Ostarbeiter Mail From 1940's Germany

While many Germans were fighting at the various fronts during World War II, the NSDAP fulfilled the need for labor in the fields, factories and mines back home through forced civilian labor. Millions of these forced laborers came from the territories occupied by German forces. The civilans sent from the eastern occupied areas were called Ostarbeiters or "Eastern Workers". Many women and men as young at 10 years old were taken away from the Ukraine and other areas to forced labor camps. Tens of thousands of them died as it was policy to "work them to death" and punishment was doled out harshly. Many others died from Allied bombings that targeted the factories where they worked. In 1942, they were allowed to send postal cards home - two per month. Here are some of their words (censored by authorities) in Ukrainian :



The postal cards with the three languages were issued for Ostarbeiter mail. Lagers are the labor camps. The Ab encircled handstamp is the censor mark. Reichenberg, Sudeten is now modern day Liberec in Czech Republic.



Handstamp from the private company that benefited from the forced labor.



A machine censor that overlapped the postmark perfectly. I first thought it was all the same postmark at first.



Half of a regular postal reply card.



Different type of censor. Aussig is modern day Ústí nad Labem in Czech Republic.



Lager / Camp handstamp at left.


No message and back is blank. There's pin holes at top suggesting it was fastened to something - or someone. Possible tag use to direct a person to a camp location? People were rounded up from churches and other events without warning.



Propaganda post card used to entice people to "volunteer" for work. Word got back to the Ukraine about the conditions and the Germans resorted to wholesale seizing.

A horrible time period, but this is one part we don't hear too much about. After the war, many of the workers who survived didn't fare much better back home under the Soviets. Most were branded traitors or enemies of the state and sent to gulags for 25 year periods of "re-education" or denied rights and privilege such as education and decent employment. It wasn't until early 2000's that the survivors were compensated.

Interesting. Horrible, but interesting. Thanks for sharing them.

Indeed, a fascinating and depressing topic. Still, sad stories such as this should be widely publicized in the hopes of keeping it from ever happening again to anyone else.

Battlestamps, thanks for presenting the scans and background info. I was somewhat aware of the forced labour by the Nazis but not the Soviet "re-education" program.

I don't suppose the Russians ever compensated the victims in their
labour camps/Gulags

Lithograving: I doubt it. The compensation the Eastern Workers received came from the German government. Those that were in the American zone after the war were better off as they were not forced to repatriate back to the Soviet Union. The "re-education" was also called "corrective labor" and lasted 15-25 years and included former prisoners of war as they were classified as "socially dangerous". They were highly ostracized by the wider Soviet society.