The Trud Army (Russian labour army): labour battalions, formed in the Soviet Union after the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941, under the authority of army administration. The Army compulsorily conscripted men and women aged 15 to 60 and exempted only pregnant women or those having children not older than 3 years. The mobilized worked in coal mines, refineries, ammunition manufactures, and constructed roads. They were barracked in special camps, where conditions were not much different from these in penal Soviet labour-camps. The largest group in the Trud Army were Germans living in the Soviet Union. Polish citizens were also conscripted, mostly of Jewish, Ukrainian and Byelorussian origin. After the war the Army was disbanded.
The term was created within the framework of the project Zapisywanie świata żydowskiego w Polsce [recording the Jewish environment in Poland], whose author is Anka Grupińska, a well-known Polish journalist and writer, specializing in the modern history of the Polish Jews. The project, initiated in 2006 by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, consists in recording interviews with Polish Jews from all generations.
