American Jewish Committee does not claim any legal connection between the historical and actual list of companies. According to our research, all of these companies have a high probability of historical and/or financial links. Therefore, the AJC wants to stress at least a moral responsibility, as well as a legal responsibility in some cases, to pay compensation to former slave laborers and forced laborers. 

These moral and ethical responsibilities are not altered through mergers, takeovers, changes in management or a change in legal structure. Given the advanced age of the survivors, there is agreement on the part of all parties involved in establishing a compensation fund that the issue can no longer be solved on legal grounds alone.

This list is meant as a public service. The intention is neither to stigmatize nor to judge companies or individuals but to demonstrate the wide scope of the usage of forced laborers and slave laborers by all branches of German industry during the Nazi era. We reiterate that the purpose of the list is not to judge guilt or to single out guilty parties but to call the attention of current companies to their moral responsibility for settling the accounts of the past and compensate workers who suffered under their company's current or previous name or at their site of production. 

The reaction the list (the FIRST PORTION was made public on Dec. 7, 1999) has shown that it is broadening discussion about a highly profitable but inhuman system of labor that resulted in untold suffering for the estimated twelve million people forced to work for German companies and for the Nazi government.

The list has also started to prompt new historical research into an era that has as yet received relatively little scholarly attention. There are currently large gaps in available information regarding the forced labor and slave labor system. It will only be possible to establish a more comprehensive historical record when companies open their archives on this subject and cooperate with historians. 

Due to the incomplete records and the lack of existing research on this subject, it is not possible to exclude all mistakes on a project of the dimension of this list. Possible errors called to our attention will be researched and corrected immediately when warranted. 

Those companies that join the compensation fund will be taken off the list and put in the column of member companies of the fund. So far, we have been able to remove 47 companies on our list that have voluntarily joined the compensation fund. 

How the List was Compiled:

Parts I and II - A National List of Companies

Part I was first made available on Dec. 7, 1999 and PART II was made available on Jan. 27, 2000. The source for the historical data for both of these lists is the book Catalogue of Camps and Prisons in Germany and the German-Occupied Territories, published in July 1949 by the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen, Germany. The book was reissued in 1990 by Martin Weinmann under the title Das nationalsozialistische Lagersystem, Verlag Zweitausendeins: Frankfurt, 3 Ed., 1999. The sources for companies currently in operation are two major registers of German companies, Mittestaendische Unternehmen 1999, Vol. 1 - 3, Darmstadt, Hoppenstedt: 1999 and Handbuch der Grossunternehmen 1999, Vol. 1-2, Darmstadt, Hoppenstedt: 1999. 

The research of the ITS in Arolsen was for the purposes of locating missing persons. The intention was not to provide a complete historical document of all work sites where forced labor was employed but to help families reunite as quickly as possible. For this reason, there are gaps and slight errors in the information regarding companies that used forced labor and slave labor. The book remains, however, the primary source material for information on the forced labor system and is considered a highly valuable source by historians.

The figures used in the next to last column are a sampling, based on information available to the ITS, of the average number of slave or forced laborers in specific camps at any given time. Due to poor treatment, the fluctuation levels of the workers was extremely high. Many of the firms on the list also had more than one camp. Therefore, the number of laborers listed is often only a fraction of the total number used by a company during the course of the Nazi regime. 

For example, Blohm & Voss used 60,000 forced and slave laborers, according to Professor Ulrich Herbert, University of Freiburg, Germany’s preeminent expert on slave and forced labor during the Nazi era, although only an average of 700 are mentioned in the Catalogue of Camps.

Slave laborers were concentration camp prisoners requisitioned by German companies from the SS. A high percentage of them died as a result of inhuman working conditions that were intended to result in death. Forced laborers were individuals brought from Nazi-occupied territories to work in German industry under harsh conditions.

Professor Herbert points out that the AJC list accounts for only a portion of those firms that could be listed, given that virtually every industrial company of any size in Germany during the Nazi regime used slave or forced labor. 

Part III - List of Companies in Berlin

The third portion of the list regards companies in Berlin that used forced labor or slave labor. This list was compiled for the AJC by the Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt e.v., a non-profit organization in Berlin founded in 1981 dedicated to researching local history.
The historical research for the Berlin companies is based on two primary sources: 

Rainer Kubatzki, Standorte und Topographie der Kriegsgefangenen- und Zwangsarbeiterlager in Berlin und Umland. 1939 bis 1945, Eine Dokumentation (Sites and Locations of Camps for Prisoners of War and for Forced Laborers in Berlin and Surrounding Areas, 1939 to 1945, A Documentation). Berlin: Selbstverlag, 1999.

Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt e.V./Projekt (Hrg.) ZwangsarbeiterInnen - vergessene Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Forced Laborers: The Forgotten Victims of National Socialism), Berlin: Selbstverlag, 1999. 

The American Jewish Committee urges all companies on this list to join the central compensation fund for forced and slave laborers. In addition, we call on all companies, regardless of their founding date or their activities during the Third Reich, to join the fund, which the German government has called an historical, moral and political responsibility for itself and for all of German industry.

For information on filing a claim, please visit Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Click here for a list of Companies Participating in the Compensation Fund.