SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 341
Institute of Jewish Affairs estimated the total number of Jews in
forced labour camps in Poland in the fall of 1941 at 100,000. During
1942, forced labour became the common fate of the Jewish in
Poland and in German-occupied territory. The period for which
Jews fit to work are liable for forced labour is no longer limited.
Their removal to east was largely motivated by the wish to make use
of them as forced labour, and as Germany’s need of manpower
grew, deportation for adults of working age was tantamount to assignment
to forced labour.
In contrast with the other inhabitants of German-occupied countries,
Jews are not sent to work in the Reich, because Jewish immigration
would run counter to the policy of making Germany ‘free of
Jews.’ The needs of the war economy compelled German authorities
to deviate from this rule to some extent, and indeed some exceptions
have been reported. But, generally speaking, deportation to the east
is for the Jews the equivalent of the recruitment for work in the
Reich to which the rest of the population of German-controlled Europe
is subject, and their removal further and further eastwards is
doubtless connected with the need for supplying the army’s requirements
near the front.
For the Polish ghettos are not the last stage in the forced eastward
migration of the Jewish people. On 20 November 1941, the
Governor General, Hans Frank, broadcast the information that the
Polish Jews would ultimately be transferred further east. Since the
summer of 1942 the ghettos and labour camps in the Germanoccupied
Eastern Territories have become the destination of deportees
both from Poland and from western and central Europe; in particular,
a new large-scale transfer from the Warsaw ghetto has been
reported. Many of the deportees have been sent to the labour camps
on the Russian front; others to work in the marshes of Pinsk, or to
the ghettos of the Baltic countries, Byelorussia and Ukraine. It is
hardly possible to distinguish how far the changes in the Jewish
population of the General Government are due to deportation and
how far they are attributable to ‘ordinary’ mortality and extermination.
Moreover, the number of Jews remaining in the General Government
is in any case uncertain.”