1938-1945: Forced Labourers in Industry
Over seven million people were coerced into forced labour by the Nazi regime, about one million in Austria alone. They were used in agriculture and industry, compensating for the war-related labour shortage. At the beginning it was mostly enlisted civilian “foreign workers”, but then more and more people were violently deported to perform forced labour in the German Reich. Concentration camp prisoners and POWs also performed forced labour in the steel and armaments industries under inhumane conditions. It took decades both in Germany and in Ausria until the state and private industry decided on compensation payments. In Austria, the so-called Versöhnungsfonds (Reconciliation Fund) was created in 2000, from which former forced labourers received compensation payments.
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