Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

358
the physical destruction of the Jews and the disappearance of not only their
community but the Jews themselves from the landscape of the city they had so
patriotically called home.
With the outbreak of war and a severe labour shortage, a demand for Jewish
labour became apparent. 187 It is not known exactly when the labour deployment of
Jews occurred, however, it is most likely that it had commenced by the winter of
1939–1940. Prior to Otto Herrmann relocating to Potsdam from Magdeburg at the
end of August 1940, 188 he had been forced to work as a labourer on a bridge being
constructed on the River Elbe. A non-Jewish girlhood friend of Herrmann’s
daughter, who visited the Herrmanns with food parcels from her mother, recalled
seeing Herrmann working in the middle of winter in freezing conditions. Without
protective clothing Herrmann laboured in the River Elbe, with water right up to
his waist. 189 The Klemm brothers also recalled a bridge under construction, which
was never completed. Located in the suburb of Werder, they knew of its existence
because they used its thick pylons as a shelter during air raids in 1945. 190
In May 1940 in Berlin, all Jewish men aged between eighteen and fifty-five
and all Jewish women aged between eighteen and fifty had to register with the
Jewish community for forced labour. Forced labour, itself, commenced in
Magdeburg either after its introduction in Berlin or shortly thereafter.
Furthermore, in March 1941, all Jews in the Reich between the ages of fifteen and
sixty-five were formally drafted into forced labour. In the initial years of forced
187
Konrad Kwiet, “Forced Labour of German Jews in Nazi Germany,” Leo Baeck
Institute Year Book, vol. XXXVI, 1991, pp. 389–410 and Wolf Gruner, “Poverty and
Persecution: The Reichsvereinigung, the Jewish Population and Anti-Jewish Policy in
the Nazi State, 1939–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XXVII, 1999, pp. 23–60.
188
Private correspondence from Otto Herrmann, 25 November 1940, Private Archive
of I. Poppert, op. cit.
189
Austinat, op. cit., 29 January 2001.
190
Name withheld, op. cit., 13 July 2004.