Hard Labour: The Forgotten Voices of Latvian Migrant 'Volunteer' Workers

Description

Although the Second World War ended sixty years ago, there are still untold stories waiting to be heard: stories not only of diplomats and soldiers but also of refugees, camp inmates and ordinary people living in occupied territories, stories of women's and children's lives as well as those of men. In Hard Labour the forgotten voices of a group of young women who left Latvia in 1944 are captured, telling the story of their flight from the advancing Soviet Army, their difficult journeys across central Europe, their lives as displaced people in Allied camps in Germany and finally their refuge in Britain. Hard work is at the centre of these stories, as the women became 'volunteer' workers, first for the Nazi war effort and then as labourers in the British post-war reconstruction plan. In what has been described as a 'venemous postscript' to the War, the fit and able amongst the vast homeless and often stateless population that fetched up in camps run by the Allies in war-devastated Germany were recruited by western states as labourers. Great Britain was the first nation to recruit displaced persons, offering jobs in hospitals and private homes as domestic workers and in the textile industry to young single women (and later men) from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and other once independent states. Many of these women spent the rest of their lives in Britain, longing to return to their homelands but independence came too late for many of them. At the centre of Hard Labour are the lives of twenty-five now elderly Latvia women who came to Britain between 1946 and 1949. Their memories are placed in the context of recent work in feminist history, illuminating debates about displacement and loss as well as the transformation of women's lives in post-war Britain. For Chris, Hugh and Sarah, with love PREFACE CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Tables, maps and figures CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: LOOKING BACK TO THE 1940S AND 1950S CHAPTER 2 THINKING THROUGH GENDER: THEORISING MIGRATION, MEMORY AND IDENTITY CHAPTER 3 DISCIPLINING BODIES: EXILE AND INVOLUNTARY LABOUR Figure 3.1 Latvia in its region Table 3.1: Latvian women's place of birth and parents’ occupations Table 3.2: Male and female civilian foreign workers in the Third Reich, September 1944 CHAPTER 4 LIFE IN THE CAMPS: FROM FOREIGN WORKERS TO DISPLACED PERSONS Plate 4.1 Europe’s exiled millions: the nationality of occupants in a displaced persons camp near Kl agenfurt Figure 4.1 Divided Germany in 1945: the occupation zones Involuntary labour? Work in the camps Table 4.1: Latvian women’s work in the Third Reich and in displaced persons’ camps, 1944–47 CHAPTER 5 BECOMING EVWS: FROM DISPLACED PERSONS TO ECONOMIC MIGRANTS Plate 5.1 Hired girls leaving for a new life, 1947 Table 5.3: First occupational placing of EVWs CHAPTER 6 SURVIVAL STRATEGIES: WOMEN’S DUAL ROLES IN POST-WAR BRITAIN Plate 6.1 A young machinist working in Leicester’s textile industry in 1948 The new consumerism Table 6:1: Percentage of women in different age groups in employment, 1931–61 CHAPTER 7 PLACE, LOCALITY AND GENDERED LOCAL CULTURES Table 7.1: EVWs’ jobs, family status and childcare arrangements, late 1940s to 1960 Place matters Table 7.2: Typical employment trajectories of EVW women CHAPTER 8 YEARNING FOR ‘HOME’: NARRATIVES OF BELONGING AND IMAGINED COMMUNITY Fitting in? Plate 8.1 Latvian singers in national dress PP ll aa tt ee 88 .. 22 PP oo ll ii tt ii cc aa ll pp oo ss tt cc aa rr dd ss tt oo cc oo mm mm ee mm oo rr aa tt ee tt hh ee SS oo vv ii ee tt dd ee pp oo rr tt aa tt ii oo nn ss ii nn tt hh ee 11 99 44 00 ss T H E S I B E R I A N E X P R E S S CHAPTER 9 CONCLUSIONS: MEMORY, IDENTITY AND TRANSLATION BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX