The Jews Went to Work? Organization Todt

[Nazgul]

Which leaves you with a chronological gap and is circumstantial evidence of the mass killings, causing a huge reduction in the Jewish population.

This is not a discussion on mass killings but the fact that Jews were used in making munitions. There were 9 camps at the two places mentioned both serviced by the Fplo train schedules. The munitions factories were established later. Fplo 587 Scheduled to depart on September 30, 1942 from the Polish town of Sedziszow, so after the muntions factory was established.

[Nessie]

Which leaves you with a chronological gap and is circumstantial evidence of the mass killings, causing a huge reduction in the Jewish population.

This is not a discussion on mass killings but the fact that Jews were used in making munitions. There were 9 camps at the two places mentioned both serviced by the Fplo train schedules. The munitions factories were established later. Fplo 587 Scheduled to depart on September 30, 1942 from the Polish town of Sedziszow, so after the muntions factory was established.

It is a discussion on whether OT provides evidence of millions of Jews still alive in 1944-5. It clearly does not.

You all ignore the evidence Sanity Check posts, that proves declining populations;

"Hans Frank noted at a meeting of 24 August 1942 that the feeding of 1.2 million Jews would 'fall away' from the autumn while 300,000 would be retained as workers..."

Along with populations that are far lower, that would be expected if millions were not being killed;

"In early 1943 the districts in Latvia reported the following employment of Jews - all documents are on the Arolsen Archives
5.1.43 GebK Mitau employing 289 Jews
10.1.43 GebK Dünaburg employing 454 Jews
10.1.43 GebK Kurland (Libau) employing 841 Jews
10.1.43 GebK Riga, Arbeitseinsatz; Hier: Judeneinsatz: 10,405 Jews [total, 11,999 Jewish workers]"

You cannot square the evidence of falling populations and only a few thousand Jews being used for labour, with the claim that the Nazis were resettling millions in the east and employing them in labour camps.

[SanityCheck]

In 1941, Jews in the GG were basically banned from armaments work.

This is false information. I do not think the word basically is appropriate considering hundreds of thousand Jews were making munitions including bombs. Here are two examples applicable to the GG.
Jewish Labour Camps for munitions at SkarzyskoKamienna. This is one of the camps mentioned on Fplo 587 documents en transt to Treblinka arbeitslagers. The camp belonged to the German
Hasag concern. It was established in August 1942 and was liquidated on
August 1, 1944. Altogether, 25,000--30,000 Jews were brought to Skarzysko-Kamienna. link
According to the German researchers there were 7 Forced Labour Camps for Jews in Czestochowa all working for HASAG making munitions. One closed in 1944 while the other 6 closed in 1945.

No, it's not at all false information, the records of the Armaments Inspectorate of the GG state this quite explicitly *in 1941*. The growing shortage of Polish workers because of impressments for Germany forced a significant change *in 1942*.

Felicja Karaj in her study of Skarzysko-Kamienna makes it quite clear that Jewish workers only began to be sent there in 1942, this was pretty much the case for all of the Distrikt Radom labour camps, and was also true for new plants like the Heinkel factory at Budzyn, which was only established in October 1942.

The numbers classified as working in direct armaments in the GG was still relatively low. Hilberg extracted the key figures for 1943-44 in the first edition of his book. I quoted these in the 2011 HC white paper.

The Reichsführer-SS, however, was unable to force through the mass murder of Jews employed in armaments factories or in directly war-related production. Osti, the major employer at Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki, did not manufacture armaments, and accordingly could not hold on to its workforce when the SS panicked. Nor could the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke at Janowska justify its continued existence as its output involved light manufacturing only. By contrast, the forced labour camps at the oil refineries of Boryslaw and Drohobycz in the Galicia district , as well as the forced labour camp at Budzyn in the Lublin district which produced aircraft components for Heinkel , were all left untouched by ‘Erntefest’, as were the forced labour camps for heavy industry and armaments in the Radom district. Indeed, the number of Jewish forced labourers employed in what was adjudged ‘direct’ armaments work rose from 22,444 in October 1943 to 27,439 in May 1944, as Jewish slave labourers engaged in non-armaments work were transferred to the arms factories, including the aforementioned 4,000 prisoners transferred from the Krakow district to Skarzysko-Kamienna in November 1943, and after 1,500 Jews were transferred from the Łódź ghetto to Skarzysko-Kamienna in March 1944.

