Child Forced Labourers in National Socialist Germany and German Occupied Eastern Europe, 1939-1945

During the Second World War, a substantial number of children (up to the age of 18) became victims of the National Socialist forced labour system. In National Socialist Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe they worked in all branches of industry, in agriculture and as domestics in German households. The Wehrmacht and SS also deployed children in construction work on fortifications, bridges, roads and airfields.

While international research on the Holocaust and the National Socialist 'extermination through labour' programme started immediately after the war, only a small number of monographs on forced labour had been published by the middle of the 1990s. Since then, however, hundreds of research projects have been set up as a result of the public debate on German compensation payments. The majority of these projects have concentrated on forced labour in a particular town, region, firm or institution, but a study on child forced labourers has still not been undertaken.

This research project provides the first comprehensive study of young forced labourers in National Socialist Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe by drawing on a wide range of archival documents and former forced labourers' testimonies. It focuses on both the perpetrators, their ideology and policy, and on the young victims' experiences.

The research will identify the political, economic and ideological background which led to the deportation of children during the Second World War. It will examine the extent to which the forced labour of children was linked with National Socialist racist ideology, the Holocaust and the Germanization programme; and it will evaluate the participation of civil authorities, police and military units in the deportation process. Based on official documents, the project will assess the total number of young forced labourers, their age and sex, their social, ethnic, national and regional origins, and the professional areas of their employment.

Special consideration will be given to the working and living conditions of children forced to work in Germany and occupied Europe, their treatment by employers and colleagues, their social contacts with the civil population and other forced labourers. Child abuse, including heterosexual and homosexual raping will be investigated, forms of passive and active resistance explored. Finally, the project will discuss the experience of forced labour, liberation, repatriation and further migration as narrated in published and unpublished testimonies.

The results will enhance our knowledge of both Nazi Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe as well as on the situation of child forced labour during the Second World War. It will contribute to academic research on the various links between the forced labour system, the Holocaust and the Nazi racist ideology. It will also enhance our understanding of how the experiences of deportation and forced labour been narrated in testimonies. As such, the outcomes will be of interest to both academic and non-academic audiences, including the media.

The study will have impact on a variety of users and beneficiaries outside the academic research community, among them the third sector, international organisations, policy-makers, professional and practitioner groups, public sector agencies, and the media. Some of them are directly interested in my research topic, while others are engaged in the wider context of my research.

Three groups of users and beneficiaries can be identified:

Firstly, impact can already be seen in the work of international organizations engaged with current problems in the context of 'children, war and persecution'. In particular the UN 'Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict' has shown great interest in the study and in the applicant's research related activities (please see Pathways to Impact). These contacts will be strengthened and developed in future.

Secondly, pressure groups, public sector agencies, policy-makers and governments will benefit from the results of this research project. As described in the Pathways to Impact, the Polish "Association of Children of the War" has already taken up preliminary research results for their campaign for compensation and equal rights for all children forced to work, including those who had to work locally, and who have been so far ignored by both the German and the Polish government. Other groups in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other countries occupied by Germany during the Second World War will follow.

Thirdly, the third sector, in particular museums (like the Imperial War Museum in London, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem) and memorial sites (for example Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and Auschwitz) will be among the main users of the research project be it that the results will be used to amend existing exhibitions and information services, or that they will be considered when new exhibitions are being planned in the context of Holocaust and forced labour. The same applies to the media interested in producing documentaries and articles on these topics. The research project had already direct impact on an exhibition entitled "Zwangsarbeit. Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg" ("Forced labour. The Germans, the forced labourers and the war". http://www.stiftung-evz.de/eng/forced-labour/history_programmes/international-exhibition/), that derived from an international research scheme supported by the foundation "Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft", in which the applicant participated in a study on the resilience of Polish child forced labour.