Nazi policy labeled those not considered ethnic Germans as racially inferior. According to this racial hierarchy, people of Slavic origin—such as Poles, Russians, and Serbs—were marked for enslavement, deportation, and murder, as their lands were to be repopulated with ethnic Germans. Between the years 1939 and 1945, approximately 1.5 million Poles from Nazi-occupied territories, mostly teenage boys and girls, were deported to Germany for forced labor. Racial separation laws also prohibited relations between Germans and "non-Aryans."
One such law, known as "The Polish Decree" of March 1940, regulated the working and living conditions of Polish laborers. Under this provision, any Pole who had sexual relations with a German man or woman, or approached them in any other improper manner, was punished with death. The policy was strictly enforced by the Gestapo.1
Whereas Nazi police officials were charged with enforcing such measures, authorities could also often rely on civilians to reinforce them in principle. This film documents a spectacle of public humiliation of a young couple in Steinsdorf—formerly the town of Ścinawa Nyska, in the German-annexed region of Poland—that had supposedly broken the racial separation laws.2 The forbidden affair between Bronia, a 16-year-old Polish slave laborer, and Gerhard, a 19-year-old German, had been reported to the Gestapo. Subsequently, the two were paraded through the streets of the town, with their hands tied, barefoot, and wearing signs reading, "I am a Polish pig" and "I am a German traitor."3 During the "parade," their hair is cut, and Bronia is forced to light the pile of hair on fire.
This 1941 film captures the reactions of the couple, as well as many spectators and participants in the "parade" and rituals of humiliation. For some of those men, women, and children, the event appears to function as a festive social gathering, accompanied by children playing musical instruments. The film concludes with the couple's arrival at the local prison.4