Why go
This chapter helps visitors understand why work permits and trades appear so often in survivor accounts. It also makes clear that persecution extended beyond labor and confinement to bodily autonomy, family life and the possibility of having children. It shows why a sought-after trade still offered no safety.
The full story
Early work details sent German Jews to shovel snow, unload cargo and clear apartments left by Latvian Jews who had been murdered. Later, German and Latvian prisoners were assigned to combined details. Skilled craftspeople were wanted for the German war effort and had better chances of surviving than many people without a trade. Yet a work assignment never protected someone reliably: guards could kill workers, and Nazi authorities seized Jewish homes and belongings. By late 1942, thousands of ghetto prisoners worked in workshops, at workplaces outside the ghetto or in columns marched out each day. The same authorities also sought to prevent Jewish births. In the German section, women faced coerced abortions and threats of sterilization. Jewish doctors worked under these conditions, at times trying to conceal later pregnancies to protect patients. Children born alive could be killed. This history should be read as part of the Nazis’ broader persecution, not as a separate medical policy. It shows how coercion reached into the most private decisions while prisoners were also being exploited for labor.