(, "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for millions of foreign workers deported from the occupied Soviet Union for slave labor in Germany during World War II. The program was a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Ostarbeiter comprised about 2.8 million people, with the largest group (2.2 million) coming from Ukraine. About 1.6 million were children under 16. They often received starvation rations and were forced to live in guarded labor camps. 80,000 to 100,000 died from starvation, disease, overwork, bombing (they were frequently denied access to bomb shelters), abuse, and execution by the German overseers. These workers were often denied wages; when they did get paid, they received payment in a special currency which could only be used to buy specific products at the camps where they lived.
Following the war, the Allies repatriated many of the over 2.5 million liberated OstarbeiterInternational Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Volume 1 Chapter X - The Slave Labor Program, The Illegal Use of Prisoners of War. Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. under the terms of the Yalta Agreement. Those from territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939-1941 were not subject to repatriation from the Western zones of occupation, and settled in Germany or emigrated. In 2000 the German government and thousands of German companies made a one-time payment of just over € 5 billion to victims of the Nazi regime.
Terminology
The official German records for the late summer of 1944 listed 7.6 million foreign civilian workers and prisoners of war in the territory of the "Greater German Reich", who for the most part had been brought there by force.Ulrich Herbert (16 March 1999), The Army of Millions of the Modern Slave State: Deported, used, forgotten: Who were the forced workers of the Third Reich, and what fate awaited them? Universitaet Freiburg. Thus, they represent roughly a quarter of all registered workers in the entire economy of the German Reich at that time.
A class system was created amongst the (foreign workers) brought to Germany. The multi-layered system was based on layers of national hierarchies. The , the so-called "guest workers" from Germanic countries, Scandinavia, Romania and Italy, had the highest status. The forced workers in Germany included (military internees), POWs, and Zivilarbeiter ("civilian workers"), primarily Polish workers from the General Government. They received reduced wages and food rations and had to work longer hours than the former, could not use public facilities (such as public transportation, restaurants, or churches), were forbidden to possess certain items and some were required to wear a sign – the "Polish P" – attached to their clothing.
The were the "eastern workers", primarily from Reichskommissariat Ukraine. They were marked with a badge reading "OST" (East) and were subject to even harsher conditions than the civilian workers. They were forced to live in special camps that were fenced with barbed wire and under guard, and were particularly exposed to the arbitrariness of the Gestapo and the commercial industrial plant guards. By the end of 1944 the German Reich held 5.7 million of foreign civilian workers; 2.8 million of them were from the Soviet Union.
Demographics
Ostarbeiter victims comprised about 2.8 million people, with 2.2 million coming from Ukraine. Following Operation Barbarossa, the Germans deported civilians at unprecedented levels from the newly-formed German districts of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, District of Galicia (itself attached to the General Government), and Reichskommissariat Ostland. These areas comprised the conquered territories of the Soviet Union within its 1941 borders. In addition to Ukrainians, Ostarbeiter included ethnic Belarusians, Russians, Poles, Armenians, Tatars, and others.
Although forced workers from most occupied territories were predominantly men, of the "eastern workers" taken from occupied Soviet territories over 50% were women. A significant number of them were children, deported alone or with their families. After the war, Soviet authorities repatriated about 1.65 million children under the age of 16. By 1944, most new workers were under 16; 30% were as young as 12–14 years of age when taken from their homes. The age limit was reduced to 10 in November 1943.
By 1944, the policy turned into mass abductions of virtually anyone to fulfill the labour needs of the Organisation Todt among other similar projects; 40,000 to 50,000 children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped by the German occupational forces and transported to Germany proper as slave labourers during the so-called . The () was an acronym for allegedly homeless, parentless and unhoused children gathered in lieu of their guardians. After arriving in Germany, the children were handed over to Reich Labour Service or the Junkers aircraft works. The secondary purpose of these abductions was to pressure the adult populations further to register in place of children.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 351.
History At the end of 1941, a labour crisis developed in Germany. Following the mobilization of men into its massive armies, the country faced a shortage of labour in support of its war industries. To help overcome this shortage, Göring decreed to bring in people from the territories seized during Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union.
Recruitment and kidnapping
Initially a recruiting campaign was launched in January 1942 by Fritz Sauckel for workers to go to Germany. "On January 28 the first special train will leave for Germany with hot meals in Kiev, Zdolbuniv and Przemyśl", offered an announcement. The first train was full when it departed from Kiev on January 22.
