Forced Labour
Work shoes of a forced labourer in Weitramsdorf
© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Inv. No.: KT 2004/236.1–2
In the early 2000s, heavily worn work shoes were found in the basement of the bankrupt Albrecht furniture company in Weitramsdorf, Bavaria. They had been made by forced labourers who had been deported to the German Reich during the war. The furniture company produced for the German air Luftwaffe during the Second World War.
Forced labour was a central experience of violence throughout Europe. More than 36 million people, well over ten per cent of the population in the occupied territories, were directly affected by forced labour, but it indirectly affected far larger parts of the occupied societies, for example through the destruction of families. Those affected were either forced to work in their places of origin or deported to other occupied territories or the German Reich. The ubiquity of forced labourers in Germany made the violent nature of the occupation unmistakable to German society – a society that, in large part, benefited from forced labour.