Background to the Poster Image
The exhibition poster depicts a photograph of female forced laborers from the Soviet Union on their arrival at the Berlin-Wilhelmshagen Transit Camp in December 1942.
Every day from the spring of 1942 onward, thousands of deported men, women and children arrived on rail transports at the “Durchgangslager” (transit camps) which had been set up all over the German Reich as regional distribution centers.
In the transit camps, the deportees were first subjected to disinfection. Then they were registered by members of the employment office staff, and issued employment cards and “Arbeitsbücher” (labor books). Finally they were assigned to the companies which had applied for workers.
The employment offices frequently fixed a date on which farmersor company representatives could select workers for a fee. Former forced laborers described this situation in their memoirs as tantamount to a slave market.