On the Osti firm, see see Jan-Erik Schulte, ‘Zwangsarbeit für die SS. Juden in der Ostindustrie GmbH’ in: Norbert Frei et al (eds), Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Oeffentlichkeit. Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik. Munich: KG Saur, 2000, pp.41-74.
Jahresbericht 1943 DAW Lemberg, BArch NS 3/146, p.34.
On these camps see Rainer Karlsch, ‘Ein vergessenes Grossunternehmen. Die Geschichte der Karpaten Oel-AG’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 2004/1, pp.95-138, as well as the older work by East German historian Hanns-Heinz Kasper, ‘Die Ausplünderung polnischer und sowjetischer Erdöllagerstätten im Gebiet der Vorkarpaten durch den deutschen Imperialismus im zweiten Weltkrieg’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1978/II, pp.41-64. The rescue activities of Berthold Beitz are now the subject not only of extensive discussion in Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’ in Galizien, but also two recent biographies: Joachim Käppner, Berthold Beitz: die Biographie. Berlin: Berlin-Verl., 2010; Norbert F Pötzl, Beitz: eine deutsche Geschichte. Munich: Heyne, 2011
Lutz Budrass, ‘ “Arbeitskräfte können aus der reichlich vorhandenen jüdischen Bevölkerung gewonnen werden’. Das Heinkel-Werk in Budzyn 1942-1944’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1, 2004, pp.41-64; Wojciech Lenarczyk, ‘Budzyn’ in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds), Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Band 7. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2007, pp.89-92.
Adam Rutkowski, ‘Hitlerowskie obozy pracy dla zydow w dystrykcie radomskim’, Biuletyn ZIH 17/18, 1956, pp.106-128; cf. Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, pp. 353-365. There are now several detailed studies of individual camps. On Skarzysko-Kamienna see Felicja Karaj, Death Comes in Yellow. Skarzysko-Kamienna Slave Labor Camp. Amsterdam, 1996; on the Kielce camp see Felicja Karaj, ‘Heaven or Hell? The Two Faces of the HASAG-Kielce Camp’, Yad Vashem Studies XXXII, 2004, pp.269-321 ; on Starachowice see Browning, Remembering Survival.
Piotr Matusak, Przemysl na ziemiach polskich w latach II wojny swiatowej, Tom 1, Warsaw/Siedlce, 2009, p.207; Hilberg, Vernichtung, p.563.
027/1/Bi/Si, Überführung von 1500 Juden in das Generalgouvernement, 18.3.1944, I.A. gez Biebow, BArch B 162/21665 unpag., also published in Tatiana Berenstein, Artur Eisenbach and Adam Rutkowski (eds), Eksterminacja Zydow na ziemiach polskich w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej. Zbior dokumentov, Warsaw, 1957, p.256; cf. Karaj, Death Comes In Yellow, p.66.

Italics are post-2011 additions, I happen to have this updated file open.

Skarzysko-Kamienna required many extra workers because conditions in the chemical part of the ammunition factory were so awful, literally poisonous. This was 'Werk C', one of three sub-plants in the complex. Turnover was likely over 100% in 1943-mid 1944 before the evacuation of the workforce. While claims of 18-23,000 deaths there may be overblown, the known transfers with big reinforcements from the Lodz ghetto, Plaszow and Majdanek in the last twelve months of its existence topped up the camp at a high level, with thousands vanishing inside the factory and not being sent elsewhere until the evacuation.

Mortality wasn't nearly as high in other industrial/armaments camps in the Radom District; Christopher Browning established that it was about 25% (IIRC) in Starachowice over 1942-44.

The records of the Armaments Inspectorate in the GG and the subordinate Armaments Commands in Radom etc became available in NARA T77 in August 2022, the Bundesarchiv digitised the corresponding original files in RW 23 a year or so later. They confirm the conventional understanding as spelled out in the studies of individual camps as well as the Radom District - Robert Seidel's Deutsche Besatzungspolitik im Distrikt Radom was published in 2006 and was made open access practically a decade ago at Digi20.

Those 1944 figures ought to give you pause. Even if you can accept the harsh conditions in ammunition factories like Skarzysko-Kamienna which killed thousands of Jews, the armaments camps were not big enough to have soaked up the 330,000 deported from the Radom District in 1942 to Treblinka.

[Nazgul]

Those 1944 figures ought to give you pause. Even if you can accept the harsh conditions in ammunition factories like Skarzysko-Kamienna which killed thousands of Jews, the armaments camps were not big enough to have soaked up the 330,000 deported from the Radom District in 1942 to Treblinka.

The Fplo documents show multiple other labour camps for Jews on the same route, not just munitions factories.
TNT poisoning was not just confined to the Reich. The Canary Girls were British women who worked in munitions factories during World War One and World War Two.

They were known colloquially as canaries because their skin turned yellow due to toxic jaundice caused by the phosphorus used to make TNT, often leading to premature deaths.
I doubt if your Radom scenario is accurate but closer to Nessies failings as a historian.

[SanityCheck]

The Fplo documents show multiple other labour camps for Jews on the same route, not just munitions factories.

List those for the Radom District, indicating the type of work and employers.

I seem to recall you highlighting Sedziszow as one "stop" in the past, this had only 350 workers when it was closed and the survivors sent to Skarzysko-Kamienna at the end of 1942, at latest by February 1943. Tomaszow Mazowiecki ZALfJ was closed in May 1943 and 650 survivors sent to Blizyn. There's no hint in the existing sources that anyone was unloaded at Sedziszow to be employed by construction firms on roadbuilding for a few months. Look them up on USHMM Encyclopedia, vol II for ghettos has a lot of information on the numbers held back temporarily for labour. Sedziszow entry here:
https://muse.jhu.edu/document/2530

From a compilation of data on ZALfJ I made in 2006, which incorporated the website data in its previous version, there were virtually no ZALfJ which weren't absorbed into the industrial camps or SS camps in the Radom district in 1942-3.