"Ostarbeiter"
sent from Leningrad
to the West 1942
Private Films
silent
Without subtitles
8:11 Min.
This historically significant private footage shows the processing of new "Ostarbeiter" migrants that were being sent from Leningrad area to the West. The footage chronicles their stay at a transit camp documenting their arrival, shows their disinfection, living quarters, the conversion of their currency to Reichsmarks, their cafeteria, and their final physical exams before being sent on. With the way they act and are being treated they seem to have volunteered for this migration.
Ostarbeiter (eastern workers). The German term for several million civilians from the ‘conquered eastern territories’ taken to Germany for labor during the Second World War. There was a combination of volunteers and forced labor that were sent. The recruitment of workers was not part of the Germans' preinvasion planning, but it began, in November 1941, when it had become apparent that there would be no quick victory on the eastern front. The head of the Nazi Four-Year Plan, Hermann Göring, issued instructions in that month to the effect that ‘Russian’ workers should be used for Germany's benefit. In the same month the labor office of the Distrikt Galizien reported that 60,709 workers had been sent to Germany. At the beginning of 1942 a campaign was instituted under the auspices of the Four-Year Plan to supply 380,000 laborers for German agriculture and 247,000 for German industry. On 21 March F. Sauckel was appointed plenipotentiary general for labor allocation (Generalbevollmüachtiger für den Arbeitseinsatz, or GBA); he became Göring's subordinate in charge of recruiting ‘all available manpower, including foreigners and prisoners of war,’ to work in German industry and thereby allow the release of Germans for the war effort.
Lost Wochenschau 
Shopping Cart: 0 item(s) -$ 0.00 
