How were the resettled Jews treated?

[bombsaway]

As preparation for my 'Best case for the Holocaust' essay, which I'm finally ready to put some time into, I want to ask revisionists here a few things

First up is this.

During the interwar period and the rise of Nazi Germany, die Juden faced escalating restrictions, surveillance, and violence. Internment and labor camps in Germany, Latvia, and elsewhere reflected wartime policies and perceived threats, but the severity, intent, and human cost in each case varied dramatically.

At places like Kaiserwald, the reality was horrific. Forced labor often involved extracting shale oil in freezing temperatures — conditions that would exhaust even the strongest adults. Most of us become frustrated when the power goes out for an hour; imagine enduring such brutal work, day after day, with inadequate food, clothing, and shelter. The cold, hunger, and constant fear were unrelenting.

This is where my concern truly lies. While population anomalies and statistical trends can be interesting to study, my focus is always on the lived experience: the suffering, endurance, and resilience of die Juden in places like Kaiserwald.

Here we have Nazgul apparently showing a lot of empathy for the humans involved.

We have some idea about how Jews in the labor system were treated. If we don't want to say they were treated unfairly, at the very least we can assess super high death rates. That's objective, though some would say totally the fault of the allies. When it comes to Jews in the ghettos, large swathes of the population were dying every month due to famine and disease.

Decisions were made to restrict or completely cut off food for non-working Jews. This is detailed on page 200 of the HC Blog white paper. Hans Frank said:

The feeding of a Jewish population component, estimated heretofore at 1.6 million, drops off to an estimated total of 300,000 Jews, who still work for German interests as craftsmen or otherwise. For these the Jewish rations, including certain special allotments which have proved necessary for the maintenance of working capacity, will be retained. The other Jews, a total of 1.2 million, will no longer be provided with foodstuffs.

Confirmation of this decision can be found in the revealing reports of a representative of the Party Chancellery attached to a manpower comb-out commission that was touring the Generalgouvernement at this time. “It is planned from 1 January to give the Jews no more food at all and to reduce the rations for Poles considerably, and no longer to allot any
increases for armaments workers.”

There's obviously no documents or witness testimony giving us any idea about how the resettled Jews fared in Occupied USSR, but is it fair to presume that the revisionist position is that conditions were brutal, and in terms of percentage many or more died in Nazi internment than of civilians in the surrounding areas? these civilians would have had access to food from many sources, whereas the interned Jews could only have received it from government channels.

We also have the case of Soviet POWs in Nazi custody. It is estimated that half died in German custody. Were the non-working Jews treated better than this?

From here https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... uated.html (see 'The "evacuated" Jewish People' section) it's clear that the majority of Jews in German control and even greater percentage of those "resettled" were non-working. Jews incapable of work were especially filtered out before going to the Reinhardt camps, Chelmno, and at Auschwitz (where many revisionists believe Jews were diverted to the East from).

[Nazgul]

There's obviously no documents or witness testimony giving us any idea about how the resettled Jews fared in Occupied USSR, but is it fair to presume that the revisionist position is that conditions were brutal, and in terms of percentage many or more died in Nazi internment than of civilians in the surrounding areas? these civilians would have had access to food from many sources, whereas the interned Jews could only have received it from government channels.

My principal research focus concerns the oil-shale labour camps in the Kaiserwald region, where conditions were severe and where even civilian workers endured extreme hardship. A second, closely related area of study is the system of Zwangarbeitslager für Juden (forced labour camps for Jews). Two such camps existed at Treblinka—one for men and one for women—operating separately from the better-known extermination facility.

A particularly important personal testimony is that of Peter Lantos, a Hungarian Jewish boy deported with his parents on one of three transports from Hungary. Notably, those on these transports paid for their own fares. According to Lantos’s memoir Parallel Lines, the transport was diverted westward rather than sent directly to Birkenau; only a single train from this group went there.

