No Freedom in Free Time 
The Daily Life of Forced Labourer

Various decrees and edicts determined everyday-life even outside work. The quality of living quarters, freedom of movement or food rations depended on ethnic heritage. Polish citizen and citizen of the Soviet Union were worst off.

Accommodation was provided in improvised camps, which didn’t necessarily have to hold barracks. Collective accommodation of different kinds was organised and forced labourers had to move into anything from empty gymnasiums to inns. Often there was a lack of sanitary facilities. Famine, exhaustion, or poor working conditions led to sickness and disease among the forced labourers. Despite all, there was only rudimentary health care being provided. Arbitrariness, harassment and abuse of power by the camp supervisors and guards threatened the lives and health of the foreign labourers additionally.

Women especially were subject to threats. They often became victims of sexual harassment. Job centres and medical personal forced women from Eastern Europe to abort their babies, who were classified as “racially undesired”. If they could give birth at all, then only under adverse conditions. In many cases, their babies were taken away from them.  They starved to death or died from diseases in so called “Ausländerkinderpflegestätten” (foster homes for children of foreigners).