FORCED LABOUR HOLOCAUST BMW airplane aircraft motor engine fabrik employee round pin
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FORCED LABOUR HOLOCAUST BMW airplane aircraft motor engine fabrik employee round pin
From 1941 BMW recruited prisoners of the SS, as well as concentration camp prisoners from 1942. Allach and Dürrerhof erected their own satellite camps specially for the purpose, and by the end of 1944, some 29,000 forced labourers were working for BMW. They accounted for more than half of its workforce. Without such extensive use of forced labour, mass production would not have been possible: the labourers would be forced to toil for up to 12 hours a day. For ‘eastern workers’ and concentration camp prisoners especially, even the slightest incident could lead to harassment, violence or even death. Mortality rates among these two groups were particularly high.
At the end of the Second World War, most of the surviving forced labourers left Germany, which had been destroyed by the conflict. With their departure, memories of the horrors and crimes committed against them largely began to fade. Like most German companies, BMW was long in denial about its responsibility in this chapter of its history.