The transport carrying Lantos and his parents stopped at a labour camp in Austria, where conditions—while still those of captivity—were comparatively humane. Lantos recounts that guards behaved in a friendly manner and regularly gave him chocolate. This period stands in sharp contrast to later stages of his captivity and is described in his own words rather than inferred retrospectively.

Subsequently, the family was transferred to another camp run by the SS. Here, conditions worsened: food was rationed but initially adequate, and while the SS guards were less personable than the Austrian camp staff, Lantos does not describe them as overtly brutal during this phase. Tragedy nevertheless followed. His father, a heavy smoker, exchanged portions of his food ration for cigarettes and ultimately died of malnutrition. Lantos records this sequence himself. Other secondary sources have later claimed that his father was deliberately starved by the Germans; however, this interpretation goes beyond Lantos’s own account and illustrates the tension that can arise between survivor testimony and later explanatory narratives.

As the war drew to a close, conditions deteriorated rapidly. Food rations became negligible, and prisoners were placed on a transport whose locomotive halted inexplicably in a remote area. The prisoners disembarked and were eventually encountered by American troops. These troops handed them over to Soviet forces, who detained them with the intention of transporting them east into the Soviet Union.

Lantos and his mother managed to escape Soviet captivity by hiding aboard a coal train, ultimately securing their freedom. Their survival, as recorded in Parallel Lines, underscores both the contingency of individual fate and the danger of imposing simplified explanations on complex and shifting wartime realities.

Late-war German policy operated under extreme resource scarcity, and priority was inevitably given to the front and to those deemed economically essential. This explains the deterioration of conditions across many forms of custody, though it does not erase the fact that some groups were structurally placed at the bottom of the ration hierarchy long before resources collapsed.

[bombsaway]

This explains the deterioration of conditions across many forms of custody, though it does not erase the fact that some groups were structurally placed at the bottom of the ration hierarchy long before resources collapsed.

You didn't really answer the question. Were non-employable Jews lower on the totem pole than Soviet POWs? Please go easier on the AI btw, it doesn't really add much.

[Nazgul]

You didn't really answer the question. Were non-employable Jews lower on the totem pole than Soviet POWs? Please go easier on the AI btw, it doesn't really add much.

I don’t know, and the AI comment isn’t relevant—let’s stay on topic.

[bombsaway]

You didn't really answer the question. Were non-employable Jews lower on the totem pole than Soviet POWs? Please go easier on the AI btw, it doesn't really add much.

I don’t know, and the AI comment isn’t relevant—let’s stay on topic.

The question is what you think, or would reasonably expect, not what was, since you're right we can't say in any evidence backed way what happened to them.

[Nazgul]

The question is what you think, or would reasonably expect, not what was, since you're right we can't say in any evidence backed way what happened to them.

Considering the mass killings of Soviet prisoners, it’s astonishing that Олександр Аронович Печерський (Oleksandr Aronovich Pechersky), a Red Army lieutenant and clearly a dangerous officer, was allowed to live in an alleged extermination camp. He should have been considered high-risk even before the Sobibor uprising, which he orchestrated—an event that cost the lives not only of SS officers but also of escaping prisoners. This raises serious questions about SS competence, and whether the treatment of Soviet prisoners was uniformly as brutal as often claimed, given that someone like Pechersky survived under their watch.

[bombsaway]

The question is what you think, or would reasonably expect, not what was, since you're right we can't say in any evidence backed way what happened to them.

Considering the mass killings of Soviet prisoners, it’s astonishing that Олександр Аронович Печерський (Oleksandr Aronovich Pechersky), a Red Army lieutenant and clearly a dangerous officer, was allowed to live in an alleged extermination camp. He should have been considered high-risk even before the Sobibor uprising, which he orchestrated—an event that cost the lives not only of SS officers but also of escaping prisoners. This raises serious questions about SS competence, and whether the treatment of Soviet prisoners was uniformly as brutal as often claimed, given that someone like Pechersky survived under their watch.

