During the Second World War, approximately 2.75 million civilians from “conquered eastern territories” were taken to Germany for forced labour. About 2.2 million of them came from present-day Ukraine.

The German term for these people was Ostarbeiter (“eastern workers”). The recruitment of “eastern workers” began in November 1941, when it became clear to Germany’s leaders that there would be no quick victory on the Eastern Front and that a larger workforce was needed. Initially, many Ukrainians greeted the Germans as liberators from Soviet rule and volunteered to work in the Reich. However, the German’s brutal treatment of workers soon became known in Ukraine. By the summer of 1942, Nazi Germany resorted to forced means of recruitment: people were rounded up arbitrarily in the streets to fill the quotas imposed by the GBA (“General Plenipotentiary for Manpower”).

In Nazi Germany Ostarbeiter were treated worse than forced labourers from other occupied countries. The “Eastern Workers’ Decrees” (“Ostarbeitererlasse”) from February 20, 1942, formed the legal basis for their poor treatment, subjecting workers deported from the Soviet Union to a discriminatory special law. Based on this law, “eastern workers” received smaller food rations than other forced labourers; every article of their clothing had to be identified with an “OST” badge; German maternity protection laws did not apply to female “eastern workers”, and their children received half the rations allocated to German children. Furthermore, the German police and the SS kept those who worked in private enterprises and industry under close surveillance.