4 April 2019

Join Prof. Dieter Steinert for a free history talk titled: Echoes from Auschwitz: Jewish child forced labourers and the Holocaust

During the Second World War, 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered in the Holocaust. Only a small minority survived as child forced labourers, in hiding or with partisan groups. Jewish children were forced to work in ghettoes, concentration and labour camps, in industry and agriculture; the Wehrmacht and SS deployed children in particular in construction work on fortifications, roads and airfields. The lecture will focus on a recently finished project in which hundreds of testimonies as well as contemporary and post-war documents have been researched. Some aspects of the children’s living and working experiences and their chances of survival will be analysed.