Workers from the East

Abstract

This chapter discusses the deportation and conditions of labor among Eastern Workers. Of the millions sent to work, only a handful of people volunteered, and fewer still would have agreed to go if they had known what awaited them. Workers at factories felt hunger constantly and experienced arbitrary violence. They resided in overcrowded camps, where illness and bombing raids threatened. Meanwhile, small workplaces like family farms or households usually provided better conditions. Living with a family meant some private space and more food, although it also meant working closely with one's employers. In some senses, the conditions of Eastern Workers were not so different from those of their counterparts in the wartime USSR. The difference between Stalinism and Nazism for civilian workers was in the racialized cruelty of Germany. The occupiers brought Eastern Workers to the Reich because the necessities of war outweighed their hatred of Slavic people. German limitations on Eastern Workers' mobility were also much stricter than Stalinist restrictions on laborers.