Unknown Stories of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters: Labor Experience of Women from Southern Ukraine in Ordensburg Krössinsee (1943–1945)

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to highlight the unprecedented experience of labor of women from the Mykolaiv and Kherson oblasts in 1943–1945 on the territory of Ordensburg Krössinsee.

The methodology of the study is based on the principles of historicism, scientificity, anthropocentrism. The method of historiographic and source analysis, historical-genetic and problem-chronological methods were used to cover the problem.

Scientific novelty. For the first time, the author investigated the fact of mass involvement of female forced laborers from the East to labor in one of three “Order Castles”, elite party educational institutions for Nazi youth, on the territory of which one of Adolf Hitler Schools was located. The author has managed to cover the atypical everyday life of Ukrainian female Ostarbeiters, to find out the names and place of residence of a part of female laborers, most of whom voluntarily agreed to go to work on the Third Reich territory. Interesting private letters of the group of repatriates under study, some photos and captured documents have been introduced into scientific use.

Conclusions. On the basis of archival documents it has been found out that the circumstances of transportation to the destination point, conditions of work, life and leisure, quality of food and clothing of this category of female laborers were much better than those of the vast majority of our compatriots who worked hard at military industrial complex objects or in agriculture in Nazi Germany and satellite countries. Such atypical everyday life can be explained to some extent by the voluntariness of departure and, obviously, by the status of such elite institution, where even female laborers “from the East” had to look decently and work in proper conditions. The fact of the mass involvement of female laborers from the East, but not local German women (“Aryan representatives”) or at least Western European female laborers, to this rank of the institution is unique.