The advertising continued in the following months. "Germany calls you! Go to Beautiful Germany! 100,000 Ukrainians are already working in free Germany. What about you?" ran a Kiev newspaper ad on March 3, 1942. Word got back however, of the sub-human slave conditions that Ukrainians met in Germany and the campaign failed to attract sufficient volunteers. Forced recruitment was implemented, although propaganda still depicted the workers as volunteers.Europe at Work in Germany "Background "
When the news about the terrible conditions many faced in Germany came back to Ukraine, the pool of volunteers dried up. The Germans resorted to mass round-ups, often targeting large gatherings such as church congregations and crowds at sporting events, with entire groups simply marched off at gunpoint to waiting cattle trucks and deported to Germany.
Employment Ostarbeiter were employed in agriculture, mining, armament manufacturing, metal production, and railroads. Ostarbeiter were initially sent to intermediate camps, where laborers were picked out for their assignments directly by representatives of labor-starved companies. Ford-Werke in Cologne and Opel in Rüsselsheim and Brandenburg each employed thousands of such at their plants.
Some worked for private firms, although many were employed in the factories making armaments. These factories were prime targets for Allied bombing. The were considered to be quite productive and efficient. Males were thought to be the equivalent of 60-80% of a German worker, and women — 90-100%. Two million Ukrainians worked mostly in the armaments factories, including the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde.
According to Alexander Dallin, as of December 1944, the numbers of deployment were: +TaskNumber of OstarbeiterAgricultural work725,000Mining93,000Machine and equipment manufacturing180,000Metal industries170,000Railways122,000
One special category was that of young women recruited to act as nannies; Hitler argued that many women would like to have children, and many of them were restricted by the lack of domestic helpLynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World, p. 256, . (this was one of many efforts made to promote the birth rate).Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p 237, Since the nannies would be in close company with German children as well as in a position where they might be sexually exploited, they were required to be suitable for Germanization.Nicholas, p. 255 Himmler spoke of thus winning back German blood and benefiting the women, too, who would have a social rise through working in Germany and even the chance to marry there. They could be assigned only to families with many children who would properly train the nannies as well. These assignments were carried out by the NS-Frauenschaft.Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p 258, Originally, this recruitment was carried out only in the annexed territories of Poland, but the lack of women who passed screening extended it to all of Poland, and also to occupied territories of the USSR.
Conditions Within Germany lived either in private camps owned and managed by the large companies, or in special camps guarded by privately paid police services known as the . They worked an average of 12 hours a day, six days a week. They were paid approximately 30% of German workers' wages; however, most of the money went toward food, clothing and board. The labor authorities, the RSHA , complained that many firms viewed these former Soviet civilian workers as "civilian prisoners", treated them accordingly, and paid no wages at all to them. Those who received pay got specially printed paper money and savings stamps, which they could use only for the purchase of a limited number of items in special camp stores. By law they were given worse food rations than other forced labor groups. Starvation rations and primitive accommodation were given to these unfortunates in Germany.
The were restricted to their compounds, in some cases labor camps. Being ethnically Slavic, they were classified by German authorities as the ("sub-humans"), who could be beaten, terrorized, and killed for their transgressions. Those who tried to escape were hanged where other workers could see their bodies. Escape or leaving without authorization was punished by death. The Nazis issued a ban on sexual relations between Germans and the Easterners.Sonderbehandlung erfolgt durch Strang. Einsatz von Arbeitskräften aus dem Osten, vom 20. 2. 1942. NS-Archiv. On 7 December 1942 Himmler called for any "unauthorized sexual intercourse" to be punishable by death. In accordance with these new racial laws all sexual relations, even those that did not result in pregnancy, were severely punished as (racial pollution).Robert Edwin Hertzstein, The War That Hitler Won p139 . During the war, hundreds of Polish and Russian men were executed for their sexual relations with German women,Majer, "Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich, p. 855. even though the main offenders by far – wrote Ulrich Herbert – were the French and Italian civilian workers who were not prohibited from social contacts with them.Ulrich Herbert (1997), Hitler's Foreign Workers, Enforced Foreign Labor In Germany Under The Third Reich. Cambridge University Press, pp. 269, 324–325. .
Rape of female was extremely common and led to tens of thousands of pregnancies caused by rape.Cezary Gmyz, Wprost magazine (Number 17/18/2007), pp. 1–3. The victims began giving so many unwanted births that hundreds of special Nazi birthing centres for foreign workers had to be created in order to dispose of their infants.