Ostindustrie

SS Ostindustrie GmbH
Company typeCorporation
IndustryManufacturing
FoundedGeneral Government, Poland (March 1943 (1943-03))
DefunctMarch 1944 (1944-03)
Headquarters
Occupied Poland
Key people
SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn
SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik
OwnerSS
Number of employees
17,000 forced laborers (peak)[1]

Ostindustrie GmbH ("East Industry", abbreviated as Osti) was one of many industrial projects set up by the Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) using Jewish and Polish forced labor during World War II. Founded in March 1943 in German-occupied Poland, Osti operated confiscated Jewish and Polish prewar industrial enterprises, including foundries, textile plants, quarries and glassworks. Osti was headed by SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn, who was subordinated directly to Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office.[2] At its height, some 16,000 Jews and 1,000 Poles worked for the company, interned in a network of labor and concentration camps in the Lublin District of the semi-colonial General Government territory.[1][2]

SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik hoped to make Ostindustrie into an armaments company, but gave up the idea to pursue Operation Reinhard instead.[3] The company was dissolved ahead of the Soviet counter-offensive of 1944.[1][2][3] The entire slave-labor workforce of Osti was exterminated in the process of the company's dissolution, during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in Poland.[4]

  1. ^ a b c Yad Vashem (2013). "Ostindustrie GMBH" (PDF file, direct download 19.6 KB). Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  2. ^ a b c Dobroszycki, Lucjan (1984). "Introduction (Ostindustrie)". The chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto: 1941-1944. Yale University Press. p. lxi. ISBN 0300039247. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  3. ^ a b Longerich, Peter (15 April 2010). "Murders and Deportations 1942–3". Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford University Press. p. 377. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  4. ^ Stone, Dan (1 September 2010). Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0191614200. Retrieved 11 July 2013.