Since the start of the war, people from the occupied countries were deported to the territory of the Reich. There, they were conscripted as cheap labour.

Foreign forced labourers

The German authorities classified the forced labourers according to their origin. The ranking ranged from “foreign workers of the Germanic race” to “foreign ethnic forced labourers”, which included Poles and Soviet citizens in particular. They were marked with the imprints “P” and “Ost” on their clothing and grouped together in special camps. In Berlin alone, there were 666 camps; quite a few of them were near the clinic.

 

At first, if two to three weeks of medical treatment did not restore their ability to work, sick forced labourers were sent back to their home country. Since these return transports had a demoralising effect, they were stopped from the middle of 1943 and collective camps were set up for the sick. The Landsberg an der Warthe asylum served as a collection centre for mentally ill “Eastern workers” as of mid-1944. From there, they were transferred to killing centres.

Since the start of the war, people from the occupied countries were deported to the territory of the Reich. There, they were conscripted as cheap labour.

Since the start of the war, people from the occupied countries were deported to the territory of the Reich. There, they were conscripted as cheap labour.

Since the start of the war, people from the occupied countries were deported to the territory of the Reich. There, they were conscripted as cheap labour.