Berlin at War (29 page)

concluded:

There were no disputes or conflicts . . . I can’t remember any serious

incidents. No one was bothered what we did in our free time, we could

come and go when we wanted; no one told us what we could and

couldn’t do. The most important thing was, to turn up for work in the

morning, and to do what was demanded of you . . . The behaviour of

the Germans towards us was, in general, good.26

The same would not have been said by one of his eastern coun-

terparts. Although all labourers were vital to the German economy,

the mere presence of those from eastern Europe in Hitler’s Germany

was considered an affront to the more racially and ideologically minded

Nazis. Therefore, some restrictions were deemed necessary. Workers

from the Soviet Union – the so-called
Ostarbeiter
, or ‘eastern workers’

– as well as those from Poland, were subject to a raft of legislation,

limiting their movement, rations, pay and conditions. One Ukrainian

labourer summed up the differences: ‘All the other foreigners that

were [in Berlin] were also in camps, but they had completely different

rights to us . . . For us, everything was forbidden.’27

This summary is not far from the truth.
Ostarbeiter
and Poles endured

a status similar to that of POWs. They lived in fenced-off, guarded

barracks from which they would be marched to and from work in

columns, accompanied by a guard detail. They were also obliged to sew

a cloth badge, bearing the letter ‘P’ for Poles, or ‘OST’ for
Ostarbeiter
, onto their clothing. Unlike their ‘western’ fellows, they were forbidden

to visit the city in their spare time. Even if they had sufficient funds,

restaurants, bars, theatres, cinemas, even public baths, were out of

bounds to them.28 Personal contact with German civilians was also strictly

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125

forbidden: ‘we avoided each other like the plague’, one Polish forced

labourer recalled.29

Pay for
Ostarbeiter
was also restricted. ‘It was like a slave trade’, one remembered: ‘I worked from 6 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon

and I received between 20 and 40 Marks every two weeks . . . two

years without leave.’ ‘Our wages were ridiculous’, another recalled,

‘deductions were made for everything; for the blankets, mattresses,

for the badge with the latter “P”, for the soup, for insurance and for

other things.’ There was, as a Ukrainian labourer complained, little

left over: ‘We were paid a little bit, we got a few Marks. But it was

impossible for us to buy food or clothes.’30

Poor sanitary conditions, combined with hard labour, malnourish-

ment and persistent infestations of lice, often made for horrific living

conditions, yet few of the
Ostarbeiter
camps offered even the most

rudimentary medical treatment. While a few of the larger factories

had on-site infirmaries, as many as three hundred camps had no duty

doctor at all; in one instance, a single doctor from the central district

of Friedrichshain was supposedly responsible for nearly five thousand

labourers spread right across the city.31

For this reason, medical care for ‘eastern workers’ in some instances

rarely stretched beyond crude gynaecological inspections for women

and piecemeal measures undertaken against tuberculosis. Even the

latter was not forthcoming at times. A German observer noted that it

was forbidden for camp doctors to prescribe medicines to the
Ostarbeiter
, and that those infected with tuberculosis ‘were not even isolated from

the others’; indeed, they ‘were beaten and forced to continue their

work, as the camp authorities doubted the competence of the doctors’.32

Trained medical staff were also rare. As one ‘patient’ recalled: ‘In our

camp, there was a sick bay and a nurse called Tamara. She arrived with

me in the camp and understood as much about medicine as I did about

ballet.’33 For an
Ostarbeiter
to register as sick, therefore, was often akin to writing a suicide note.

There were exceptions, however. The lucky ones might have found

themselves referred to one of the dedicated clinics for foreign labourers,

such as that at Malchow, which was largely staffed by Russian and

eastern European doctors and had a capacity of about eight hundred

beds. Although conditions there were predictably poor, patients at

least stood a chance of receiving competent medical treatment.

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berlin at war

One nineteen-year-old Russian male, for example, was admitted to

the facility on 9 February 1944 with an inflamed appendix. He was

operated on and released three weeks later. Another young Russian

male, admitted with a suspected fractured skull in May 1943, spent

a month in the clinic under observation.34

A few
Ostarbeiter
had the rare good fortune to gain admission to a

regular civilian hospital. But they, too, would have had profound cause

for concern and would have been made acutely aware that all men

were not treated equally in the Third Reich. In one such instance, a

foreign labourer was rather surprised to see that he was the only

person on the ward who was not evacuated to the cellar during an

air raid. It seems that though he could make no complaints about the

standard of medical care he received, he evidently did not ‘qualify’ for

even the most elementary protection during an air raid. ‘Luckily’, he

recalled, ‘the bombs missed.’35

For many sick
Ostarbeiter
– especially those diagnosed with terminal

diseases or chronic debilitating conditions – the final stage of the

journey was a transfer to the transit camp at Pankow, from where

they would supposedly be returned to their home countries. Given

the logistical complexities of such a move, however, most were never

transferred out of the capital at all; the ‘transit camp’ became, in effect,

a ‘death camp’.36 In some instances, the long-term sick would even be

sent to one of the Third Reich’s sinister euthanasia ‘hospitals’.

Food was the greatest source of discontent and many ‘eastern

workers’ complained bitterly about the starvation rations that they

were forced to endure. Most of them were fed in a factory canteen,

and so were guaranteed at least some nourishment each day, but it

was hardly appealing. As Kazimiera Czarnecka remembered:

We received the weekly ration cards for the kitchen, where we collected

the food. It was 250 grams per day of greasy, black bread, a smear of

margarine and a ladle of soup, usually from carrots. Sometimes one

found a piece of horsemeat in the soup, with skin or other pieces of

carcass. We learnt to make the most of our allowances, so that we

would eat the soup straight after work and would save the bread for

breakfast the next day.