I think there's no evidence they let so many POWs die (the commisar order is something separate, commisars were only a small percentage) because they were security risks, rather that they did not value their lives very much at the time.

Himmler:

The Russian Army was herded together in great pockets, ground down, taken prisoner. At the time, we did not value the mass of humanity as we value it today: as raw material, as labor. The fact that prisoners died of exhaustion and hunger in tens and hundreds of thousands is by no means regrettable from the standpoint of lost generations but is deplorable now for reasons of lost labor.

https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cf ... nt_id=1513

[Archie]

As preparation for my 'Best case for the Holocaust' essay, which I'm finally ready to put some time into, ...

Glad to hear it. I didn't think we were going to get anymore submissions.

We have some idea about how Jews in the labor system were treated. If we don't want to say they were treated unfairly, at the very least we can assess super high death rates. ...

I won't comment on all of this at length right now, but it seems you're going for a choose-your-own-adventure Holocaust. I would caution against that. It's ultimately not a good approach for your side. The standard history is that around six million Jews died and that the vast majority of these deaths were from mass executions, principally gassings and shootings. That's the story. That's what's under dispute. To me, trying to shift to more general claims of "suffering" is pure motte-and-bailey.

[bombsaway]

As preparation for my 'Best case for the Holocaust' essay, which I'm finally ready to put some time into, ...

Glad to hear it. I didn't think we were going to get anymore submissions.

We have some idea about how Jews in the labor system were treated. If we don't want to say they were treated unfairly, at the very least we can assess super high death rates. ...

I won't comment on all of this at length right now, but it seems you're going for a choose-your-own-adventure Holocaust. I would caution against that. It's ultimately not a good approach for your side. The standard history is that around six million Jews died and that the vast majority of these deaths were from mass executions, principally gassings and shootings. That's the story. That's what's under dispute. To me, trying to shift to more general claims of "suffering" is pure motte-and-bailey.

Do you think I would for a moment consider this a reasonable possibility? That they were decimated through resettlement.

This is a question directed at revisionists who are taking Nazi officials at their word about resettlement. What do you reasonably think it was it like? A pretty chill time, better than the ghettos?

[Nazgul]

Do you think I would for a moment consider this a reasonable possibility? That they were decimated through resettlement.

This is a question directed at revisionists who are taking Nazi officials at their word about resettlement. What do you reasonably think it was it like? A pretty chill time, better than the ghettos?

I realize this wasn't intended for me to reply, but I will anyhow.

I appreciate your intent to build a case grounded in these operational realities. My research into the Kaiserwald and the Zwangsarbeitslager system isn't about scoring points for a 'side' or engaging in a 'Motte-and-Bailey' debate over numbers. It’s about the functional truth of the camps.

When we look at the Lantos transport being diverted to Austria, or the separate perimeters at Treblinka, we see a system of extreme complexity. This extends to the industrial negligence seen at Skarżysko-Kamienna. While the British 'Canary Girls' faced toxic jaundice as a tragic byproduct of war—leading to the eventual implementation of safety protocols—the authorities at the HASAG Werk C facility operated with a total absence of health and safety. Despite being aware of the UK’s experience with TNT poisoning, they chose to ignore the risks.

The resulting 'death in yellow' wasn't necessarily an ideological policy of 'annihilation through labour,' but rather a manifestation of absolute negligence. The Jewish workers were treated as a disposable resource; their skin, hair, and eyes turning yellow from raw picric acid was merely a sign that the 'material' was being exhausted. When a labor force is treated with this level of calculated indifference, the factory itself becomes the execution chamber. You don't need the infrastructure of a gas chamber when the production line is designed to consume the worker within three months.

The 'middle ground' isn't a compromise; it’s the recognition that the Nazi machine operated with a specific hierarchy of survival. Whether it was the exhaustion of shale-oil extraction or the structural starvation of the 'non-essential,' the result was a calculated human cost that doesn't need 'storytelling' to be understood.

