Questions and answers

• Where was the document used and who created it?

  This index card comes from the Dachau concentration camp and was probably created by the labour deployment department there. From March 1942, Department III E Labour Deployment and, as a subgroup, Labour Statistics were responsible for the organisation of the labour force in the concentration camps. The labour deployment leader was usually in charge of one or more SS labour service leaders, who put together the labour detachments together with prisoner registrars. The Labour Deployment Department used various card indexes to manage the prisoners, which were compiled and maintained by the prisoner registrars.

• When was the document used?

  The Dachau concentration camp existed from March 1933 until its liberation by the US Army on 29 April 1945 and thus existed for almost the entire duration of the Nazi regime. However, it was only after the start of the war that the targeted exploitation of the labour of concentration camp prisoners in factories and businesses outside the camps became more important.

  It is not possible to determine with certainty when the name index of the Labour Deployment Department at Dachau concentration camp was started. However, on the basis of the dates of admission, transfer and release of the prisoners noted on the cards, it can be concluded that they were created between 1940/41 and the last weeks of the war in 1945. This means that the card index or parts of the card index were probably created before the establishment of the Labour Deployment Department - probably by the so-called Labour Service, the predecessor of the Labour Deployment Department - and then continued by the Labour Deployment Department from March 1942.

• What was the document used for?

  In the early years of the concentration camps, prisoners mostly worked in the camp's own commandos such as the kitchen, the administration or in the construction of the concentration camps. From 1936/1937, comparatively few prisoners were also deployed in the newly established SS operations in the camps or in the immediate vicinity. The focus was on the harassment and deterrence of the prisoners rather than their economic exploitation. This changed fundamentally from spring 1942 at the latest. More and more private German companies were short of labour, as many German employees had been called up for frontline service and the millions of foreign forced labourers who had been brought into the country since the beginning of the war were soon no longer sufficient to secure production. At the same time, war production was massively expanded by the state, which is why thousands of workers were also needed there. Finally, more and more companies moved their armaments production into tunnels and galleries to protect them from air raids. Concentration camp prisoners initially had to work on the construction sites there and later in production. Their chances of survival were particularly slim in these construction projects due to the catastrophic conditions.

  From 1942, the SS and armaments companies set up hundreds of satellite camps at the factories and construction sites. At the same time, armaments production also grew in the camps and the immediate surroundings, where prisoners were deployed in numerous subcamps. According to research, there were up to 1000 satellite camps and detachments between which the prisoners were transported. In mid-January 1945, around 714,000 concentration camp prisoners were employed in forced labour, which - depending on estimates - corresponded to 60 to 80 percent of all prisoners.

  From March 1942, Office Group D of the Economic-Administrative Main Office (WVHA) was responsible for the labour deployment of all concentration camp inmates and for the concentration camps' economic links to the German economy. In order to utilise the prisoners with the greatest profit, it was important to know the prisoners' particular linguistic or professional skills. It was also necessary to be able to quickly clarify in the concentration camps which commando or subcamp a prisoner was in. In order to ‘manage the deployment of prisoners at the various workplaces and in the individual occupations in an appropriate and satisfactory manner’, the labour deployment departments in the concentration camps were required to keep ‘precise and clear records of all prisoners’ (1.1.0.6/2327000/ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives).

  Accordingly, the Dachau concentration camp's labour deployment department kept different, independently functioning card indexes in which the prisoners were registered according to certain criteria. In addition to a labour deployment file and an occupational file, there was also a numbered file and finally a name file known as the ‘central file’. While the labour deployment card index recorded in which labour detachment an inmate was deployed (cf. Buchenwald concentration camp labour deployment card), the occupational card index classified the inmates according to their occupational skills and the number card index made it possible to trace which inmate had been assigned a specific inmate number (cf. Buchenwald concentration camp number card), the name card index recorded the most important personal information about the inmates as well as their access data and detention categories, among other things.

• How common is the document?

  In the holdings of the Arolsen Archives, cards from this card index are managed in two sub-collections. On the one hand, around 600 originals from this card index can be found in the individual files on prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp (DE ITS 1.1.6.2). Secondly, the Arolsen Archives were provided with scans of around 84,000 cards from the card index by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Archives in Jerusalem in 2018. These can now be found in the DE ITS 1.1.6.12 Collection of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone of the Dachau Concentration Camp.

  Between April 1940 and April 1945, a total of more than 150,000 prisoners were registered in the Dachau concentration camp. It can therefore be assumed that the cards held in the collections of the Arolsen Archives and Yad Vashem Archives do not show the complete list of names of the Labour Service Department.

• What should be considered when working with the document?

  The description of this map was created primarily on the basis of well-founded assumptions and can therefore only make a limited claim to completeness and accuracy.

  If you have any further comments on this or any other document presented in the e-Guide, we would be delighted to receive feedback at eguide@arolsen-archives.org. The document descriptions are regularly expanded - and the best way to do this is to collect knowledge together.