If You Use a Screen Reader
This content is available through Read Online (Free) program, which relies on page scans. Since scans are not currently available to screen readers, please contact JSTOR User Support for access. We'll provide a PDF copy for your screen reader.
Journal Article
Exploitation, Criminality, Resistance. The Everyday Life of Foreign Workers and Prisoners of War in the German Town of Osnabrck, 1939-49
Panikos Panayi
Journal of Contemporary History
Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 483-502
Published
by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036339
Page Count: 20
You can always find the topics here!
Topics: Prisoners of war, Concentration camps, Nazism, Prisoner of war camps, Workforce, World wars, Air raids, Larceny, Bombings, Criminal arrests
Were these topics helpful?
Select the topics that are inaccurate.
Since scans are not currently available to screen readers, please contact JSTOR User Support for access. We'll provide a PDF copy for your screen reader.
Abstract
This article examines the experience of foreign workers and prisoners of war in the medium-sized German town of Osnabrck in Lower Saxony during the years 1939-49. It begins with an introduction to the historiography, public and civic memory of foreigners in Germany and Osnabrck during these years, as well as providing details about Osnabrck and the arrival of foreigners after 1939. The article then outlines the experience of exploitation, focusing upon living conditions, work, nutrition, life under Allied bombs and lack of freedom. During and immediately after the war, foreigners in Osnabrck became involved in criminality. The article asks whether such behaviour during the war originated in the exploitation which they suffered and whether the criminality amounted to resistance. It then moves on to examine the violence and looting which broke out immediately after the war, explained essentially by a desire for revenge. This had died down by the autumn of 1945, after which repatriation began in earnest. The article concludes by asserting that exploitation largely explains the criminality which occurred between 1939 and 1949.
Journal of Contemporary History © 2005 Sage Publications, Ltd.