Workers
Some ordinary people played a role in the Holocaust simply by doing their jobs. Bank employees, carpenters, railroad engineers, and other workers often took actions that had life-and-death consequences for others. While earning a paycheck, many of these workers made choices that aided the Nazi persecution and murder of European Jews. A rare few decided to risk their jobs—and their lives—to help the victims.
Background: Prisoners at a workshop in Bobrek, a subcamp of Auschwitz, assemble parts for warplanes, 1944. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leon Henry Schwarzbaum
1. Enforcing Laws to Seize Jewish People’s Property
A customs officer in Bielefeld, Germany, monitors as movers pack the belongings of emigrating German Jews, 1936. Stadtarchiv Bielefeld
Enforcing Laws to Seize Jewish People’s Property
An Ordinary Day at Work
As German Jews fled escalating persecution in Nazi Germany, the regime stripped them of their money and property. Government officials, bank employees, and customs service workers enforced laws targeting Jews, including heavy “flight taxes.” By 1939, Jews leaving Germany faced taxes equal to 96 percent of their assets, making it impossible for many to leave.
Personal and professional pressures may have weighed on this customs officer as he worked. Many officials worried that refusing to carry out anti-Jewish laws would prevent them from advancing in the workplace. For others, the need for a steady job to support a family could outweigh any reservations.
Location: Nazi Germany
Beginning in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis transformed the country into a dictatorship. New anti-Jewish policies met with support among some Germans. The regime’s economic and foreign policy successes helped many ordinary people accept attacks on Jews. By early 1939, Nazi Germany had annexed Austria and the Czech lands.
Enforcing Laws to Seize Jewish People’s Property
Robbing Jews to Enrich the “German Nation”
This 1943 chart explains how cash, businesses, and belongings seized from Jews throughout Europe became the property of the “German nation.” Many workers—bankers, real estate brokers, civil servants, and tax officials—helped carry out this effort to strip Jewish people of their property. They also helped to ensure that these assets were redistributed to “Aryan” Germans.
Original poster at left; translation appears on the right. Yad Vashem
Cup and saucer from the Linhards’ cafe, brought to the United States by the family in 1939. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Steven and Marion Linhard
Enforcing Laws to Seize Jewish People’s Property
Remnants of a Once-Thriving Business
Bernhard Linhard was a successful cafe owner in Vienna until March 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria. Authorities immediately implemented new anti-Jewish laws. One measure barred Jews from running businesses, forcing Bernhard to turn over his business to “Aryan” Germans.
With no income to support them, Bernhard and his family resorted to selling their belongings to survive. To further intimidate them into leaving Germany, Nazi paramilitaries raided the Linhards’ home and threatened the family.
Following Kristallnacht, the wave of violence targeting Germany’s Jews in November 1938, many of Bernhard’s family members managed to flee the country. His wife and children took this cup and saucer, once used in his cafe, as they immigrated to the United States in spring 1939.
Unable to organize an escape for himself, Bernhard took his own life in April 1939.
2. Creating Tools to Find and Target Victims
Creating Tools to Find and Target Victims
Counting, Mapping, and Registering
Nazi Germany controlled much of Europe during World War II. Many governments in occupied countries developed policies aiding the efforts of German authorities to isolate, deport, and murder Jews within their borders.
This map of Jewish homes in Amsterdam was created by employees in the city statistics office. In early 1941, at least 20 Dutch office workers went door-to-door counting Jews living on each city block. Each dot on the map represents ten Jewish residents. Maps like this allowed German officials to more easily arrest and deport Amsterdam’s Jews.
NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam
Jacobus Lentz at work during the war. NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam
Creating Tools to Find and Target Victims
Excelling in the Workplace
After German troops occupied the Netherlands in October 1940, each Jewish person was required to register with authorities and receive a new identity card. A Dutch official named Jacobus Lentz created the ID cards, which Jewish people were forced to carry with them at all times.
Whether motivated by a hatred of Jewish people, career opportunity, or simply a desire to succeed in his job, Lentz carefully crafted his design to be difficult to forge. His cards included the address, photograph, fingerprint, and signature of each Jewish person registered. The cards also featured a large black letter “J” for “Jew.”
Although Lentz was never personally involved in deportations, his cards aided German authorities in deporting and murdering about 75 percent of Dutch Jews—more than 100,000 people.
