Ostindustrie
Female forced laborer wearing an Ost-Arbeiter badge at the former SS Osti Arbeitslager near Łódź, Poland, January 1945
|
|
| Corporation | |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Founded | General Government, Poland (March 1943) |
| Defunct | March 1944 |
| Headquarters | Occupied Poland |
|
Key people
|
SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik |
| Owner | SS |
|
Number of employees
|
17,000 forced laborers (peak) |
The SS Ostindustrie GmbH ("East Industry", abbreviated as Osti) was one of many industrial projects set up by the Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) using Jewish and Polish forced labor during World War II. Founded in March 1943 in German-occupied Poland, Osti operated confiscated Jewish and Polish prewar industrial enterprises, including foundries, textile plants, quarries and glassworks. Osti was headed by SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn, who was subordinated directly to Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS-WVHA), the SS economic administration department. At its height, some 16,000 Jews and 1,000 Poles worked for the company, interned in a network of labor and concentration camps in the Lublin District of the semi-colonial General Government territory.
SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik hoped to make Ostindustrie into an armaments company, but gave up the idea to pursue Operation Reinhard instead. The company was dissolved ahead of the Soviet counter-offensive of 1944. The entire slave-labor workforce of Osti was exterminated in the process of the company's dissolution, during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in Poland.
...
Wikipedia