''Többens and Schultz'' () was a

Nazi German Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

textile manufacturing conglomerate making German uniforms, socks and garments in the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...

and elsewhere, during the

occupation of Poland Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...

in World War II. It was owned and operated by two major war profiteers: Fritz Emil Schultz from Danzig,Powell 2000
p. 114 ''(ibidem)''.
/ref> and a convicted war criminal, Walter C. Többens (i.e. Walther Caspar Toebbens, from Hamburg).

History

Schultz and Többens appeared in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

in the summer of 1941, not long after the Ghetto was closed off with walls topped with barbed wire. The unemployment, hunger and malnutrition there were rampant. At first, they both acted as middlemen between the German high command and the Jewish-run workshops, and placed production orders with them. Within weeks they opened their own factories in the Ghetto using slave labour on a record scale. By spring 1942 the ''Stickerei Abteilung'' division run by Schultz at Nowolipie 44 Street had 3,000 workers making shoes, leather products, sweaters and socks for the Wehrmacht. Other divisions were making furs and wool sweaters also, guarded by the ''Werkschutz'' police. Some 15,000 Jews were working for Többens in the Warsaw Ghetto, at the Prosta Street and at the Leszno Street factories among other places. Staying with any of them was a source of envy for other Jews living in fear of deportations. In early 1943 Többens gained for himself the appointment of a Jewish deportation commissar of Warsaw in order to keep his own workforce secure and maximize profits.

Relocation

Resulting from the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the ...

and the destruction of an entire city district by the SS, in May 1943 Többens had transferred his businesses, including 10,000 Jewish slave workers with families spared from

Treblinka Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the Treblinka, ...

, to the Poniatowa concentration camp facility set up near

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

, part of the so-called " territorial solution to the

Jewish Question The Jewish question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century Europe that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other " national questions", dealt with the civil, legal, national, ...

" never fully realized by the

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...

(SS). Fritz Schultz took his manufacture along with 6,000 Jews and their 400 children to the nearby

Trawniki concentration camp The Trawniki was a Nazi concentration camps, concentration camp set up by Nazi Germany in the village of Trawniki about southeast of Lublin during the occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout its existence the camp served a dual function ...

commanded by Karl Streibel. A number of vastly profitable enterprises were run by the SS in the Lublin reservation, part of the

General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...

during

the Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust saw the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under Nazi racial theories, similar racial pretexts in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. Over th ...

. '' SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei''

Odilo Globocnik Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was a Nazi Party official from Austria and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. A high-ranking member of the SS, Globocnik was the leader of Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of ar ...

from Austria racked up millions of

Reichsmark The (; sign: ℛ︁ℳ︁; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, and in the American, British and French occupied zones of Germany, until 20 June 1948. The Reichsmark was then replace ...

s and gold from his murderous

Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...

. The business was booming, with large amounts of money initially coming from the victims of gassing, and foodstuffs requisitioned from terrorized farmers for free. But not for long. During the final phase of

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

, the SS-WVHA's economic department under

Oswald Pohl Oswald Ludwig Pohl (; 30 June 1892 – 7 June 1951) was a German high-ranking SS official during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps, he was a ke ...

had given up the idea of a "reservation", partly due to the Soviet counter-offensive and the Jewish revolts.See: the uprisings at the Sobibor and

extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocau ...

s, and armed resistance in the Warsaw,

Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the List of cities and towns in Poland, tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Biał ...

, and

Vilna Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

ghettos. The SS proceeded to shut down the '' Ostindustrie'' entirely in order to prevent further unrest. On 3 November 1943, all sub-camps of the Majdanek death camp were liquidated in '' Aktion Erntefest'', the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war, with approximately 43,000 victims across District Lublin fatally shot in fake anti-aircraft trenches by the

Reserve Police Battalion 101 Reserve Police Battalion 101 () was a Nazi German paramilitary formation of the uniformed police force known as the ''Ordnungspolizei'' (Order Police, ''Orpo''), the organization formed by the Nazi unification of the civilian police forces in th ...

(a unit of the German Order Police), augmented by a squad of '' Hiwis'' called "

Trawniki men During World War II, Trawniki men (; ) were Eastern European Nazi collaborators, consisting of either volunteers or recruits from Prisoner of war, prisoner-of-war camps set up by Nazi Germany for Red Army, Soviet Red Army soldiers captured in the ...

". Többens was captured in Austria by the Americans in 1946. He escaped from a train on the way to a trial in Poland and settled under an assumed name in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, where he founded a new business from his wartime profits. He revealed his identity in 1952, and died in a car accident two years later.

History

Relocation

See also

Notes

Further reading