Historians of the Holocaust have generally accepted that the Nazi regime gave a fundamental priority to racial ideology over economic utility in carrying out the Final Solution. Perhaps the most succinct and emphatic statement in this regard was the cryptic message of December 18, 1941: “In principle, economic considerations are not to be taken into account in the settlement of the [Jewish] problem.” It is my purpose not to dispute but rather to qualify this axiom of Nazi Jewish policy through an examination of the German exploitation and destruction of Jewish labor in Poland.

I will argue for four points. First, Nazi policy toward the use of Jewish labor in Poland differed in both time and place. Conclusions drawn from a single camp or single phase of occupation are generalized only at the risk of considerable distortion. The story is a complex one. Second, in the German use of Jewish labor in Poland, economic considerations were taken seriously by many Germans but only within and not as a challenge to the parameters set by political and ideological factors. Third, even within these ideological parameters there was no consensus among the Germans over the use of Jewish labor, and productive utilization of Jewish labor often faced opposition and sabotage from both local and higher authorities. In 1942–43, Himmler himself was the driving spirit behind the destruction of Jewish labor, apparently finding “destruction through labor” an unsatisfactory policy in most circumstances.