During the Second World War, Hasag became a Nazi arms-manufacturing conglomerate with dozens of factories across German-occupied Europe using slave labour on a massive scale.

As the Nazi Party grew in influence and eventually came to power in 1933, growing militarism led to the company's return to small arms production under the new SS leadership.

Following the invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II the company expanded to accommodate thousands of NS-Zwangsarbeiters from concentration camps and ghettos.

The company was founded in September 1863 as Häckel und Schneider in Paunsdorf, near Leipzig,[1] with 20 employees who made lamps by hand.

[1][5] Hugo Schneider was a 27-year-old Silesian salesman; his partner, Ernst Häckel, was a plumber, who had started the business making lamps, tinware and painted wares in 1854.

[5] In 1902, in addition to lamps, the company began making portable stoves for heating and cooking, bicycle headlights and brass sheeting and wire.

[5] The outbreak of World War I briefly interrupted the success of the business, as HASAG lost important foreign markets, but this was soon supplanted by the production of small arms.

[5] The worldwide economic crisis and the situation in Germany affected HASAG as well, as workers continually found their remuneration to be inadequate.

[1] As was common in the Nazi armaments industry, nearly all of the deputies and directors were in the SS, the Gestapo or the SA, most notably Wilhelm Renner, father of Hannelore Kohl, who later became the head of the military business and helped develop the Panzerfaust.

[1] In 1934, with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in control of the government and a growing militarization in Germany, HASAG undertook intensive negotiations with the Reichswehr and again received contracts for ammunition production,[5] having been classified as a military supplier.

Dresdner Bank and the Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt financed the development of the company into an arms manufacturer and the old products became a sideline.

[5] The military contracts were very lucrative because they did not have to arrange distribution to a large number of retailers, rather they sold in bulk directly to one customer, the Third Reich.

[1] Under Renner's leadership, HASAG remained one of the largest arms manufacturers in central Germany till the end of World War II.

An agreement was reached between the arms inspector and Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the SS-Obergruppenführer of the General Government, allowing Jews to be used as workers.

[1] HASAG was able to use women to replace male workers because of automation and their machinery, also the company produced small and medium-sized arms.

[1] In 1944, Reichs Minister for Armaments and Munitions Albert Speer gave HASAG special authority under the title "Hochlauf (run-up, production boost) Panzerfaust",[3][9] making the company the weapon's sole producer in Germany.

As at Colditz, Flößberg's slave laborers were primarily Hungarian and Polish Jews, but one-quarter to one-fifth were political prisoners from various countries in Europe.

Aside from the gnawing hunger, there were no sanitary facilities or running water for the prisoners, so they could not wash themselves or their clothing[12] and it rained often, making the camp very muddy.

[11] Following their breakfast of thin coffee, prisoners were forced to perform 12 hours of physically hard labor under the supervision of capricious guards,[12] who vengefully beat them with sticks and screamed at them.

[13] Conditions were so bad at Flößberg, that the commandant told the SS to make some improvements, not because of concern for the prisoners' welfare, but because missile production and therefore the war effort would be negatively affected.

[13] One of Kotkowsky's friends found the conditions so unbearable, he took the opportunity to be returned to Buchenwald with a transport of prisoners too sick to work, betting his chances of survival against the odds.

How we survived that ordeal was beyond my understanding.With Allied forces nearing and more and more German troops seen in retreat, the SS evacuated Flößberg labor camp on April 13, 1945.

[1][15] After 1949, HASAG's civilian patents were used by Volkseigener Betrieben, the publicly owned industrial enterprises in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

[18] An earlier memorial to the "Victims of Fascism" was unveiled in 1948 and renovated in 1975, when a red triangle was added to commemorate the political prisoners who died.