Ostarbeiter
Ostarbeiter was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginning of the war and began doing so at unprecedented levels following Operation Barbarossa in 1941. They apprehended Ostarbeiter from the newly-formed German districts of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, District of Galicia, and Reichskommissariat Ostland. These areas comprised German-occupied Poland and the conquered territories of the Soviet Union. According to Pavel Polian, although the Ostarbeiter from most occupied territories were predominantly men, of the "eastern workers" taken from occupied Soviet territories over 50% were women, and of those from Poland nearly 30% were women. Eastern workers included ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Russians, Armenians, Tatars, and others. Estimates of the number of Ostarbeiter range between 3 million and 5.5 million.
By 1944, most new workers were under the age of 16 because those older were usually conscripted for service in Germany; 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. Ostarbeiter were often the victims of rape, and tens of thousands of pregnancies due to rape occurred.
Ostarbeiter often received starvation rations and were forced to live in guarded labor camps. Many died from starvation, overwork, bombing, 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 occupying powers repatriated many of the over 2.5 million liberated Ostarbeiter. American authorities banned the repatriation of Ostarbeiter in October 1945, and some of them immigrated to the U.S. as well as to other non eastern-bloc countries. In 2000 the German government and thousands of German companies made a one-time payment of just over € 5 billion to Ostarbeiter 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. 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 Fremdarbeiter brought to Germany. The multi-layered system was based on layers of national hierarchies. The Gastarbeitnehmer, the so-called "guest workers" from Germanic countries, Scandinavia, Romania and Italy, had the highest status. The Zwangsarbeiter included Militärinternierte, POWs, Zivilarbeiter ; and primarily Polish prisoners 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, were forbidden to possess certain items and some were required to wear a sign – the "Polish P" – attached to their clothing. The Ostarbeiter were the Eastern workers, primarily from Reichskommissariat Ukraine. They were marked with a badge reading "OST" 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. At the end of the war 5.5 million Ostarbeiter were returned to the USSR.
History
At the end of 1941, a new 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 Central and Eastern Europe. These workers were called Ostarbeiter. The crisis deepened as the war with the Soviet Union went on. 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 Polish children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped by the German occupational forces and transported to Germany proper as slave labourers during the so-called Heuaktion. The Heuaktion 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.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.
When the news about the terrible conditions many Ostarbeiter 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.
Nannies
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 help. 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. 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. 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 Ostarbeiter 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 Werkschutz. 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 Arbeitskreis, 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 Ostarbeiter were restricted to their compounds, in some cases labor camps. Being ethnically Slavic, they were classified by German authorities as the Untermenschen, 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. 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 Rassenschande. During the war, hundreds of Polish and Russian men were executed for their sexual relations with German women, 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.
Rape of female Ostarbeiter was extremely common and led to tens of thousands of pregnancies caused by rape. 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.
Many Ostarbeiter died when Allied bombing raids targeted the factories where they worked and the German authorities refused to allow them into bomb shelters. Many also perished because the German authorities ordered that "they should be worked to death".
Nazi authorities attempted to reproduce such conditions on farms, ordering farmers to integrate the workers into their workforce while enforcing total social separation, including not permitting them to eat at the same table, but this proved far more difficult to enforce. Sexual relationships in particular were able to take place despite efforts to raise German women's "racial consciousness". When Germany's military situation worsened, these workers' conditions often improved as the farmers tried to protect themselves against a defeat.
Native German workers served as foremen and supervisors over the forced labour in factories, and therefore no solidarity developed between foreigners and German nationals. The German workers became accustomed to inequalities raised by racism against the workers and became indifferent to their plight.