In the canteen, one could buy a cup of bitter malt coffee for 5 pfennigs.

Occasionally, on Sundays, there was a quarter of a baguette instead of

unwelcome strangers

127

bread, and goulash for lunch with a few small potatoes. The problem

was, however, that they were often rotten, so we went hungry.37

The observations of a German Foreign Office official, on an inspec-

tion tour of labour camps in the capital, confirmed that this was not an

isolated example:

In spite of the official ration allocated to
Ostarbeiter
, it can be concluded that the situation regarding food supply in the camps is as follows:

mornings – a half-litre of turnip soup. Midday, at work, a litre of turnip

soup. Evening, a litre of turnip soup. The
Ostarbeiter
also receives 300g of bread each day. In addition, there is a weekly allocation of 50–75g

margarine [and] 25g meat or meat products, which is distributed

according to the whim of the camp commandant.38

This lack of sufficient and regular food had a profound effect on

the behaviour of the
Ostarbeiter
themselves. In a minority it inspired

an entrepreneurial spirit, whereby the workers would make wooden

toys or ornaments, which they would then exchange for bread with

their German colleagues. One Czech labourer in Berlin recalled

producing wooden trolleys and crates, which ‘were of great value to

[the Berliners] when they had to rescue their belongings during the

air raids’.39

This was not the reaction of the majority, however. Increasingly,

solidarity in the camps broke down and was replaced by a dog-eat-

dog mentality, in which intimidation, begging, theft, prostitution and

petty criminality became commonplace. Pushed to the very margins

of society, forced labourers had to survive as best they could.

Not all foreign and forced labourers, ‘easterners’ or ‘westerners’, were

confined to camps and forced to work in industrial concerns. A

proportion of them were allocated to small businesses and even to

private houses, where a sympathetic employer might extend exemplary

hospitality and welcome ‘their’ labourer as a part of the family. Teenager

Erich Neumann recalled the arrival of two labourers at his mother’s

café in the western district of Charlottenburg. When business flour-

ished, he remembered, his mother had applied for two foreign labourers

from the local
Arbeitsamt
, or ‘employment office’. She duly received:

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berlin at war

One pretty, German-speaking waitress, late twenties, and a young girl

in her early twenties as a kitchen help. Both of them came from Belgium

and spoke amongst themselves predominantly in French. My mother

didn’t like this at all, so she took private lessons in French and paid for

German lessons for the [younger] girl, [who] very quickly, could speak

German. Mother, however, in spite of all her efforts, never spoke French

. . . The two very quickly became part of the family and enjoyed coming

to work.40

In rare examples, that hospitality could take a more intimate form.

Frenchman Marcel Elola arrived in Berlin in 1943. A trained butcher,

he was allocated to a small business in Schöneberg, whose owner had

been called up for military service, and which was now being run by

the man’s wife. ‘The serving girls smiled at me’, Elola reported. ‘My

first impression was that here was a good atmosphere.’41 On the evening

of that first day, however, events took an unexpected turn. Over dinner,

in the half-light of the blackout, he felt a hand reaching for his own:

‘In that moment, there was nothing for me to do but collaborate.

I was twenty-one years old and in good shape. I didn’t understand

what she was saying to me, but that gesture spoke volumes . . .

That night, she offered me the hospitality of her bed.’ It was a

bed that he would share for the following five months, until the

return of the woman’s husband put paid both to Elola’s employ-

ment and to his nocturnal adventures. ‘I thought I was going to

Hell’, he wrote, ‘but found myself in paradise.’42

Had he been discovered, Elola would not have enjoyed ‘paradise’

for long. Since such fraternisation was strictly forbidden, those who

transgressed would swiftly have found themselves exposed to the

full fury of the Gestapo and the SS. Few foreign labourers, however,

would have had the opportunity to follow in Elola’s amorous foot-

steps. The most common offence among them was a ‘breach of

contract’, which could cover a multitude of sins, from sloppy

working practices to persistent absences and perceived ‘laziness’.

Beyond that, there were a number of more serious offences, such

as sabotage, black-marketeering, prostitution and theft. If offenders

were not caught red-handed, a thriving culture of denunciation

within the camps was bound to bring their activities to the ears of

the authorities.

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129

Discipline for foreign and forced labourers was enforced, in the first

instance, within the camp or workplace itself. Minor misdemeanours

would be punished via a system of forfeits; a verbal warning would

be followed by withdrawal of privileges, of pay or even rations.

Continued ill discipline would then result in the withdrawal of a pris-

oner’s bedding and the allocation of ‘special’ work assignments. Finally,

criminal activity, or persistent minor transgressions, would be met

with a complaint to the Gestapo, which would usually result in arrest

and interrogation.43

Those forced labourers who fell foul of the regime in this way

would generally be sent to an
Arbeitserziehungslager
(AEL) – or ‘Work

Education Camp’. Conditions here were often extremely harsh, as the

Nazi security chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner explained with remarkable

candour in 1944: ‘the working and living conditions for the inmates

[in an AEL] are in general harder than in a concentration camp. This

is necessary to achieve the desired results.’44 As well as being harder,

it should also be remembered that there were more AELs in the Third

Reich than there were concentration camps.

The Berlin district had a number of AELs: one at Grossbeeren, to