Funding: Ökohaus Frankfurt Foundation Doctoral Scholarship
By the end of the Second World War, more than half a million people had been imprisoned in one of around 200 labor education camps (AEL) in the territory of the German Reich. The term »labor education camp« served as a euphemism to disguise the actual character of the places of forced labour and death. The history and aftermath of these »Gestapo concentration camps« (Gabriele Lotfi) is still little researched.
Using the Hessian labor education camps Heddernheim, Hirzenhain, Affoldern, Breitenau and others as examples, the doctoral project deals with the violence in the camps and the judicial confrontation with the crimes committed there after the end of the war. Both US and German investigations and criminal proceedings are analyzed and embedded in the context of the politics of the past. The role of the various arms factories and companies that profited from the labor of the AEL inmates and promoted the existence of the camps is central.
