ZDFE to Rep Hitler’s Slaves Doc

Filming has been completed on the three-part docuseries Hitler’s Slaves, with ZDF Enterprises commencing worldwide distribution for the title immediately.

Hitler’s Slaves explores the beginnings of forced labor in the early Nazi era and coming to terms with it after the war. Organized by the Nazi regime and supported by society, the use of forced labor was a mass phenomenon, with the victims including prisoners of war and civilians. During the Nazi dictatorship, 13 million people were deported to Nazi Germany to toil as forced laborers, with roughly one in five not surviving.

From filmmaker Frank Diederichs and probono Fernsehproduktion, Hitler’s Slaves portrays the system of Nazi forced labor based on the fates of individual prisoners. The docuseries combine scientific analyses with personal experiences of former forced laborers or their descendants. It features Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, economic historian Thomas Kuczynski and professor of Eastern European history Tanja Penter.