The German Catholic Bishops’ Conference has released an exhaustive study of the use of forced labor by Catholic institutions under the Nazi regime. Nearly 6,000 people, including conscripted laborers and prisoners of war, were forced to work at Church-administered institutions during World War II. Their work is detailed in a study commissioned by the bishops' conference, entitled ‘Forced Labor and the Catholic Church: 1939-1945.’ Cardinal Karl Lehman of Mainz, the former head of the Bishops' Conference, said that the 700-page study was "an important step along the way to constructing future unity." Lehmann added that the use of forced labor was "a burden of history that our Church will keep facing up to in the future."
The study reveals that the 5,904 people were put to work at Catholic institutions, on orders from Nazi authorities. In most cases, they worked in hospitals, orphanages, cemeteries or other institutions run by the church. The workers assigned to church institutions represented only a small fraction of the people forced into labor by the Nazi regime. An estimated 13 million people were forced and slave laborers for Nazi Germany during World War II.
