Toxicity and forced labour in the Buna-plant

In order to understand which toxic consequences former workers are still facing one should first take a look at the working conditions in the GDR and their relations to forced labour.

At the end of the 1980s, production facilities such as the chlorine plant of the Buna Werke Schkopau, where chlorine, hydrogen and sodium lye were produced, were still almost in their original 1940s state and therefore technologically obsolete and partly in danger of collapse (Derlien, Faupel and Nieters 1999: 3). As a result of these health damaging working conditions combined with poor environmental and living conditions in the region, the Middle German Chemical Triangle increasingly increasingly lacked urgently needed workforce (Vesting 2012: 30). Only few people were willing to work under these conditions. Instead of improving this situation, forced labour was used in order to to meet the output values and allow production to continue in the toxic and health-threatening environment of the plant. As mentioned before, prisoners worked at Buna Werke from 1974 onwards (Vesting 2003: 54) and construction soldiers (Bausoldat:innen) were employed at the site since 1986 (ibid.: 152). However forced labour has an even longer standing tradition in Buna Werke; during the Nazi regime, especially Soviet prisoners were forced to do the heaviest and most toxic work at the chemical plant. Witnesses report of mistreatment, vermin infestations and hunger during this period (Schwarz 2017). In GDR times, old technologies and a disregard for safety measures immensely increased the potential for health hazards: for civilian workers, but especially for forced labourers. People were working while standing in mercury, or were burned by alkalis. In sections where prisoners got deployed, mainly in aluminium extraction, the authorized values of mercury (MAK Werte) and of carcinogenic substances such as chlorine, methanol, tetrachloroethane, pentachloroethane or potassium dichromate were exceeded (Vesting 2012: 123). Only a very few safety masks were provided for plant departments in which large numbers of prisoners worked. Construction soldiers also report of mercury contaminated soil next to the chlorine electrolysis plants in Buna, where they were supposed to dig cable pits (ibid.: 164).
Equally disastrous conditions were encountered by civilian labourers: “[…] what we also heard again and again, was about accidents at work. And no work protection and no protective goggles and acid burns.” (A, interview 21.06.2021, own translation) as one of our interviewees noted.  “So you were always happy when you left the site without injuries” (see B, interview 21.06.2021 or Brinkmann 1988: 03:57). Such feeling of insecurity in their working environment were described by several of our interlocutors, former Buna employees, and also in interviews quoted in other sources.
The conditions decribed here indeed resulted in incidents, such as in February 1990, when three men were burned to death in the 2,300-degree Celsius hot material shooting out of the carbide oven. Two more died in the days following the accident, and 23 were injured (Kriener 1990). The Ministry for State Security (known as MfS or Stasi) was aware of the conditions at the plant, as an inspection report by MfS Department XVIII from 1985 shows. It states: “The walls are dilapidated, numerous measuring and display devices are missing in the control room,” there are “leaks in the piping system and non-functional control technology”, the permissible exposure to pollutants and toxins is “exceeded to an extremely high degree”, and the “ventilation system blows mercury vapours into the rooms” (Könau 2015). A commission of experts, who on behalf of the Politbüro and the Council of Ministers inspected the Buna Werke in 1986, stated that in the first half of 1986, there had been 15 disruptions in the carbide ovens every day. The cooling systems were totally rotten, leading to 97 unscheduled shutdowns in June 1986 alone. According to the warning, there was an “acute danger of explosion” (Der Spiegel 1990). Although authorities were aware that incidents could happen every day,  production under these conditions was made possible by exemptions granted by the Ministry of Health (Vesting 2012: 122). In order to ensure the production goals, health damages and deaths were officially accepted.
The daily exposure to toxicity had effects on workers' health that are still experienced today. For example, a former chlorine electrolysis worker told a local newspaper that most of his colleagues died suddenly in their mid-40s or early 50s, most of them from cancer (Könau 2015). Similar stories can be found in reports of workers from the entire Middle German Chemical Triangle. Causal links between working conditions and clinical courses leading up to death were, however, not recognised. Claims for compensation payments due to work-related illnesses were and are still not asserted and in the event of workers' death, their relatives are not entitled to survivor’s pensions. One of our interviewees told us that reasons for lung diseases are not separately evaluated but rather assumed in people‘s individual behaviour, like smoking (A, interview, 21.06.2021). Medical records provided by factory doctors, which could be used for documentation, are still kept secret. Neither the state archives nor today's owners of parts of the old plants can tell where medical reports from the past can be found. For forced labourers and construction soldiers in particular, their experiences at the Buna site were linked not only to physical but also to psychological suffering. To this day, they have not been compensated for either of these harms. Their cases show us that securing the production has been and still is the main issue – but when it comes to social responsibility, no one seems willing to bear it.

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