Eastern workers

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Patch to identify Eastern workers

During the Second World War, Ostarbeiter was the official name for workers of non-German nationality who were recorded in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine , in the Generalkommissariat Beloruthenia or in areas that bordered these areas to the east and the former Free States of Latvia and Estonia and for the German Reich worked. After the occupation of these areas by the Wehrmacht , they were recruited to work in the German Reich including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, or they were deported there for forced labor . They were mainly used in companies in the armaments industry and agriculture and within the framework of the "Bauhilfe der Deutsche Arbeitsfront GmbH" for the construction of makeshift accommodation within the framework of the German Housing Fund in order to compensate for the war-related shortage of German workers. Their legal status was determined in June 1942 by the Council of Ministers for Reich Defense .

During the entire period of the war, about 2.75 million Eastern workers were employed in the Reich.

origin

Ethnically speaking, most of the people affected were Ukrainians , Poles , Belarusians and Russians . With the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union in 1941, the Wehrmacht had invaded the Soviet Union . In the occupied territories, the civil administration of the Reich Commissariats began to recruit and deport workers for German industry. In order to be able to easily distinguish them from other forced laborers, workers from the East had to wear a patch with the label "OST" firmly attached to their clothing, while workers from the Generalgouvernement had to wear a patch with the letter "P" (Poland).

The volunteers (HiWi) in the service of the German armed forces were given a sleeve strip and certain privileges, above all the same food rations as Germans, to distinguish them.

After their liberation by the Western Allies of the anti-Hitler coalition , most Eastern workers were initially housed in DP camps as so-called Displaced Persons (DPs) . Under Soviet pressure, the Western Allies repatriated them to the Soviet Union. There many of them ended up in the Gulag camp system because they were accused of collaborating with the enemy and of espionage because of their stay in the German sphere of influence .

Eastern workers in National Socialist law

Ostarbeiter was a classification for “ foreign national ” civil workers. Anyone who was not considered a foreigner under Nazi law was regulated by the German People's List , which was based on a four-level constitutional hierarchy. The lowest two of the four hierarchical levels were formed on the one hand by the "protection members of the German Reich", on the other hand by the members of the Protectorate (Bohemia and Moravia). “Protection members” were primarily residents of annexed areas, ie ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Slovenes. They were considered neither Germans nor foreigners, but rather “stateless”, so they weren't Eastern workers either. A fifth level in the hierarchy were the foreigners or “foreign nationals”, to which all Jews and Sinti and Roma of German citizenship belonged. This fifth stage was in turn divided into six different groups that were discriminated against in legal terms to varying degrees. The lowest group was formed by Jews and Sinti and Roma who were subject to a policy of targeted extermination. Eastern workers were the second lowest group.

"Eastern Workers' Decree"

“Eastern worker” in Germany, spring 1945.
Leaflet for Eastern workers from the Soviet Union
Eastern workers in Osnabrück who were rescued shortly before their planned murder, April 7, 1945

After the attack on the Soviet Union, the General Provisions on Workers from the Occupied Territories in the East of 1942 , also known as the "Eastern Workers' Decree", dated February 20, 1942, based on the model of the Poland Decrees, added stricter provisions for Soviet prisoners of war and civilian workers . Written orders were issued to the local administrative and police offices as well as the operators in relation to the decrees.

The "Eastern Workers' Decrees" contained the following provisions:

  • Prohibition to leave the workplace
  • Prohibition of owning money and valuables
  • Prohibition of owning bicycles
  • Prohibition to purchase tickets
  • Prohibition of owning lighters
  • Labeling requirement: a strip of fabric with the inscription "East" had to be attached to each item of clothing in a clearly visible manner
  • The managers and foremen had the right to punish
  • worse food than for Germans
  • less wages than Germans
  • Any contact with Germans was forbidden, even going to church together was forbidden
  • Separate accommodation for Eastern workers, separated according to sex
  • Failure to comply with work instructions or contradictions threatened to be sent to a labor education camp , the conditions in these camps were similar to those of a concentration camp
  • Strict prohibition of sexual intercourse with Germans, the death penalty was mandatory

Later, when the Germans' fortunes at war turned and the Soviet workers were needed more urgently, the previous designation "East" was changed. "In recognition of their cooperation in the fight against the Jewish-Bolshevik world threat" Eastern workers received instead a Volkstumsabzeichen, an oval sunflower wreath with St. Andrew's Cross , St. George's Cross , including ear gear and others. This should illustrate a kind of social advancement. "The 'Untermensch' had been made a citizen!"

Eastern workers saving

Foreign workers in Germany had the opportunity to have postal savings accounts issued; Eastern workers were excluded from this. According to foreign exchange law, they were forbidden to take Reichsmarks back to their home country. In 1942 a special form of “Eastern workers' saving” was introduced, which was open to workers from the Ukraine, Belarus and the newly occupied eastern regions. They received cards on which they could stick tokens and which they could send to their relatives, who could then withdraw half of the savings amount and exchange it for the respective currency. Withdrawal was not possible within the German Reich. The workers should be able to get the other half themselves after their return. On September 27, 1944, the payment was banned in the home countries. At the same time, at the request of the NSDAP party chancellery in Munich , the workers in the East were to save more. However, the Central Economic Bank of Ukraine was given the opportunity to make payments to workers from the East “if necessary”.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Schiller: Nazi propaganda for the "work assignment". Camp newspapers for foreign workers in World War II: origin, function, reception and bibliography. LIT Verlag, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3411-5 .
  • Ulrich Herbert: Foreign workers. Politics and practice of the "deployment of foreigners" in the war economy of the Third Reich. Verlag Dietz, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-8012-5028-8 .
  • Irina A. Joffe, Elke Scherstjanoi: Young Eastern Workers in the Anti-Fascist Resistance . Documentation. In: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume III / 2006.
  • Total commitment: Forced labor of the Czech population for the Third Reich , documentation and catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Documentation Center Nazi Forced Labor Berlin-Schöneweide , Prague / Berlin, 2008. ISBN 978-80-254-1799-7 .
  • Preserving memories: slave and forced laborers of the Third Reich from Poland 1939–1945 . Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Documentation Center Berlin-Schöneweide. Warsaw / Berlin, 2007 ISBN 978-83-922446-0-8 .
  • Kartsen Linne, Florian Dierl (Ed.): Workers as spoils of war. The case of Eastern and Southeastern Europe . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-054-7 .

Web links

Commons : Ostarbeiter  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Soviet prisoners of war and "Eastern workers"
  2. ^ The "General Regulations" on workers from the occupied territories in the east of 1942 . Federal Archives; accessed on May 27, 2015.
  3. ↑ cf. Ordinance to supplement the penal provisions to protect the military strength of the German people
  4. ↑ Police Ordinance on the Identification of Eastern Workers in the Reich of June 19, 1944 (RGBl. I, 147).
  5. ^ Source and quote from: Alexander Dallin : Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland 1941–1945. Königstein 1981 (unv. Reprint from 1958), ISBN 3-7610-7242-2 , p.
  6. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Forced Laborers in Industry. In: Bernhard Chiari [u. a.]: The German War Society 1939 to 1945 - Exploitation, Interpretation, Exclusion. On behalf of the MGFA ed. by Jörg Echternkamp . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2005, Vol. 9/2, ISBN 978-3-421-06528-5 , pp. 697 f.