Woman with an Ostarbeiter badge at the Auschwitz subsidiary IG-Farbenwerke factory (Nazi propaganda image)
Ostarbeiter badge
Operation
Period
1939 – 1945
Location
German-occupied Europe
Prisoners
Total
At least 7.6 million foreign civilians in 1944 [1]
Ostarbeiter (German:[ˈɔstˌʔaʁbaɪtɐ], lit. "Eastern worker") 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 (itself attached to the General Government), 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.[2] Eastern workers included ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Russians, Armenians, Tatars, and others.[3] Estimates of the number of Ostarbeiter range between 3 million and 5.5 million.[2]
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.[2][4] The age limit was reduced to 10 in November 1943.[2]Ostarbeiter were often the victims of rape, and tens of thousands of pregnancies due to rape occurred.[5]
Ostarbeiter often received starvation rations and were forced to live in guarded labor camps. Many died from starvation, 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 occupying powers repatriated many of the over 2.5 million liberated Ostarbeiter.[6] Those returning to the USSR suffered from social ostracism.[citation needed] 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.
^Cite error: The named reference Herbert was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abcdПавел Полян - Остарбайтеры. Журнальный зал в РЖ, 2016. Звезда 2005 / 6. (in Russian)
^Alexander von Plato; Almut Leh; Christoph Thonfeld (2010). Hitler's Slaves: Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-Occupied Europe. Berghahn Books. pp. 251–262. ISBN 978-1-84545-990-1.
^Cite error: The named reference HNN was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cezary Gmyz, Wprost magazine (Number 17/18/2007), ""Seksualne Niewolnice III Rzeszy" [Sex-slaves of the Third Reich]". 22 April 2007. Archived from the original on May 13, 2008. Retrieved 2016-02-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) pp. 1–3.
^International 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.
Ostarbeiter (German: [ˈɔstˌʔaʁbaɪtɐ], lit. "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and...
with a similar number of workers in this category from other countries. Ostarbeiter ("Eastern workers") – Soviet and Polish civil workers, mostly rounded...
Among the Polish and Soviet female forced labour (German: Zivil- und Ostarbeiter) unintended pregnancies were common due to rampant sexual abuse by their...
2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023. Steinert, Johannes-Dieter. Kleine Ostarbeiter: Child Forced Labor in Nazi Germany and German Occupied Eastern Europe...
– were sexually exploited by German men. In Brandenburg, two Polish Ostarbeiter teens who returned home to Kraków in advanced stage of pregnancy, reported...
: Ваш выбор ЦИРЗ, 1996. – pp. 735–38. (Victims of Two Dictatorships. Ostarbeiters and POW in Third Reich and Their Repatriation) (Russian) Evdokimov, Rostislav...
disease. 60,000 were forcibly transported to Germany as slave workers (Ostarbeiter). Among these was Boris Romanchenko. The 96-year old survivor of forced...
Furthermore, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated Ostarbeiter, POWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000...
WWII the company profited from (expropriated) Jewish real estate and Ostarbeiter; after the war from the economic boom. The first store in the USA was...
the children of disabled and mentally ill persons. Forced abortions of Ostarbeiter for instance was referenced in documents from the Trials of War Criminals...
main goals were to unite the working class with the prosecuted people, Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war in a large movement that would overthrow the Nazi...
German government attempted to enroll Soviet citizens voluntarily for the Ostarbeiter program. Originally this effort worked well, but the news of the terrible...
forced labor, mainly French Fremdarbeiter, "foreign workers", and Russian Ostarbeiter ("eastern workers"). The key to the Flak area were three huge Flak towers...
November and beginning of December 1941. “Recruitment” of civilians as Ostarbeiter began in December 1941. In 1950, about twelve Italian POWs (prisoners...
series of mass extrajudicial killings of 208 forced labourers and POWs (Ostarbeiter), mainly of Russian and Polish descent, by Nazi troops under the command...
(blue eyes, light hair) would be allowed to serve Germans as slaves (Ostarbeiter). Some recent estimates raise the number of Belarusians who perished...
territories since the beginning of World War II. In 1940, it initiated Ostarbeiter, a massive project of enslaving the populations of Eastern European countries...
Soviet Union in Western Europe. About 3 million had been forced laborers (Ostarbeiters) in Germany and occupied territories. The Soviet POWs and the Vlasov...
when Soviet troops moved into East Prussia, large numbers of enslaved Ostarbeiter ("Eastern workers") were freed, and knowledge of the suffering and deaths...
population. Thousands of Crimean Tatars were forcibly transferred to work as Ostarbeiter in German factories under the supervision of the Gestapo in what were...
Residents of Kyiv Oblast are moving towards the collective dispatch of Ostarbeiter to Germany. Nekrasivska Street, Kyiv 1942 Female foreign workers from...
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