Location: Collaboration with Nazi Germany
Most of Europe was under Nazi Germany’s control by 1942. In their efforts to deport and murder Europe’s Jews, German authorities found willing helpers across the continent. Police, public officials, and workers played a critical role in the Holocaust. A rare few took risks to aid the victims.
Margaret Iglauer's identity card, stamped with a “J” in the upper right-hand corner. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Margaret Iglauer
Creating Tools to Find and Target Victims
Narrow Escape
For Jews living in the Netherlands and across Europe during the Holocaust, identity cards were a matter of life and death. These documents made it much more difficult to find safety from Nazi persecution.
German and Dutch authorities issued Margaret Iglauer and her husband, Ernest, identity cards stamped with a large “J” (for “Jew”) in 1940. The couple managed to avoid harassment by Dutch police and German occupation authorities for almost two years by living in hiding.
By 1942, the couple feared they would be discovered and deported to a camp. They attempted to flee to neutral Switzerland, but a guard on a train noticed the bold, black “J” on their ID cards and turned them back. Unable to find or forge documents to cross the border, they were nearly captured in a roundup. A fisherman rescued them, agreeing to secretly row the couple across a lake from France to safety in Switzerland.
Margaret and Ernest both survived the Holocaust; they moved to the United States in 1946.
3. Building and Operating Nazi Camps
Auschwitz, Poland, 1941–1942 Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem 157/52
Building and Operating Nazi Camps
Just Business
The Nazi regime established more than 40,000 camps across Europe. Some camps were designed to imprison and exploit Jews and other prisoners for labor. A few were built solely to murder them. German authorities relied on skilled civilians to build and maintain these camps. Some workers helped construct and service gas chambers and the equipment used to kill victims and burn their bodies.
These German workmen are pictured during the construction of the Auschwitz camp. Nazis used this camp for both forced labor and mass murder. More than a million people were murdered in the camp. Most of them were European Jews.
Location: Occupied Eastern Europe
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. German authorities introduced brutal occupation policies and began isolating, shooting, and deporting Jews. Nazi leaders relied on ordinary people to help carry out their plans to murder all European Jews.
An Auschwitz subcamp at Bobrek, Poland, 1944. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leon Henry Schwarzbaum
Building and Operating Nazi Camps
Exploiting Forced Labor
Nazi Germany relied on forced laborers to produce weapons and materials during World War II. Large German corporations established factories in concentration camps to exploit this labor.
In this photograph, prisoners at a workshop for the Siemens company at Auschwitz assemble parts used in German warplanes. Siemens exploited the work of 100,000 forced laborers during the war, and Siemens employees supervised the work. One forced laborer in a Siemens workshop described working 12 hours a day under the threat of being beaten, shot, or murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Several major German companies, including BMW, Volkswagen, and others, profited from the labor of millions of prisoners at Auschwitz.
Collections of the State Museum at Majdanek in Lublin, Poland
Building and Operating Nazi Camps
Manufacturing Death
German company Degesch specialized in pesticides. The company produced Zyklon B, a chemical commonly used to kill lice in Nazi camps.
In 1941, German officials began applying Zyklon B to a new purpose: gassing prisoners at Auschwitz. The Degesch company sold Nazi authorities increasing quantities of Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers at several locations in Nazi Germany and occupied Poland. Hundreds of thousands of victims were gassed using Zyklon B. Most were European Jews.
A label on this can of Degesch’s Zyklon B includes a warning of “poison gas!”
4. Transporting Victims to Killing Centers
Transporting Victims to Killing Centers
Oral History: Stefan Kucharek
Growing up in Poland, Stefan Kucharek attended school with Polish-Jewish neighbors and later worked various jobs in his small town of Małkinia.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Stefan began working for the local railroad doing track maintenance. He soon got a job driving trains full of Jewish victims into the trainyard of the Treblinka killing center, not far from his hometown.
By the time German authorities closed the facility in late 1943, camp personnel had murdered more than 900,000 Jewish people in Treblinka.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
Diary of Cypora Jabłoń-Zonszajn, written in Siedlce, Poland, in 1942. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of the Estate of Rachel Zonszajn Benshaul
Transporting Victims to Killing Centers
Choices Yield Deadly Consequences
The choices of those who, like Stefan Kucharek, drove transports to Nazi killing centers had a devastating impact on Jewish families.
By 1941, German authorities in Poland had already forced Cypora Zonszajn; her husband, Jakub; and their infant daughter, Rachel, into the ghetto of Siedlce. A few months later, Cypora learned that trains passing her town were transporting Jewish Poles to nearby Treblinka, where they were murdered. This entry from Cypora’s diary describes her despair just days before her parents were forced to board the transport:
Location: Occupied Eastern Europe
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. German authorities introduced brutal occupation policies and began isolating, shooting, and deporting Jews. Nazi leaders relied on ordinary people to help carry out their plans to murder all European Jews.
Cypora Zonszajn with her daughter, Rachel, in the Siedlce ghetto, Poland, 1941–1942. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of the Estate of Rachel Zonszajn Benshaul
Transporting Victims to Killing Centers
A Desperate Mother Hides Her Child
After her parents were deported to Treblinka, Cypora recognized that she and the rest of her family would soon be murdered. She managed to hide her daughter, Rachel, with a non-Jewish friend in late 1942.
Three months later, the remaining Jews of Siedlce were ordered to board trains to the killing center. Cypora swallowed poison, dying before being transported to Treblinka. Jakub was likely gassed on arrival. Rachel survived after her mother’s friend hid her in a Polish convent.
5. Defying a Mob, Preserving a Family’s Memory
Defying a Mob, Preserving a Family’s Memory
Oral History: Steven Fenves
In 1944, Hungarian officials ordered Jews in the town of Subotica deported. As Steven Fenves and his family were forced out of their apartment, local townspeople heckled and attacked them and looted their belongings. Despite the threat of violence from the mob, the family’s cook quickly gathered some of their treasured belongings. She returned them to family members after the war.
Along with his sister, mother, and grandmother, Steven was sent to the Auschwitz killing center. Only Steven and his sister, Estera, survived.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
The Fenves family cookbook. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Steven Joseph Fenves and the late Estera Fenjves Votaw
Defying a Mob, Preserving a Family’s Memory
Traces of a Mother’s Life
Among the items saved by the Fenves family’s cook was a cookbook with family recipes handwritten by Steven’s mother, Klara.
Steven and his sister discovered after the war that the cook had also stuffed a few other precious belongings into the pages of the cookbook. Drawings made by their mother, as well as her diary, remain among the family’s few tokens of Klara’s life.
Location: Collaboration with Nazi Germany
Most of Europe was under Nazi Germany’s control by 1942. In their efforts to deport and murder Europe’s Jews, German authorities found willing helpers across the continent. Police, public officials, and workers played a critical role in the Holocaust. A rare few took risks to aid the victims.
6. As Jews Are Targeted, Other Workers Advance
Diary of Maria Madi. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Stephen Walton
As Jews Are Targeted, Other Workers Advance
A Crime Of Opportunity?
“Race laws” created across Europe during the Holocaust limited the kinds of work that Jews could do. Jewish doctors were barred from treating non-Jewish patients. Jewish professors were banned from teaching. Non-Jewish workers often took over the positions of Jews who were expelled or deported.
A Hungarian doctor named Maria Madi describes in her diary taking a position opened after a Jewish colleague was “dismissed” sometime in 1944. Around the same time, Hungarian authorities had begun rounding up Hungarian Jewish people, deporting them to the Auschwitz killing center in occupied Poland. By July 1944, 425,000 of these deportees had been sent to Auschwitz.
Location: Collaboration with Nazi Germany
Most of Europe was under Nazi Germany’s control by 1942. In their efforts to deport and murder Europe’s Jews, German authorities found willing helpers across the continent. Police, public officials, and workers played a critical role in the Holocaust. A rare few took risks to aid the victims.
Passport of Maria Madi. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Blankinship and Walton families
As Jews Are Targeted, Other Workers Advance
Pangs of Conscience
Even as she took over her Jewish colleague’s job, Maria was apparently troubled by the plight of Hungarian Jews. In late 1944, she began to hide a Jewish friend, Irene Lakos, and Irene’s nephew, Alfred. Although her diary revealed her prejudice against Jews, Maria took risks to protect them. Her efforts saved the lives of Irene and Alfred.