During the Second World War, several thousand people from the Soviet Union and occupied Poland were brought to Luxembourg during its occupation by Nazi Germany. Once there, they were expected to satisfy the demand for labour in industries that were important to the war effort, as many of Luxembourg’s workers had been drafted into the German army and the need for steel production was higher than usual as a result of the war.
The first male and female “eastern workers” (Ostarbeiter) – so called because they came from the occupied regions of the eastern USSR and Poland – arrived in Luxembourg in October 1942. They were deployed in various roles, including in ARBED’s operations and mines, at the Differdinger Stahlwerken AG, at the cement works in Schifflange and on farms. Over the course of the next two years, nearly 3,000 eastern workers came to Luxembourg, the majority of whom were young women between the ages of 15 and 19. Half of them came from Ukraine and a quarter each from Belarus and Russia. Other forced labourers in Luxembourg were Soviet prisoners of war. After their liberation by the US army in September 1944, they were repatriated via Soviet filtration camps in Germany, but some of them remained with their new spouses in Luxembourg.
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