44 Marks for Germans, 5 Marks for Russians 
The Daily Work of a Forced Labourer

The payment of forced labourers, their employment, the scope of labour, shortly: the everyday working-life depended on their origins. The hierarchical and racial prerequisites of the National Socialists divided “German workers” from “foreign ethnic labour force” and differentiated between Northern, Western, South-eastern and Eastern Europeans.  

Those differentiations were the prerequisite for the privilege-defined working conditions. The so called “Ostarbeiter” were exempted from any form of labour protection and holidays. They received a split-part of the daily payments of the German employees. As the war continued, forced labour meant longer working hours, shorter breaks, increased supervision and the permanent possibility of punishment, which could result in the incarceration inside a Gestapo-labour camp.

Racial discrimination and arbitrariness all the way to physical violence within the workspace, were part of the everyday-lives of forced labourers.