Ostindustrie
GmbH ("East Industry", abbreviated as Osti) was one of many industrial projects set up by the
Nazi German
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
''
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...
'' (SS) using
Jewish and Polish forced labor during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Founded in March 1943 in
German-occupied Poland
German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration.
The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...
, Osti operated confiscated
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
prewar industrial enterprises, including foundries, textile plants, quarries and
glassworks
Glass production involves two main methods – the float glass process that produces sheet glass, and glassblowing that produces bottles and other containers. It has been done in a variety of ways during the history of glass.
Glass container ...
. Osti was headed by ''
SS-Obersturmführer'' Max Horn, who was subordinated directly to ''
Obergruppenführer
' (, "senior group leader") was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and adopted by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissio ...
''
Oswald Pohl
Oswald Ludwig Pohl (; 30 June 1892 – 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps, he was a key figure in ...
of the
SS Main Economic and Administrative Office
The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (german: SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt; SS-WVHA) was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the (a main branch of the ; SS). It ...
.
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
Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...
District of the semi-colonial
General Government
The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
territory.
''
SS-Gruppenführer''
Odilo Globocnik
Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was an Austrian Nazi and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the SS. Globocnik had a leading role in Operation Re ...
hoped to make ''Ostindustrie'' into an armaments company, but gave up the idea to pursue
Operation Reinhard
or ''Einsatz Reinhard''
, location = Occupied Poland
, date = October 1941 – November 1943
, incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps
, perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
instead.
The company was dissolved ahead of the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
counter-offensive
In the study of military tactics, a counter-offensive is a large-scale strategic offensive military operation, usually by forces that had successfully halted the enemy's offensive, while occupying defensive positions.
The counter-offensive is ...
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
The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
...
.
Operations
By 16 May 1943, the ''SS Ostindustrie GmbH'' controlled several factories and workshops across Poland, grouped into five active ''
Werke''. These included a glassworks in
Wołomin
Wołomin is the main town of Wołomin County situated in the Masovian Voivodship. Wołomin is situated approximately east of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, near the railway to Białystok. It has approximately 36,000 inhabitants and covers an ar ...
(''Werk'' I), a turf factory in Dorohucza (''Werk'' II), a broom and brush factory in Lublin (''Werk'' III), workshops in
Bliżyn
Bliżyn is a village in Skarżysko County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Bliżyn. It lies on the Kamienna river and Bliżyn Reservoir, approximately west ...
,
Radom
Radom is a city in east-central Poland, located approximately south of the capital, Warsaw. It is situated on the Mleczna River in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999), having previously been the seat of a separate Radom Voivodeship (1975–1 ...
, and
Tomaszów (''Werk'' IV), and ''Splitwerk'' – a grouping which comprised a shoe factory, tailoring factory, carpentry and joinery at the
Budzyn ''Arbeitslager'', a turf factory in Radom and an iron foundry in Lublin (''Werk'' V). Several additional ''Werke'' were under construction at that time, including vehicle spare parts factories, the
Trawniki ''Arbeitslager'' (''Werk'' VI), earth and stone works in Lublin (''Werk'' VII), a medical sanitary ware factory (''Werk'' VIII), various slave-labor workshops in
Lemberg
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
, and the
Poniatowa ''Arbeitslager'' (later transferred to
Többens). By mid-1943, Globocnik projected the labor force of Osti to include some 45,000 Jews from a network of parallel camps with the main branch at
Majdanek
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...
; however, the physical infrastructure in the region was insufficient for such numbers.
Dissolution
Max Horn believed that Jewish forced labor was the way of the future, but his plans were halted by the
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
and
Białystok ghetto uprisings, the latter of which occurred where the ''Ostindustrie'' textile and armament factories were scheduled for relocation.
In the wake of the uprisings, and with the war on the Eastern Front increasingly turning against Germany, the SS decided to eliminate Poland's remaining Jewish forced laborers to prevent further unrest. On 3 November 1943, Osti's workforce was liquidated in its entirety in the course of ''
Aktion Erntefest
Operation Harvest Festival (german: Aktion Erntefest) was the murder of up to 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, the Order Police battalions, and the Ukrainian ''Sonderdienst'' on 3–4 Novembe ...
'', the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war, with approximately 43,000 victims across
District Lublin being shot in fake anti-tank trenches.
Subsequently, Horn complained in a report to Globocnik about the outcome of ''Aktion Erntefest''; he stated that it had made Osti "completely valueless through the withdrawal
'sic''">sic.html" ;"title="'sic">'sic''of Jewish labor".
The company became officially defunct in March 1944.
See also
* ''Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke'', the predecessor of Ostie owned and operated by the Schutzstaffel, SS
* ''Baudienst'', a conscript labour service run by German authorities in Occupied Poland
References
Bibliography
*
*
Further reading
*
{{Authority control
SS Main Economic and Administrative Office
German words and phrases
The Holocaust in Poland
Economy of Nazi Germany
Manufacturing companies established in 1943
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1944
1943 establishments in Poland
1944 disestablishments in Poland