Talk:Extermination through labour

message: "commonly digging ditches around the camp and then levelling them or excavating earth and transporting it by foot to the other side of the camp." I think you need a quotation for this... Unsigned comment by User:Andreasegde
:If this article was something more than a stub, I would perhaps take my time to properly reference it. However, at the moment I'm working hard on Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Feel free to add your references though, I'm pretty sure every book on life in German concentration camps mentions such pointless activities, along with endless "mitzen ab" exercises, carrying wooden poles around the camp and so on. //Halibutt 03:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: 200.206.226.181 (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Just saw the word 'communist' 9238293892 times, don't you guys get tired?

message: I want references to this principle. I could find none online and the supposed "principle" seems an invention to me.Smith2006 23:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: I have cited the source for my "slander" on hali's userpage (one of his posts on discussion of German 17th Infantry Division), if it was really in contravention of WP:NPA he would of reported it to admin by now.  It is hard for me to spoil Hali's good name, he is so much better at it than me.  --Jadger 21:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: OMG, gentlemen, it's merely a stub. Check the German article if you want more specific examples. If you want sources I could add hundreds of books as almost every book on German WWII camps either uses the term or its explanation. I'll add some links for you anyway, but this would make this stub the best sourced stub we have in wiki. //Halibutt 05:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Here you go: six phrases, 14 references. I could add twice as many, but I believe there's no need to (come on, just imagine 30 references per six phrases :) ). Or am I wrong? //Halibutt 09:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I've read of this practice regarding Norwegian prisoners in Sachsenhausen as well. Prezen 22:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: PRoof

message: "Annihialation (not extermination) through work" was not only a de facto policy but an explicitly articulated one. Doubters are directed to Michael Thad Allen's superb book The Business of Genocide, where the subject is covered exhuastively. It needs noting, though, that it was not applied to all, industrially employed concentration camp inmates, but primarily to Jews, Gypsies and for a while to Soviet POWs. It was rarely applied to other categories of prisoners, although exceptions exist. The most infamous being the Dora camp, where the V2 rockets were produced. It was never applied to specialist prisoner-workers. It also needs noting that not all instances where work was used unproductively for strictly penal purposes were cases of Annihialation Through Work, just as not all punishments meted out in Concentration Camps was lethal. More over Halibut is mistaken in attributing economically useless work to subcamps. Subcamps were usually established in order to bring prison labour nearer to an economically valuble operation. Economically useless work was least likely to occur there. Soz
:I've read of this practice regarding Norwegian prisoners in Sachsenhausen as well. Prezen 22:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Some Corrections

message: a user just added the category named  "unfree labour" but I dispute that. this was free labour, the Nazis didn't pay them anything, unless you count the cost of food, then it would be "cheap labour" maybe.
--Jadger 07:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "unfree labour"

message: Modern extermination through labour was invented in Soviet Union, in 1917, not in nazi Germany.Lenin ordered the killing of about 35,000,000 people, in less than 7 years of government.Agre22 (talk) 13:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: A soviet invention

message: Under the header 'Victims' this article reads:
'Approximately six million Jews, 80,000 sick and handicapped people of German origin, 500,000 Sinti, Romanies, and members of other persecuted "gypsy" groups as well as seven million Soviet prisoners of war and civilians in concentration camps were killed altogether. It is impossible to ensure that these numbers are exact, as the Nazis often kept no records of their victims.'
However horrendous the truth is of this outcome of the war, I fail to see how this has anything to do with annihilation through labor? Is the writer / are the writers suggesting that people who got gassed or were shot, or beaten to death etc. etc. etc. were also victims of annihilation through labor? This needs to change or be removed. Mlodewijk (talk) 22:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Victims

message: I think that the article is trying to create the incorrect impression that all forced labor under the Nazis was "extermination through labor". Well, it's pretty well attested that Jewish workers were mistreated and had high death rates, and that was the explicit intent - gas chambers for some, death through labor for others. But the majority of forced laborers were not Jewish, they were Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and all sorts of others who were working under various levels of compulsion. It was not a good life, but it was not "extermination" in any sense. 76.24.104.52 (talk) 03:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Attempt to paint all Nazi forced labor with one brush?

