Operation Barbarossa: The War of Annihilation in the East
Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 initiated "the most destructive and barbaric war in human history". The attack was part of Hitler's "war of extermination" against the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. Using a deliberate starvation policy, large areas were to be emptied of people and incorporated into the Nazi Grossraum. Believing in a quick victory, Hitler ordered Soviet soldiers, who were captured, to be starved to death. The prisoners were gathered in large enclosures without food or shelter. After just over six months, 1.7 million prisoners of war had died. When it turned out that the war in the east was dragging on, and that the German war economy depended on the labor of the prisoners, it became a point to keep them alive.
"We didn't know where we were going..."
Prisoner quote
Photo: Romsdalsmuseet, photographer: unknown
Szczecin
The port city of Stettin, today Polish Szczecin, was during the war a hub for ship traffic between Germany and Norway. Most of OT's supplies to Norway were transported by ship from Stettin. In the city, OT also had its own transit camp where prisoners of war and forced laborers received their equipment before being sent north. The sea journey to and from Norway was dangerous. The torpedoing of the prisoner ships MS Palatia in 1942 and MS Rigel in 1944 led to over 3,000 Soviet prisoners of war drowning on their way to and from work in Norway.
The same ship that transported prisoners of war and forced laborers was used for the deportation of the Norwegian Jews in November 1942. For the Jews, the journey was from Oslo on the DS Danube to Stettin and on by train to Auschwitz. At the same time as German construction projects in Norway suffered from a lack of labour, able-bodied Norwegians were thus murdered in the gas chambers. The logistical system that Stettin was part of makes visible the tension between the Nazi regime's economic and racial ideological objectives.
Photo: Romsdalsmuseet, photographer: unknown
