For millions of people in German-occupied countries in World War II, forced labor was the order of the day. As one of the first persecutory measures after occupation, the National Socialists regularly imposed forced labor on the local Jewish population, whether in Poland, the Soviet Union, Norway, Serbia, the Netherlands, France, or even Tunisia. Utilization of forced labor began in Germany itself after Kristallnacht at the end of 1938, with obligatory assignment of German Jews to manual labor in municipalities and private enterprises. Forced labor ended where it began, in Germany, with the exploitation of Hungarian Jews and concentration camp prisoners in underground construction and factories for war production. At the zenith of Jewish forced labor, more than one million Jewish men and women, many of them elderly or young people, toiled for the German economy in occupied Europe.

After the war, Hugo Schriesheimer wrote about his experiences as a forced laborer in the Nazi state: “It was heavy physical labor to which we were not accustomed…. I thought of the process in biblical times, when the Jews in Egypt had to perform compulsory labor for the pharaoh and to haul bricks for his temple…. Except that our tormentor was not the pharaoh but Hitler.” As for Hugo Schriesheimer, forced labor thus shaped the daily lives of countless Jews under Nazi rule. Almost every Jewish family was affected directly or indirectly.