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To: Slagle who wrote (63041)	4/30/2005 1:15:32 AM
From: 8bits	Respond to of 74559

"KyrosL Re: "Are you aware", ect. I am well aware that the Nazis had a vast slave labor system in operation, well organized and producing a large part of Germanys war material. Most of these "slaves" were captured soldiers and other persons arrested in the occupied nations and packed off to the forced labor camps. There were also large numbers of Germans sent to the camps, including the Jews whose mistreatment is legand. Well here's a quote from someone who worked in a camp (non Jewish): "Then if the bag of cement break, then you get beaten, so...it is not your fault but you have to be careful, so they was very strictly about, uh, sabotage. We couldn't do sabotage in, in Germany, because, uh, even if you try, it cost your life." Doesn't sound too pleasant. ushmm.org "A great many of these forced workers were highly skilled and valued by their Nazi masters for their contribution to the war effort and they were not uniformly mistreated. The Germans were nothing if not efficent and as the Nazis faced no wartime food shortage as happened in WWI with starvation being one of the factors that forced Germany out of the war, there was simply no reason to starve the workers in the camps. And many were treated well." The Nazi's certainly overworked and badly abused what they considered the Untermensch: Jews, Slavs, Gypsies etc. They didn't necessarily starve them but they overworked and underfed people to a point that they were susceptible to disease. The former head of work while interviewed after he was captured made a strong point that a large number of people died of Typhus. (due to cramped conditions, inadequate heating, and not enough food..) If you want to not include the rather large number of people in forced labor (or death camps when they were not able to work....) and focus on the "Free Germans" I suppose they may have been somewhat better off than their Soviet counterparts but after war started they were not nearly as free as Americans to pick and choose employment. (A large percentage of the able bodied males went into the military..) and their ability to move from one position to another was relatively subservient to the state (According to someone I know who lived in Germany during the war)