Real research doesn't need the comfort of a single narrative. It needs the courage to look at the reconnaissance maps and the survivor’s memoir simultaneously, acknowledging that the suffering was both systematic and deeply individual. That is the only 'best case' worth writing.

The hazardous conditions at Skarżysko-Kamienna involved exposure to both TNT (trinitrotoluene) and picric acid (trinitrophenol). In the "infamous Werk C," Jewish forced labourers worked in the "yellow kingdom," where they were forced to fill mines and shells with these toxic chemicals without any protective equipment.

Toxic Exposure in Werk C

Both substances contributed to the lethal environment, though they affected the body in slightly different ways:

Picric Acid: This chemical was primarily responsible for the distinctive yellow staining of the skin and hair, sometimes referred to as "pseudo-jaundice". Beyond staining, it caused severe chemical burns, lung irritation when inhaled as dust, and systemic poisoning that could lead to acute hepatitis and kidney damage.

TNT: Exposure to TNT caused "toxic jaundice," a more serious condition where the chemical attacked the liver. Initial symptoms of TNT poisoning included nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and fatigue, which could eventually lead to death from liver failure.

Industrial Negligence and Mortality

The mortality rate in Werk C was extreme, with some accounts suggesting that workers assigned there often did not survive more than two to three months.

"The Witch Cauldrons": Saltpeter and TNT were cooked in open vats and stirred with oars. Prisoners then carried the molten TNT in buckets to workstations to fill shells.

Lack of Protection: Because their clothes were destroyed quickly by the chemicals and there were no replacements, many prisoners were forced to work wearing only paper bags.

Comparison to UK "Canary Girls": While British munitions workers also experienced yellowing and toxic jaundice, the British government eventually recognised the risk and implemented some safety protocols. At Skarżysko-Kamienna, the German authorities operated with absolute negligence, ignoring the known risks of these chemicals and treating the labour force as entirely disposable.

Felicja Karay’s book, Death Comes in Yellow, specifically dedicates chapters to this environment, detailing the struggle for survival "under a cloud of picric acid and TNT"

References for Munitions Workers and TNT/Picric Acid Exposure

The historical record confirms that munitions workers in both World War I Britain and World War II Poland suffered from severe poisoning due to handling trinitrotoluene (TNT) and picric acid.

1. HASAG-Skarżysko (Werk C), WWII Poland
At the HASAG slave labour camp, Jewish prisoners in Werk C worked with a lethal combination of TNT and picric acid to fill shells and mines.

Toxic Environment: Workers cooked saltpeter and TNT in "witch cauldrons" and stirred them with oars. They carried molten TNT in buckets to workstations without any protective gear.

"Picric Girls": Jewish women in Werk C were specifically nicknamed "picric girls" because the toxic dust turned their skin yellow and their hair a rusty colour.

Fatal Negligence: Exposure led to toxic fumes and dust corroding workers' eyes and lungs. Inmate accounts suggest that those assigned to Werk C rarely survived more than two months. Mortality in this section was estimated at roughly 25 deaths per week.

Annihilation through Neglect: Unlike the British factories, there were no safety protocols at HASAG. Survivors noted the lack of protection led to extremely painful skin burns and frequent, fatal explosions.

2. British "Canary Girls," WWI
British women who worked with TNT were nicknamed "Canary Girls" because the chemical reacted with melanin in their skin, causing an orange-yellow discolouration.

Medical Consequences: While the skin yellowing was not inherently fatal, repeated exposure to TNT attacked the liver, causing toxic jaundice and anaemia.

Fatalities and Research: Historian Anne Spurgeon identifies 400 recorded cases of toxic jaundice during WWI, with approximately 100 deaths (a 25% mortality rate). Other sources cite over 400 total deaths from TNT overexposure during the war.

Early Recognition: In 1915, following an investigation by the Medical Inspector of Factories, toxic jaundice was designated a notifiable disease in Britain, meaning cases had to be officially reported to the Home Office.

