EARLY INTRODUCTION OF FORCED LABOR UNDER SS CONTROL

During the campaign in September 1939, Wehrmacht units in occupied Polish territory obligated Jews to perform auxiliary tasks. In the period that followed, military and civilian offices forced men and women to clear away ruins, to fill in tank trenches, or to shovel snow. Under unsanctioned compulsory measures at Biala Polaska in October, 300 Jewish men and women had to perform cleaning tasks in public buildings and caserns for four weeks. In Zamość, between 500 and 600 people a day were recruited in raids. In Oświecim, Jews had to “report in columns to sweep the streets for purposes of education and punishment.” Abel Gimpel, at the time a young man barely twenty years old, describes how he was humiliated by a German soldier: “He said, ‘You have to wash the car….’ I said, ‘Give me a bucket and a cloth.’ He said, ‘No.’ I had on a coat that I had owned for less than two weeks. He said: ‘Take your coat and wash the car with it.’ When I was finished, he screamed: ‘Get lost.’ I wanted to take my coat with me. But he wouldn't let me have it. – I stood there in winter without a coat.” The brutal behavior of the occupiers – in occupied Poland the Einsatzgruppen began murdering at various places in the very first weeks – threw its dark shadow on future policies regarding Polish Jews.