‘Annihilation through work’: London exhibit highlights overlooked story of slave labor in WWII

A new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, 'Nazi Slave Labor: Perpetrators and Victims', reveals the overlooked story of millions of forced laborers in WWII. Featuring testimonies of six survivors, including Agnes Kaposi, who worked as a child in an armaments plant, it documents the evolution of the slave labor system, from Jewish exploitation in ghettos to Soviet workers, and highlights the greed of civilian industries. An estimated 20 million people were exploited, and 2.5 million died.

A new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, titled 'Nazi Slave Labor: Perpetrators and Victims', sheds light on the often-overlooked history of forced and slave labor during World War II. The exhibit, running through the end of October, features the stories of six survivors, including Agnes Kaposi, who was forced to work as a child on a state farm in Austria and later in an armaments plant. The exhibition highlights the vast scale of the Nazi labor system, which exploited an estimated 20 million people, and the complicity of civilian industries that profited from cheap labor. It documents the evolution of the system from the early concentration camps to the mass exploitation of Soviet POWs and civilians, and the particularly brutal treatment of Jewish prisoners, who were subjected to 'annihilation through work.' The exhibit includes photographs, documents, and testimonies, such as that of Elsa Kafka, who described the harsh conditions in the Lodz ghetto. Curator Clara Dijkstra notes that while the topic is well-covered by academics, it has been less prominent in popular retellings of the Holocaust.