Short answers, pulled from the story.
Estimates range between 3 million and 5.5 million Ostarbeiter. Ukrainians made up between two-thirds and three-quarters of the total, with historian Yuriy Kondufor placing the Ukrainian figure at 2,244,000, though that count likely excludes hundreds of thousands from Halychyna.
Ostarbeiter worked an average of 12 hours a day, six days a week, and received wages of roughly 30 percent of German workers' pay - most of which was deducted for food and lodging. They lived in guarded, barbed-wire camps, were denied access to bomb shelters during Allied raids, and could be executed for attempting to escape.
By 1944, most newly arriving Ostarbeiter were under 16 years old. Thirty percent were between 12 and 14 years of age. The minimum age for seizure was formally reduced to 10 in November 1943.
Many were repatriated under the Yalta Agreement, which required Soviet citizens to be returned regardless of their wishes. In October 1945, General Eisenhower banned forced repatriation in the American Zone. Those who returned to the Soviet Union were often treated as traitors, denied rights, and had their passports marked with references to their time in Germany.
In 2000, the German government and 6,500 companies established the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future," which disbursed 10 billion Deutsche Mark (approximately 5.1 billion euros) to former forced laborers. Each Ostarbeiter received a one-time payment of 4,300 marks, with the last payments made in 2007.
Ostarbeiter were required to wear a badge bearing the word "OST" (East), marking them as Eastern workers at the lowest level of the Nazi forced labor hierarchy. The badge distinguished them from other foreign worker groups and subjected them to the harshest restrictions and treatment under German racial classification.