Report reveals extent of Audi slavery under Nazis

Company spokesperson Jürgen De Graeve said that the numbers are “much higher than we had thought. Older source material had put the number of forced labourers at 11,200 and the number of concentration camp inmates at 1,800.”

He said the company’s use of slaves began in the summer of 1942 and peaked in the final two years of the war.

Like many major German firms, including Siemens, Audi — then known as Auto Union — had a deal with the SS whereby workers would be provided.

The SS also built six labour camps for Auto Union forced labourers; they were satellites of the Flossenbürg Concentration camp, Mr De Graeve said. The labour camps were located at Leitmeritz, Zschopau, Zwickau, Siegmar/Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Oederann and Wilischthal.

In the past 20 years, several other German companies and government ministries have commissioned historians to research their Nazi-era history. The first was Volkswagen.