Kalfaktor is a term for auxiliary workers or servants who perform so-called ‚simple‘ work. The female Kalfaktoren in the Klapperfeld were especially responsible for kitchen work.

Elsie Kühn-Leitz describes the special situation of these women as follows:

»They were mostly very pretty girls who came from the women‘s prison in Höchst, that is, women properly sentenced to prison, almost all of them because they had had dealings with foreign workers or prisoners of war, which was considered a serious crime in the Third Reich. The police captain of the prison selected these girls in the women‘s prison especially for their good looks, they were given uniform clothing, grey dresses and white aprons and partly bonnets, they lived separately in a section, had all kinds of privileges, especially with regard to food, they also cleaned up for the police captain and had freedom of movement, so to speak, within the prison. They were the neat, nice and invigorating elements of the prison, but also performed informer duties for the officials.«

Unfortunately, further sources on the situation of the Kalfaktoren are not yet known.

Quelle: Kühn-Leitz, Elsie: Mut zur Menschlichkeit. Vom Wirken einer Frau in ihrer Zeit. Dokumente, Briefe und Berichte. Herausgegeben von Klaus Otto Nass. Bonn 1994.