German PoWs forced into slave labour by Soviets

[Art]

Dmitri Frolov says (Sotavankina Neuvostoliitossa p. 203-4) that the leaders of Great Britain, the USA and the SU agreed in the meetings of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam that the war reparations could be paid also by the POW labor.

To be correct, the agreement was achieved in Yalta that German labor could be used as one of form of reparations:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/yalta.htm
However, no certain procedure of such use was established.
Allready in Potsdam the "labor" item disappeared from the protocol on reparations:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade17.htm
It should be said that by that time USSR seemingly lost interest in deportations of German civilians for labor use in USSR, probably it was this lak of interst that caused the absense of any mention of labor reparations in the protocal of conference.

In the statute of the Defence Comittee no 7467 ss on the 3rd of february 1945 is was ordered to intern all men fit to work in Upper Silesia and East Prussia.

In the whole rear area of Soviet army between Carpathians and Baltic Sea. This internment was undertaken as a preventive measure in order to secure the rear of the Soviet forces advancing into Germany and was overimposed on the measures allready ordered in January (NKVD order #0016 if 16th January 1945) with the same objective. Taken as whole the interment of civilian population in Reich didn't had specific anti-German character: till 15th April 215540 men were interned and arrested including 138200 Germans, 38660 Poles, 27880 former USSR citizens, and others Slovaks, Italians and Hungarians. The mass deportation of civilians from the territory of Reich was effectively canceled by NKVD order #00315 of 18th April, which prohibited the further deportations exept the persons representing interest for interogation. According to the same order all arrested invalids, women, sick and elderly people had to be released and those who were allready sent to USSR returned back.

In the January and February 1945 208 239 interned persons were removerd to the area of the SU.

Till April. This figure includes all nationallities not only Germans. For example 11 thousands of Poles from this group were repatriated till 1st February 1946.

[taltos]

There is an interesting story one of my teachers told me. He said that one of his professors was a panzer officer, a major I think, who was captured by the Soviets and was used as labor on a farm. The onther soldiers threw him into a cart where they were piling potatos and he was able to escape back to German lines.

John

[Alois41]

yes, This is true my grandpa came home from one of those in 1947 he was lucky.

He was sent there after he surrender to the Russians at Stalingrad.
He was very malnourished, lung cancer from Stalingrads chemical smoke that was in the air. He had a knee injury and couldn't work so a Russian was going to execute him but the camps warden sent him to Moscow and home. Why that Russian was so nice he didn't know but he said he would never forget him and he never did..