Foreign Workers in Germany. A Report Based on Official German Sources [Cover title].

[London, England]: United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Administration European Regional Office, 1944. 6 3/8” x 4”. Stapled thin card wrappers. Pp. iv, 85. Very good plus: minimal wear, lightly toned, prior owner penciled name to front wrap.

This is a handbook created by the Displaced Persons Division No. 3 of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) for its staff who were assisting refugees residing and/or working in Germany during World War II. It lays out, with impeccable detail, the myriad challenges faced by foreign laborers at the time.

The UNRRA was established in November 1943 to aid victims of war. While the United States was the leading source of funding, support came from 44 nations in total. UNRRA is largely seen as a success, having distributed billions of dollars worth of necessities like food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Its founding agreement related that, “immediately upon the liberation of any area by the armed forces of the United Nations . . . preparation and arrangements shall be made for the return of prisoners and exiles to their homes.” UNRRA ran hundreds of resettlement camps, many in occupied Germany, housing over seven million people. It was dissolved in September 1948.

This handbook contains painstaking detail on what feels like every possible danger facing refugees working in Germany. It has 62 enumerated passages broken down into ten chapters: the legal status of foreign workers; how those workers were administered pre- and post-Hitler; their housing conditions; food rationing; clothes rationing; racial discrimination; wages and insurance; public assistance opportunities; healthcare; and, female and child workers. There is much detail on Nazi efforts that led to the current desperate conditions facing displaced workers as well as the dilapidated state of camp accommodations such as,

“housing, behind a facade of order and cleanliness, has always been a black spot in Germany. The German worker lived in flats which were too small judged by Anglo-American standards. When the Nazis came into power there was a shortage of at least one million houses. Instead of building homes, the Nazis built barracks and showy 'Olympic' stadia . . . in consequence from 1937 onwards the German masses lived in appalling housing conditions, as the Nazis admitted themselves . . . Millions of workers are now living in huts and allotment shacks, and accommodation is strictly rationed. Lodgers and billetees are crammed into every possible house, but the Party Bureaucracy and the rich evade the regulations by every trick. The foreign workers of course have the least chance of securing lodgings.”

The chapter on race discrimination shared that there were “at least 115 different racial groups distinguished in Nazi labour legislation,” all of them then further subdivided into categories: “Peoples are split, minority is set against minority, and the bait of reclassification is dangled before every foreign worker.” It was also noted that “the worst treatment is reserved for the Jews and Gypsies.”

The final 23 pages of the book lay out a list of alphabetized German terms with their English counterparts and where they are explained in the book. For example, the term “Rassensiedlungs-Hauptamt,” directed the UNRRA worker to “Central Office for Racial Settlement” in section 62 which further described the heartbreaking regulations related to children, including how to handle Polish children below employable age:

“deserted children, orphans, children of parents serving prison sentence of more than 2 and less than 6 months are not to be repatriated if they are considered suitable for 'Germanisation.' Their names are to be submitted to the S.S. Central Offices for Racial Settlement in Lodz, Bythom and Danzig. Children under 5 years of age are considered suitable for 'Germanisation' and sent to orphanages, etc. for German children. There the means of identifying them will disappear and it will be impossible for their parents ever to find them. Children between 5 and 8 years of age who are old enough to remember their Polish origin, but too young to work, are not to be 'Germanised': they will be sent to the collecting camp . . . Children whose parents are in concentration camps or serving prison sentences exceeding 6 months are to be handed over to the Security Police . . . the fate of these children may be imagined for since 1937 even the children of German prisoners in concentration camps have been defined as of 'anti-social heredity.'”

There has been a fair amount of recent scholarship and recognition of the Nazis kidnapping up to 200,000 “Aryan”-looking children from their families in Poland for the purpose of 'Germanisation,' including using the camp in Lodz even after the war ended. See, e.g., the 2020 book by Jolanta Sowi ska-Gogacz and B a ej Tora ski “Ma y O wi cim. Dzieci cy obóz w odzi” (Little O wi cim. The children’s camp in Lód ) [Prószy ski Media: 2020].

A rare handbook intended for UNRRA workers assisting refugees in Germany during World War II. OCLC shows three holdings over two entries, with only one in the United States. Very good +. Item #7434

Price: $1,500.00