message: Hello everyone, I've noticed a sentence in the lead that says, "Whether it formed the basis for the exploitation of forced labor in the Soviet Gulag is controversial."  What ignoramus wrote that?  It's very well documented that it was indeed the official policy in the Soviet Gulag to work the prisoners to death, as evidenced by them being forced to do impossibly hard labor on a starvation diet -- the only people who would argue that it was in any way "controversial" would be the same Marxist diehards who still believe that collectivization was a necessary policy for the Soviets to follow at the time.  Get real, people! 146.74.230.99 (talk) 23:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello... anonymous IP!!!  You have some interesting things to say; so register on WP (and I don't want to hear, "My server lists me as an IP, wah wah wah...")  Register, please, and you'll have more of an audience... Doc9871 (talk) 12:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've done some editing on my own, check it out :-)  As for your offer of registering on WP, I'll turn it down for ideological reasons, because I'm a true believer in American exceptionalism and I don't want to join a community that is so heavily in favor of globalism.  So thanks, but no thanks.  Clear skies to you! 24.23.197.43 (talk) 05:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Hee hee...  so you're a "subversive" sort, eh?  I was just recommending you register because you obviously are an intelligent editor, and random IP editors on WP are treated as the lowest caste for the most part.  Registering wouldn't compromise your ideals as much as you might think - hell, maybe you can bend it 'round to a "Yank" point of view ;> Peace Doc9871 (talk) 07:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Soviet Gulag operated for several DECADES. Their policies differed at various times and in different locations (Russia is huge). Sometimes, especially back in the 30s, they were closer in spirit to "extermination". All the more so in places like Kolyma camps. Sometimes, like during the war, life was just very tough because there was little food for anybody, in the camps and outside alike. And sometimes, in the late 40s and early 50s, the Gulag authorities actually got the bright of idea of trying to keep the inmates healthier and, you know, able to do more useful work. A revolutionary idea, that... Anyway, the point is, the mileage varied. And if you ignore that, you can easily make credible arguments both ways, since you will find some locations and situations with documented horrendous death rates, and then your opponent will find likewise documented cases of low death rates in other locations and situations. 76.24.104.52 (talk) 04:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Reliable sources exist (e.g. Getty of Wheatcroft) that directly contradict to what the article says, namely, that GULAG was  designed and worked as a system of extermination through labour. The article deserves either WP:UNDUE, or WP:SYNTH tags.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Official idea behind Soviet forced labor camps was different. There was an idea of "correction through labor". You know, Marxist theory postulates that it was labor which converted monkey into a human. So they believed that labor can make a good man from a social parasite. For example when the White Sea channel was built there were many reports in the press on how those prisoners were becoming good people through work and even received government decorations such as orders and medals while still being prisoners.--MathFacts (talk) 20:05, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that was officially "correction through labor", according to the official Soviet propaganda position, and especially with regard to White Sea channel. No, it was not intentionally designed to work as a system of extermination, according to most sources (but mostly as a system of cheap labor). But it actually worked as a system of extermination through labor according to most sources. Biophys (talk) 17:13, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Soviet "extermination through labor" controversial?!

message: I've noticed that whipping is not discussed much in the article, yet I'm fairly certain that it was an incessant practice.Hoops gza (talk) 20:22, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It certainly happened at Buchenwald - see this Time Magazine article from 1958. Doc talk 20:57, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whipping 

message: I came to this article because I wanted to know about the origin of the term, where it was first used and by whom, whether it status on official documents.  That sort of info isn't readily available here.  I'm wondering if it is a term that others have applied to Nazi practice or one the Nazis used themselves, or if it appears once or twice in Nazi literature and then has been more extensively applied by others.  Hardicanute (talk) 09:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The Nazi term "Vernichtung durch Arbeit" is quoted at least in a PBS source: one of the better sources, IMHO. "They were victims of Vernichtung durch Arbeit -- the Nazi policy of physical destruction through labor, a concerted effort to kill the party's political and racial enemies through hard labor and deprivation." All manner of civilizations have used the same policy into antiquity and beyond, and also today. So I'm unsure if the article shouldn't be split into two, with one concerning the Nazi use of the policy and that term itself, and another concerning its use: everywhere else. Doc talk 03:31, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology

message: The sources cited do not mention extermination through labor.--5.228.254.68 (talk) 16:05, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The sources discuss the disappearance of 20,000 prison camp inmates who, among other things, are "worked to death." Acroterion (talk) 17:45, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was there any connection between North korea and extermination through labor or it is original synthesis? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The lead says:
:"Extermination through labour is a term sometimes used to describe the operation of labour camps in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, North Korea..."
I checked that, and my google scholar search demonstrated that all sources mention the word "Soviet" only in connection to the fact that Soviet civilians or POWs were the victims of this Nazi program (see "Extermination through labour" and "Extermination through labour"). Clearly, all these books and articles describe "Extermination through labour" as some concrete Nazi program. In connection to that, I modified the lead accordingly. 
Taking into account that many authors describe Gulag as extermination camps, although many other authors openly disagree with that, I reorganised the article accordingly and put this context to the "Controversy" section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:56, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: OR problem fixed

message: The subject of this page is the deliberate extermination of people through labor, rather than simply their forced/involuntary exploitation which led to death, as typical for the slave labor. We need sources claiming it was a deliberate extermination, rather than exploitation, or that it was literally "extermination through forced labor". I do not see it about the African slave trade and Congo. We are not going to include whole slavery here? My very best wishes (talk) 18:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: African slave trade and Congo

message: Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crimes against humanity category removal