Involuntary Abortions for Polish Forced Laborers

Over 12 million people were brought to Nazi Germany as forced laborers in the course of World War II. In the summer of 1944 alone, in addition to six million civilian laborers, two million prisoners of war and over half a million concentration camp prisoners were forced to work in the German Reich. Much has been published about them, but we still know relatively little about female forced laborers. The author conducted extensive research, involving sixty interviews with local farmers who employed and/or witnessed the treatment of slave laborers from Eastern European countries during World War II. Her article documents the poor treatment of these mostly young women of whom many died because of starvation and brutal treatment, were raped and forced to do abortions or the killing of their newborn babies.