Hugo Boss facing Holocaust lawsuit.FASHION designer Hugo Boss is the latest high-profile businessman to face a lawsuit after being accused of using slave labour slave labour, slave labor (US) n → trabajo de esclavosslave labour n → travail m d'esclave; it's just slave labour (fig in World War II. US lawyers acting for Holocaust victims While victims of the Holocaust were primarily Jews, the Nazis also persecuted and often killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior, undesirable or dangerous. have started legal proceedings All actions that are authorized or sanctioned by law and instituted in a court or a tribunal for the acquisition of rights or the enforcement of remedies. against Boss Ltd and 21 other firms, mostly German. The lawsuit comes a year after an Austrian magazine exposed the use of slave labour by Boss to make the uniforms worn by the SS, the Hitler Youth Hitler Youth German Hitler-Jugend Organization set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youths aged 13–18 in Nazi principles. and the German wermacht during the Third Reich. On the strength of the report, Boss hired a historian to probe the firm's activities in wartime. It's understood he found French POWs and Polish death camp "Polish death camp(s)" and "Polish concentration camp(s)" are misleading terms that have appeared in the media in reference to World War II German concentration camps located in German-occupied Poland involved in The Holocaust. inmates HAD been used in manufacturing the clothing. Today Hugo Boss is a leading name in fashion. But when he founded a textile factory in 1923 it was to make post office and police uniforms. The advent of Nazism and its love of uniforms meant the firm had full order books for the 12-year reign of the Third Reich. But manpower became a problem as workers went into the armed services The Constitution authorizes Congress to raise, support, and regulate armed services for the national defense. The President of the United States is commander in chief of all the branches of the services and has ultimate control over most military matters. . Boss, like thousands of other German firms, used slave labour to keep production lines going. Last year Sigfried Boss, 83, said: "Of course my father belonged to the Nazi party. But who didn't belong back then? The whole industry worked for the Nazi army." It's thought Boss's lawyers will argue that any forced labourers were fairly treated in comparison to others in Germany industry. Last week Europe's biggest car maker Volkswagen faced a lawsuit when it emerged 400 children of slave labourers had died of neglect at a company-run nursery. |
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