In Lagern - Schicksale deutscher Zivilisten im östlichen Europa 1941-1955

The film aims to bring a little-known chapter of German and European history into the public consciousness today: the deportation of German civilians from the former German eastern territories and settlement areas, and their internment in camps. These events are part of the large-scale expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe during and after the Second World War. They also include the deportation and forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union. The exhibition www.ausstellung-inlagern.de, presented by the Center Against Expulsions Foundation, is the fifth installment in its traveling exhibition series and focuses on the particular fate of the civilian population who remained there – mostly women, teenagers, children, and the elderly. Their internment took place as a mass phenomenon in a legal vacuum – without individual charges or trials. The film shown here is part of this exhibition. From the perspective of the Soviet victors, the labor of German civilians represented a form of reparations. The Soviet Union's Western allies, the USA and Great Britain, had no fundamental objections to their forced labor. The Soviet Union suffered extensive destruction and heavy loss of life as a result of World War II. Furthermore, the exploitation of human labor to build the Soviet Union as an economic power was already common practice. The causes of the deportation and exploitation of German civilians are closely linked to the preceding crimes committed by the Nazi regime against the people of many European nations. In addition to the millions of war dead, an estimated 12-14 million people died as a result of the Nazi regime's criminal actions and its extermination and racial policies. During the war, the German leadership forced civilians from all German-occupied countries to perform labor and also used prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates for forced labor. From 1939 to 1945, an estimated 12 million forced laborers were exploited to maintain the Nazi dictatorship. An estimated 2.5 million people died as a result. In the wake of Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, over one million German civilians were deported to camps. They came from the former German eastern territories, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, as well as from the Soviet occupation zone and later East Germany. Within the Soviet Union, Germans living along the Volga River and in other settlement areas were deported to regions east of the Ural Mountains following the Wehrmacht's invasion in 1941. The total number of Germans deported within the Soviet Union is estimated at approximately 1.1 million. The exhibition and film aim to raise public awareness of the fate of those affected. They describe the initial political situation, the reasons for the establishment of the camps, the various camps, and the living conditions there. Through quotations from eyewitnesses and their recollections in documentary and literary form, the film makes the personal experiences tangible.