Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW; literally the German Equipment Works (1939 -- 1943) | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

The Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW; literally the German Equipment Works) was a Nazi German defense contractor with headquarters in Berlin during World War II, owned and operated by the Schutzstaffel (SS). It consisted of a network of requisitioned factories and camp workshops across German-occupied Europe exploiting the prisoner slave labor from Nazi concentration camps and the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. DAW outfitted the German military with boots, uniforms and materials on the eastern front at a windfall profit, provided wood and metal supplies, as well as reconstruction work on railway lines and freight trains.

The business enterprise was founded in May 1939 and was in operation until 1943. About 15,500 concentration camp prisoners died at DAW due to heavy workloads imposed by the contractor and the inhuman working conditions "calculated not just to cripple their bodies but also to plunge them into a state of perpetual terror." DAW operated several businesses in the Dachau Concentration Camp, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, where forced labor was used. Work was later expanded to Majdanek concentration camp, KZ Lviv (Janowska Road Camp), Stutthof, and other camps.