EN
These until now unknown documents from the Soviet archives illustrate the imprisonment of the civil population of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in 1944-1945, in the last period of World War II and after the end of the war. Men between 17 and 45, women between 18 and 30 were to be deported to work in the Soviet Union that had a great need of work force after World War II. Not only ethnic Germans but Hungarians, Slovaks etc. were imprisoned during this action. Due to the bad circumstances, tens of thousands of these civil prisoners of war died during this time. In 1950, the German prisoners working in Soviet mines began a great strike. It was not until 1955 that all civil prisoners were allowed to leave for their country, in some cases some of them returned to Germany with their children born in the Soviet Union.