Civilians, concentration camp prisoners, deportees, foreign nationals, Jews, and prisoners of war were all forced into the sprawling forced and slave labor system that encompassed most of Europe and supported the war efforts of the Nazi regime and Axis countries. Forced and slave labor was used in road-building and defense works; the chemical, construction, metal, mining, and munitions industries; and elsewhere. Such labor was integral to concentration camps and their subcamps, farms, ghettos, labor battalions, religious institutions, prisoner-of-war camps, and private industries in Germany, other Axis countries, and the German-occupied territories east and west. The objective of this symposium, held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on October 24, 2002, was to examine key elements of the forced and slave labor system as a European phenomenon during World War II.