Required to wear the letter "P" as a badge, Polish forced laborers were identifiable wherever they went. Due to numerous sets of regulations and penal measures, they barely had any rights. Germans felt empowered to use violence against them and faced no consequences for such actions. As a result, Polish men and women often experienced open hostility or attacks by Germans in public.
After the war, Tadeusz Czerniak recounted one such experience. He and his colleagues were taunted by German youth, because they were walking on the sidewalk. The police legitimized the attacks by forcing the Poles back onto the sidewalk from the street.
Tadeusz Czerniak’s private photograph shows a different reality, but only at first glance. Upon closer examination, the scene seems staged—probably to create a different impression for the recipients of the photograph back home. However, the camp fence in the background and the badges give indications of the coerced situation.
Tadeusz Czerniak was born in 1919 in Smulsko near Łódź. Beginning in April 1940 he had to perform forced labor in a weapons factory in Eberswalde.
He was one of over 20 million people from throughout Europe, who had to perform force labor for Germany under National Socialism.
