ABSTRACT
To understand the National Socialist concept of the slave as a disposable chattel, one needs a smaller example than is provided by the Third Reich as a whole, with its endless proliferation of cruelties. Throughout the period of racial persecutions, as though with an eye on the day of reckoning, a vocabulary of euphemisms for what was actually happening to Jews and other doomed categories became current among Nazi officials. Connections were made between the employment of slave labour and a totalitarian political system, but it is doubtful whether the revelations served to draw attention to the lack of fundamental human rights enjoyed by ordinary Soviet citizens at that time. Democratization of existing totalitarian regimes to the extent that slave labour camps can be abolished is unlikely to occur until ratification of international Conventions involves giving guarantees of access to United Nations officials for purposes of inspection – currently a remote possibility.
