. But the more significant point about this is that soon afterwards (a good many similar cases having happened) Hitler "purged" hundreds of "too soft" judges, appointed himself supreme Legislator, Judge, and Executioner, and let Himmler go a big step forward in consolidating the power of the SS. through occupying all key positions in the judiciary and the administration. Will Not Be Forgotten Nevertheless the resistance movement and active sabotage and ca’canny could never be entirely stopped, and here too there is considerable evidence as to collaboration between German and foreign | workers. I will only quote one Czech (Jiri Hronek) and one Belgian (Le Nouveau Journal) source: + . + The German shop steward warned the Czech workers n their arrival with the words: "Don’t be in a hurry! We decide the tempo of the work here." The result is that a job that used to take an hour now lasts half a day and -more in many German factories. And here the Belgian report: + . The work demanded from us did not come up to the normal speed we were used to. When we began at a good reasonable pace, ghe German colleagues immediately interfered: ‘Why the hurry? Take your time!" Whatever the amount of solidarity between German and foreign workers may have been, this much is certain: millions of persons living for years among a foreign nation, sharing their workaday lives, their homes, their troubles, dangers, anxieties, privations, cannot do this for such a long time without getting to know each other pretty well and without storing up a certain amount of friendship and goodwill for those who were kind to them, along with the bitter hatred for those who tormented them. The hatred will be quenched with the blood of the tormentors, But the goodwill and friendship will live on. :