#ostarbeiter

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Kyiv, Ukraine 1942: Ostarbeiter (slave labourers) being abducted by the German occupiers. They walk down Nekrasivska Street, which was renamed Ivan Drach Street to remove any russian association after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Over three-million Ostarbeiter were forced to perform slave labour in Germany. Classed as "subhumans", between 2/3 and 3/4 of all slaves taken were Ukrainian.

[klimbims]

Women brought from the USSR for forced labor in Germany arrived at the Berlin-Wilhelmshagen transit camp, 1942 by Olga Via Flickr: Sowjetische Frauen als zwangsverpflichtete Ostarbeiterinnen im Durchgangslager Wilhelmshagen Beginning in the spring of 1942, nearly three million men and women were rounded up under threat of violence and other forms of retaliation in areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the Wehrmacht. The average age of the deportees was 20, but many were substantially younger, at just 15 or 16. Of the 11 million slave laborers the Nazis rounded up to work in Germany, it was Soviet citizens – whom Nazi bureaucrats lumped together with other Eastern and Central European captives and referred to as Ostarbeiter – that were by far the largest single group. They were also treated with particular brutality; in the Nazis’ depraved hierarchy of nationalities, Ostarbeiter occupied the bottom rung. Женщины, привезенные из СССР на принудительные работы в Германию, прибыли в транзитный лагерь Berlin-Wilhelmshagen

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Ukrainian Ostarbeiter (slave labourers) at the Regensburg Displacement Camp protest against forced repatriation to the Soviet Union in 1946.

Millions of mainly Ukrainian slaves were abducted by the Nazis for forced work, and those who were forcibly returned to the Soviet Union were persecuted.

The youngest slave labourers taken were ten. Ukrainian child Ostarbeiter can be seen in the centre of the photograph.

Here are some first-hand accounts from Ostarbeiter.

[klimbims]

Women brought from the USSR for forced labor in Germany arrived at the Berlin-Wilhelmshagen transit camp, 1942 by Olga Via Flickr: Beginning in the spring of 1942, nearly three million men and women were rounded up under threat of violence and other forms of retaliation in areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the Wehrmacht. The average age of the deportees was 20, but many were substantially younger, at just 15 or 16. Of the 11 million slave laborers the Nazis rounded up to work in Germany, it was Soviet citizens – whom Nazi bureaucrats lumped together with other Eastern and Central European captives and referred to as Ostarbeiter – that were by far the largest single group. They were also treated with particular brutality; in the Nazis’ depraved hierarchy of nationalities, Ostarbeiter occupied the bottom rung. Женщины, привезенные из СССР на принудительные работы в Германию, прибыли в транзитный лагерь Berlin-Wilhelmshagen Photo by Gerhard Gronefeld Фото: Герхард Гронефельд waralbum.ru/49824/

[errant-fork]

Family History Time!

CW for sexual violence, slavery, starvation and state violence . . . . . . Emailed my mom to ask for some more details about my grandparents’ early life.  Here are the results:   “On grandpa, yes, he told us about the Soviet Union causing a manmade famine.  The Russians came into his village and confiscated all their food, took their chickens, and then they closed all the borders so that the Ukrainians couldn't cross over to try to get food from there.  His mother would boil roots she dug from the ground and make "soup" from that.  She couldn't even make bread because there was no flour because the Russians also took that.  They really wanted the Ukrainians to die because they didn't want them to rebel against them.  So they caused them to starve to death.  Grandpa said that the winter was the worst because the ground was frozen so his mother couldn't even dig up roots.  They were starving.  Only rarely did they catch some kind of rodent which they could eat. “The Russians would not allow any food products and even any fuel, to be brought in.  People were all dying around them.  They shot grandma's one brother in the road in front of her.  Grandpa married grandma to protect her from the soldiers.  They were so young.  Grandpa was just 17 years old. “During the war [WW2],  grandma and grandpa and grandma's other brother and sister and her cousin, and grandpa's mother, two brothers and his sister, were all put into work camps [abducted by the Nazis].  He said that they were fed a dirty water as "soup" and only enough so that they could be strong enough to work.  After the war, they were offered a choice from the allies, to either be sent to the U.S. or to Austria.  So, they came here by ship and sent to Ellis Island.  Grandpa was 23 when he arrived here.  His one brother stayed living in New Jersey, his other brother moved to Minnesota, his sister moved to Florida, and the rest settled in Chicago.  Grandpa's mother lived into her 90's.”