James D. Newton collection

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn8923
• English
• overall: Height: 1.500 inches (3.81 cm) | Width: 1.500 inches (3.81 cm)
• Updated 9 months ago

Forced labor badge, yellow with a purple P and a purple border, found by Jim Newton, a US soldier, in April 1945 in Germany. This badge would be worn to identify a Polish forced laborer in Nazi Germany. German regulations required the workers to wear the badge with the purple band visible around the P on the right chest to keep them separate from the German populace. During the German occupation of Poland, 1939-1945, many non-Jewish Polish people were sent to Germany as conscript labor for civilian labor details on farms and factories. Workers sometimes volunteered for the forced labor serv...

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn8924
• English
• overall: Height: 1.500 inches (3.81 cm) | Width: 1.500 inches (3.81 cm)
• Updated 9 months ago

Forced labor badge, blue with OST in white letters, found by Jim Newton, a US soldier, in April 1945 in Germany. The badge would have been worn by a forced laborer to identify them as an Ostarbeiter [Worker from the East], usually Russian or Ukrainian, deported to work in Nazi Germany. The patch would have been sewn to the chest with the outer white border visible. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941, the need for forced labor to support the war effort became an urgent necessity. Beginning in 1942, millions of forced laborers were deported from the Soviet Union to ...