Audi Admits Using 3,700 Concentration Camp Workers
Image by getty images
A new report by German car company Audi shows that 3,700 concentration camp inmates were forced to work in its factories during World War II.
Audi had previously acknowledged its role in exploiting forced labor, paying millions of dollars into a fund set up by the German government to compensate victims, according to the Daily Mail. But Monday’s report shows the extent of Audi’s complicity with Nazi Germany.
In a deal brokered with the Nazi SS, Audi had a total of 20,000 forced laborers working in its factories. The SS had six labor camps built for the company, which was then known as Auto Union.
The company also used its factories to build tanks and aircraft engines for the Nazis, according to the report.
Audi follows BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen in commissioning a report on its activities under Nazi Germany.
“I’m very shocked by the scale of the involvement of the former Auto Union leadership in the system of forced and slave labor,” Audi works council head Peter Mosch told German magazine Wirtschaftswoche, according to the Times of Israel. “I was not aware of the extent.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
