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Private company

Ostindustrie

Nazi German industrial project

Ostindustrie GmbH ("East Industry", abbreviated as Osti) was one of many industrial projects set up by the Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) using Jewish and Polish forced labor during World War II. Founded in March 1943 in German-occupied Poland, Osti operated confiscated Jewish and Polish prewar industrial enterprises, including foundries, textile plants, quarries and glassworks. Osti was headed by SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn, who was subordinated directly to Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office.2 It ceased to exist in 1944.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Mar 1943Founded1
  • Industryindustrial manufacturing1
  • HeadquartersGeneral Government1
  • Legal formGesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung1

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WWII OST
Photo: courtesy of Unknown Russian archive, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons4

Ostindustrie GmbH ("East Industry", abbreviated as Osti) was one of many industrial projects set up by the Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) using Jewish and Polish forced labor during World War II. Founded in March 1943 in German-occupied Poland, Osti operated confiscated Jewish and Polish prewar industrial enterprises, including foundries, textile plants, quarries and glassworks. Osti was headed by SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn, who was subordinated directly to Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. At its height, some 16,000 Jews and 1,000 Poles worked for the company, interned in a network of labor and concentration camps in the Lublin District of the semi-colonial General Government territory.2

Products and brands

By 16 May 1943, the SS Ostindustrie GmbH controlled several factories and workshops across Poland, grouped into five active Werke. These included a glassworks in Wołomin (Werk I), a turf factory in Dorohucza (Werk II), a broom and brush factory in Lublin (Werk III), workshops in Bliżyn, Radom, and Tomaszów (Werk IV), and Splitwerk – a grouping which comprised a shoe factory, tailoring factory, carpentry and joinery at the Budzyn Arbeitslager, a turf factory in Radom and an iron foundry in Lublin (Werk V). Several additional Werke were under construction at that time, including vehicle spare parts factories, the Trawniki Arbeitslager (Werk VI), earth and stone works in Lublin (Werk VII), a medical sanitary ware factory (Werk VIII), various slave-labor workshops in Lemberg, and the Poniatowa Arbeitslager (later transferred to Többens). By mid-1943, Globocnik projected the labor force of Osti to include some 45,000 Jews from a network of parallel camps with the main branch at Majdanek concentration camp; however, the physical infrastructure in the region was insufficient for such numbers.

From Wikipedia’s article on Ostindustrie, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Subsidiaries and ownership

Parent company

  • SS Main Economic and Administrative Office

Owners

  • Schutzstaffel

From Wikidata.1

Timeline

  1. Mar 1944Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. Mar 1943Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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