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The miners from Poland settled in new settlements in the Ruhr area, such as the "Dunkelschlag" colony in Oberhausen (1906)
Photo: Mining Museum Bochum
She dug a hollow in the earth, put her baby in it, and worked in the field for two or three hours.
“Then she went over there, gave him the breast, and put it back in the hole.
Jan Kryniwicki, born in Posen in 1906, remembers an incident his mother told him in the early 1980s.
“It was so common.
There was no other way. "
Malnutrition, exploitation, humiliation by the big landowners and their administrators - many people from Eastern Europe could almost only improve if they made their way west.
From the second half of the 19th century, Poseners ended up in Oberhausen and Wanne-Eickel, Masurians in Gelsenkirchen, Upper Silesians in Bottrop and West Prussian Poles in Wattenscheid to work in the coal and steel industry.
In addition, Jews from Central and Eastern Europe sought their livelihood in the German Empire.
They filled the gaps that had been torn by emigration and that urbanization could not make up for: 4.4 million Germans had emigrated to the USA between 1830 and 1890 - workers who were lacking in Germany at the time of high industrialization.
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