Polish civilian forced labourers and prisoners of war in the Organisation Todt – Einsatzgruppe Wiking, 1941–1945
Polish civilian forced labourers and prisoners of war in the Organisation Todt – Einsatzgruppe Wiking, 1941–1945

Summary/Abstract: Over 8800 Poles (ca.7100 civilian forced workers and 1711 prisoners of war) were sent to Norway and Finnish Lappland to work for the Organisation Todt – Einsatzgruppe Wiking (EW). The first and second sections present the recruitment of the civilian forced labour within Poland and the sites to which they were transferred in Norway and north Finland. Until the spring of 1943, the majority were recruited from the Polish areas included in the Reich. The recruitment operated through construction firms with help of German recruitment offices. From spring 1943, recruitment increasingly originated from the General Gouvernement, the east part of Poland occupied by Germany. This change coincided with targeted actions to recruit for the EW, and in the autumn the OT started its own recruitment campaigns. The third section presents the number of Polish prisoners of war (POW) which were sent to Norway from Hamburg in April–May 1942. They were divided into three working battalions and spread on various building sites around the country, until 1041 of them were gathered in December 1943 to work on the expansion of the railway line in northern Norway. The fourth section elaborates the kind of building labour, mainly building of fortifications, roads and the north railway in Norway. The final section presents the living and working conditions of the Poles who were discriminated against both in terms of pay and liberties. Discrimination was also applied to the Poles working for EW. In January 1943, the OT adopted a specific Polen–Ausland–Bautarif, which sustained discrimination for Polish civilian workers. For Polish POWs norms of social conditions were higher than for Soviet and Yugoslavian POWs.

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