''Többens and Schultz'' (german: Többens und Schultz & Co) was a

Nazi German Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

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

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

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, t ...

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 ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

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; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany' ...

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 an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...

, to the

Poniatowa concentration camp Poniatowa concentration camp in the town of Poniatowa in occupied Poland, west of Lublin, was established by the '' SS'' in the latter half of 1941, initially to hold Soviet prisoners of war following Operation Barbarossa. By , about 20,000 Sov ...

facility set up near Lublin, part of the so-called " territorial solution to the

Jewish Question The Jewish question, also referred to as the Jewish problem, was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other " national ...

" never fully realized by the

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe duri ...

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

Trawniki concentration camp The Trawniki concentration camp was 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. It was organized on the g ...

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

Lublin reservation The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940. The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Jews ...

, part of the General Government during

the Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. ...

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

Odilo Globocnik Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was an Austrian Nazi and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the SS. Globocnik had a leading role in Operation Re ...

from Austria racked up millions of

Reichsmark The (; sign: ℛℳ; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until 20 June 1948 in West Germany, where it was replaced with the , and until 23 June 1948 in East Germany, where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reich ...

s and gold from his murderous Operation Reinhard. 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, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

, the SS-WVHA's economic department under Oswald Pohl had given up Nisko Plan#Role in Holocaust historiography, the idea of a "reservation", partly due to the Battle of Smolensk (1943), Soviet counter-offensive and the Jewish revolts.See: the uprisings at Sobibor extermination camp, the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka extermination camps, and armed resistance in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Warsaw, Białystok Ghetto Uprising, Białystok, and Vilna Ghetto, Vilna Ghettos in German-occupied Europe (1939-1944), 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 (a unit of the Ordnungspolizei#Police Battalions, German Order Police), augmented by a squad of ''Hiwi (volunteer), Hiwis'' called "Trawniki men". 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, 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