Munca obligatorie ca dimensiune a Holocaustului în România? Studiu de caz: Banatul românesc
Mandatory labor as a dimension of the Holocaust in Romania? Case study on the Romanian Banat

Summary/Abstract: Mandatory labor was the policy implemented by the Antonescu regime by which the Jews of Romania were forced to work for the needs of the State. The harshest kind of labor was in work detachments in which Jewish men aged 20-40 were sent in groups of anywhere between 20 and 500 to do hard labor on stone quarries, forestry, and infrastructure maintenance on roads and railroads. This paper tries to make the point that in order to better understand the institution of mandatory labor that, firstly, it should be organized into two categories: forced labor, namely the work detachments, and mandatory labor in which Jews aged 18-19 and 41-50 had to do more rudimentary jobs in local factories or businesses. Secondly, even though forced labor involved the degradation and dehumanization of Jews, it was never used as a policy of mass extermination and that therefore it should not be taken as a dimension of the Holocaust in Romania. Lastly, this paper attempts to showcase the region of Banat as an example of a region in which Jews had better treatment than in other regions of Romania.

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