Protective Measures: To mitigate the poison's effects, British workers were given milk to drink and were eventually required to follow strict safety measures, such as avoiding metal hairpins or silk clothing to prevent rogue sparks.

3. Comparing the Chemicals
While both chemicals cause yellowing, they have distinct properties:
TNT (Trinitrotoluene): Primarily causes toxic jaundice by attacking the liver and can cause anaemia. It was discovered to be poisonous as early as 1914.

Picric Acid (Trinitrophenol): Known for causing "pseudo-jaundice" (yellow staining of skin and hair). It is highly explosive when dry and can cause chemical burns, lung damage, and dermatitis.

[bombsaway]

Not even close to an answer to the actual question, which was about non-working Jews.

[Nazgul]

Not even close to an answer to the actual question, which was about non-working Jews.

14f13

[bombsaway]

Not even close to an answer to the actual question, which was about non-working Jews.

14f13

Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary entry of 27 March 1942:

"From the General Government, starting at Lublin, the Jews are now being deported to the east. A fairly barbaric procedure not to be described in more detail is used, and there is not much left of the Jews themselves. In general, one can say that 60% of them have to be liquidated, while only 40% can still be used for work."

the 60% liquidated get 14f13?

Memo of the official for population policy in the district Lublin of 27 March 1942:
"1.) It would be useful to divide the Jewish transports coming to the Lublin district into workable and non-workable Jews at the departure station. If this distinction at the departure station is not possible, one might have to proceed to separate the transport in Lublin according to the above-mentioned criteria.

2.) Unfit Jews all come to Belzec, the outermost border station in the Zamosz district."

the non working Jews filtered for Belzec, 14f13?

Minutes of the 5th working meeting of the department heads in Krakow on 11 May 1942:
"As State Secretary Dr. Bühler reports that, according to recent news, the plan is to dissolve the Jewish ghettos, keep the Jews who are fit for work and continue to deport the rest of them to the east."

The Jews fit for work are kept are kept in Poland, the non-working sent east get 14f13?

and so on...

Minutes of the police meeting in Krakow on 18 June 1942:
"The Jewish question is settled in the city of Lublin. The previous Jewish quarter has been evacuated and the able-bodied Jews are housed outside the city in a special district.

[...]

In Radom and Czestochowa, Jewish workers will have to be retained for the armaments industries. Of course, the immediate family members of these workers have to be left behind as well, but everyone else will be resettled."

Instructions of the commissioner for the resettlement to the Jewish Council in Warsaw of 22 July 1942:
"All Jewish persons, regardless of their age and gender, who live in Warsaw are resettled to the east. The following are excluded from the resettlement:

a) All Jewish persons who are employed by the German authority or branch offices and can provide proof of this;

b) all Jewish persons who belong to the Judenrat and are employees of the Judenrat (the deadline is the date of publication of the order);

c) all Jewish persons who work for Reich-German companies and can provide proof of this ;

d) all able-bodied Jews who have not yet been included in the work process, these must be barracked in the Jewish residential area;

[...]"

[Nazgul]

The Jews fit for work are kept are kept in Poland, the non-working sent east get 14f13?

Aktion 14f13: Systemic Murder of "Incapacitated" Prisoners

Aktion 14f13 (or Sonderbehandlung 14f13) was a Nazi campaign conducted between 1941 and 1944 to systematically murder concentration camp prisoners. While often called "prisoner euthanasia," it was a calculated effort to eliminate "excess ballast"—prisoners deemed physically or mentally unfit for the war economy.

The Driver: Resource Scarcity and Military Priority

A primary catalyst for this campaign was the extreme shortage of food within the camp system. As the war progressed, the Nazi regime prioritised the Wehrmacht (military) for all agricultural and food resources.
Systemic Starvation: With the bulk of food diverted to the front lines, rations for concentration camp inmates were slashed to sub-survival levels.

