ABSTRACT
Nearly 7,000 civilian Soviet forced labourers, or so-called ‘Ostarbeiter’, were sent to Norway during World War II. They were Soviet citizens driven into forced labour for the Germans. Among the Soviet civilians there were about 1,400 women and 400 children aged from zero to 15. Approximately 150 of these children were born in German forced labour camps in Norway (Soleim 2010, p. 9). Among the labourers there were also several families with children and grandparents. The oldest person who was sent home in 1945 was 85. Only a few of these labourers managed to get a Norwegian residence permit after the war. Most of the female forced labourers were sent from Ukraine or White Russia. They were mainly put to work in factories connected with the fishing industry in northern Norway. This chapter describes the German forced labour camp system in Norway, the destiny of the female labourers ‘from the East’ and their repatriation after the war.
