Former <I>Ostarbeiteren</I> In Germany: Overcoming Fear of the Past
Leaving for Germany by invitation, I hoped for a respectful welcome of the Germans who invited me. The invitation was preceded by a long story of searching for the documents that confirm my stay in Hagen, Westphalia, as a Zwangsarbeiter (slave laborer) and a punishment camp inmate. Employees at the Hagen Historical Center and the city archives with Ms. Beata Hobein at the head had been looking for the necessary documents for six years.
The search for documents confirming the stay of Ostarbeiteren at Hagen’s factories and farms induced city archive employees to set up a special data bank now comprising 40,000 names of the Ostarbeiteren who worked in Hagen during World War II.
The Historical Center and the city archives were then joined in their work by the Institute of History and Biography of the Hagen Extension University run by Doctor Alexander von Plat. It is on his initiative that twenty former Ukrainian and Russian Ostarbeiteren were invited.
I must point out that the Germans who study the history of eastern slave laborers in wartime Germany are firmly convinced that the word Ostarbeiter does not exactly reflect the living conditions of eastern workers in labor camps. On the basis of the available documents, they identified very precisely three groups of eastern workers. The first group comprises those enjoying the status of an inmate (Haeftling). The second group are the workers who stayed in the conditions similar to those of inmates (Zwangsarbeiter). The third group, according to archive employees, includes all the other eastern workers (Ostarbeiter) whose conditions differed from those of inmates (small enterprises), as well as those who worked for Bauern (farmers).
Much to the hosts’ chagrin, only eight people arrived at Hagen, out of which only two were from Russia, but they had lived in Ukraine before being deported to Germany. So we all represented Ukraine in a way.
It is difficult for me to answer the question why only eight out of the twenty invited came to Hagen. The correspondent who published an article on September 22, 2001, in the newspaper Hagener Zeitung was perhaps right when he wrote about fear. But my opinion is that there was no fear of present-day Germans, there was a fear of the past. You were frightened to see the place where you were kept as a dumb draft animal and to go through what you went through in Nazi captivity.
The very first meeting with employees of the city archives and the Institute of History and Biography totally dispelled all fears and suspicions. From the very first day we were shrouded with, I would say, increased care and concern. We were served by four interpreters ready to offer us any kind of help both in communicating with the surrounding Germans and in solving problems of everyday life. The institute and city archive employees were interested in virtually everything about our stay in the Third Reich and our destinies after returning home when the war was over.
Our sojourn in Hagen was covered not only in the local newspapers Westfalische Rundschau and Hagener Zeitung but also on television and the radio. This is why city residents treated us with special care and benevolence, when meeting us in the streets. This speaks volumes. Yet, it should be noted that the Germans called us all Russians. An ordinary German cannot tell a Ukrainian from a Russian. Moreover, he/she knows almost nothing about Ukraine and still pictures it as part of Russia. That Hagen has long and closely been associated with its sister Russian city of Smolensk has played not the least role in this.
We were stunned by what we saw. This new and modern city was totally different from the one we knew in 1942-1945. It rose from the ashes and became still more beautiful. Three allied bombing raids in October 1943, December 1944, and March 1945 destroyed 80% of its enterprises and residential buildings. Taken on a tour of the city, many of us visited, but failed to recognize, the places we stayed during the war. Many enterprises, for example, the Kloeckner Werke steel mill, are gone, as are the traces of Westphalia’s most notorious punishment camp situated next to the mill at the suburb of Haspe. That camp went on record for “reeducating” in 1942 residents of Hagen (Germans and Jews) who refused to let the Nazi terror break them. From 1942 on it would also “reeducate” recalcitrant Ostarbeiteren.
A park for young people was located on the site of the former plant. Still, it is impossible to erase the history of “reeducation” in the Hagen- Haspe punishment camp from the memory of both the old and new generations of Germans thanks to the efforts of not only the Hagen Oberburgomeister (Mayor) Wilfried Horn but also the local Peaceful Initiative Society. It is thanks to this society that the Hagen Monument to Peace was erected downtown with a bronze plaque reading:
“The residents of this city REMEMBER the slave laborers and soldiers who quit the Nazi army or died at the hands of the Nazis, VENERATE the residents of the city of Hagen, men and women, who did not let Nazi terror break them, AND REMIND OURSELVES the necessity of setting humanity against injustice 55 years after the end of Nazi rule May 8, 2000.”
Our past again descended upon us when we visited on September 22, 2001, a cemetery in the Hagen suburb of Vorhalle, where the prisoners of war, who died in Nazi camps, were buried. A tombstone reads in Russian, “Eternal memory to our comrades who died in Nazi captivity, 1941-1945,” A wreath with a yellow and blue ribbon was laid at the monument on the Oberburgomeister’s and our behalf.
What made a lasting impression on us was the reception given in our honor by Oberburgomeister Horn along with the Institute and archives directors.
In his welcoming speech, the mayor spoke at length about sufferings borne by the Ostarbeiteren in Nazi camps, about heavy casualties inflicted as a result of factory slave labor and the allied air raids on Hagen. Simultaneously the Oberburgomeister apologized on behalf of himself and the city residents for what we had to endure in Nazi captivity. He also offered an apology for the fact that we have not yet received compensation due us for the years we spent in Nazi Germany. I am far from thinking that the mayor was tormented by a guilty conscience. He cannot be held responsible for the past. He is not the owner of some plant that employed Zwangsarbeiteren during the war.
I came to know from Hagen archive employees that 400 large and small enterprises of the city exploited Ostarbeiteren in the years of war. But most of the current factory managers and owners try to deny in one way or another that their enterprises employed Ostarbeiteren in the past simply to evade making their contribution to the unitary compensation fund. What is more, we could hear the following argument, “We don’t want to feed your Zherdytsky-type thieves.” Only 4% of Hagen’s 400 enterprises have contributed to this fund. The archive employees failed (or refused) to name the plants that are evading contributions to the German government compensation fund.
On the last day of our sojourn in Hagen we attended a farewell dinner hosted by the Peaceful Initiative Society and participated in by local professionals, such as teachers, doctors, and art figures. Of great interest was the speech by sculptor Heinz Richter (author of the Hagen Monument to Peace), who explained why he had first mentioned the Zwangsarbeiteren. Mr. Richter noted that Hagen residents still have no information on how many Ostarbeiteren died in and near Hagen due to the Nazi terror and allied air bombing during World War II.