Selection for Survival: This created a horrific "utilitarian" logic among camp administrators: because there was not enough food to sustain the entire prisoner population, those who could no longer work were viewed as a drain on dwindling supplies.

Eliminating "Non-Producers": The murder of the sick, elderly, and incapacitated was seen as a way to "relieve" the camps of mouths to feed, ensuring that the minimal remaining food was reserved only for those providing active forced labour for the war effort.


The Mechanics of Murder

The operation utilised the infrastructure and personnel of the Aktion T4 programme (the earlier "euthanasia" of the disabled).

Selections: Initially, panels of T4 doctors visited camps to select victims. Later, this responsibility shifted to camp doctors. The selections were done by the doctors at the ramps after people disembarked the transports.

Processing: Victims were checked for gold teeth and "labelled" before being transported to killing centres like Hartheim, Bernburg, and Sonnenstein.

Execution: Prisoners were murdered in gas chambers using carbon monoxide. Following the murders, any gold teeth were extracted for the central office in Berlin, and the bodies were incinerated.

Cover-up: Camp administrations handled the death notices, typically falsifying the cause of death as a natural illness to notify relatives.

A Universal Campaign Against All Prisoners

Crucially, Aktion 14f13 targeted the entire concentration camp population based on perceived "utility" rather than just specific ethnic or religious groups. The victims included:

All Nationalities and Backgrounds: Sick, elderly, or incapacitated prisoners of any origin.

Political and "Social" Prisoners: Political dissidents, "career criminals," and those labeled "asocial" (including vagrants, the "work-shy," and others).

Diverse Groups: Soviet prisoners of war, forced labourers from Eastern Europe, and Hungarian Jews.

The Criteria: Anyone deemed a "ballast existence"—including those with tuberculosis, bed-ridden individuals, or people with permanent physical disabilities.

Labour Shortages and the Second Phase

By 1942–1943, the demand for war labour forced the SS to restrict selections.

Economic Shift: Orders from SS officials like Oswald Pohl and Richard Glücks demanded that only the mentally ill be "retired" for 14f13. Even bed-ridden prisoners were expected to perform work from their beds if possible.

Phase II: In 1944, the formal "doctors' commissions" were abandoned. Camp administrations took direct control of selections, often murdering the sick on-site or allegedly transferring them to camps with active gas chambers (Auschwitz, Mauthausen, etc.). This however, is rumour.

Legacy and Scale

The operation ended in December 1944. Evidence at sites like Hartheim Castle was dismantled to hide the crimes, and the facility was repurposed as an orphanage. Historians estimate that 15,000 to 20,000 people were murdered under Aktion 14f13 by the end of 1943 alone, with many more following in the second phase.

[Hektor]

As preparation for my 'Best case for the Holocaust' essay, which I'm finally ready to put some time into, ...

Glad to hear it. I didn't think we were going to get anymore submissions.

We have some idea about how Jews in the labor system were treated. If we don't want to say they were treated unfairly, at the very least we can assess super high death rates. ...

I won't comment on all of this at length right now, but it seems you're going for a choose-your-own-adventure Holocaust. I would caution against that. It's ultimately not a good approach for your side. The standard history is that around six million Jews died and that the vast majority of these deaths were from mass executions, principally gassings and shootings. That's the story. That's what's under dispute. To me, trying to shift to more general claims of "suffering" is pure motte-and-bailey.

That's exactly what it is. When it became more difficult to uphold the conventional Holocaust Narrative it moved more and more to 'bad treatment of Jews' by the Axis during WW2. It also shifted from accusing the Germans towards blame-shifting onto Poles and Ukrainians, etc. The Germans were of course a more lucrative target after the Wirtschaftswunder. That's probably the reason why there were new pushes to reinforce the Holocaust narrative in the 1960s and 1970s. Although there were also examples of falsely accused Poles and Ukrainians, who migrated to the US or Canada since WW2.