Eastern Workers (Nazi Germany)

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Eastern Workers or Ostarbeiter was the official term introduced in Nazi Germany to denote people "of non-German national origin who inhabited the Reich Commissariat for the Ukraine, the General Commissariat for White Russia, or territories bordering on these territories to the east or on the former free states of Lithuania and Estonia, and who were brought into the German Reich, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and employed there after the occupation by the German armed forces." Their status was legally defined by the Ministerial Council for Defence of the Reich in June, 1942.

Most of these "Eastern Workers" were native Russian, Belarusian, Crimean Tatars or Ukrainian inhabitants of the eastern lands conquered by Nazi Germany, and used as a source of unfree labor.

A significant percent of eastern workers had developed anti-Soviet convictions, having been given an opportunity to be in an environment free of informers where open criticism of the Soviets was possible. This, combined with the opportunity to see the living standard of non-communist countries, made them seen as a threat by the Soviet system. A number had also volunteered to join the Russian Liberation Army. After the liberation of "Eastern Workers" by the Soviet Army, a majority of them were subject to "filtration" and "internal exile", the latter mostly amounting to serving in labour camps for six years or more.

After the war, a significant part of them was accumulated in camps for displaced persons in the Western occupation zones of the post-war Germany. Many of them were from the Kresy territory of Poland occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939. This presented a dramatic issue, since Soviets sought to "repatriate" them, while many of them sought to avoid this kind of "repatriation", see, e.g., Ruthenia: Belarusians.