The Nazi Slave Labour exhibition in London presents stories like that of Eva Clarke, born in Mauthausen in 1945. Her mother, Anka Bergman, was deported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz while pregnant. There, the Nazis demanded she sign a document authorizing the euthanasia of the baby. Anka survived and was sent to a weapons factory in Freiburg, where she performed heavy labor before being evacuated to give birth.
The slave labor system and its industrial organization 🏭
The exhibition details how the Nazi regime structured forced labor as an industrial system. Millions of prisoners were assigned to weapons factories, mines, and infrastructure construction. Working conditions were lethal: 12-hour shifts, minimal food, and no protection. In camps like Mauthausen, the mortality rate from exhaustion was high. The Nazis kept detailed records of each worker, including their productivity, as part of a bureaucracy of mass exploitation.
Signing to kill the baby: bureaucracy with style 📄
That a pregnant mother had to sign a document authorizing the euthanasia of her own child sounds like a one-stop shop procedure, but with a sinister outcome. The Nazis, so fond of forms, demanded a signature and date. Anka, lucky to be a survivor, signed and then watched the system collapse. In the end, the paperwork was useless: her daughter was born alive and kicking, proving that even the cruelest bureaucracy cannot stop a birth that comes at the wrong time.