Author(s): MEMORIAL; Georgia Thomson (Translator)

History | Eastern Europe | Germany | Biography and Memoir

An extraordinary assemblage of moving and revelatory documents and testimony from the Nazi forced labor camps.

An Ostarbeiter was an 'Eastern Worker', rounded up by Nazi Germany from the captured territories in Central and Eastern Europe. By the end of the war, it is estimated that approximately 3 million to 5.5. million Ostarbeiter were forced to work in guarded work camps, many of them younger than 16 years old - at which age they would be conscripted for military service. Ostarbeiter worked 12 hours a day on starvation on rations; as ethnic Slavs, they were treated with extraordinary brutality by Nazi guards who considered them 'sub-human' by the standards of the Aryan master race. They were distinguished by the label 'OST' sewn onto their uniforms.

OST is based on over two hundred personal accounts, hundreds of hours of interviews, and over 350,000 letters. This important publication will ensure that the voices of the brutalized and displaced Ostarbeiter will not be forgotten.

Author Biography: MEMORIAL International is a Russian historical and civil rights society focused on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, and monitoring human rights in Russia and other post-Soviet states.

Georgia Thomson is a translator from Russian to English. She studied at the Institut Superieur d'Interpretation et de Traduction (ISIT) in Paris and went on to attain a First Class Honours degree in Russian and French. She lived in Moscow for several years and is now based in London.