Читать книгу The Exile Mission - Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann - Страница 16

2

“All I have left is my free song”

The Polish Community in the Displaced Persons Camps

Formation of the DP Camps

Thursday, April 12, 1945, was just another prisoner-of-war day, although there were rumors that parts of the wider area around us might be already in the Allied hands. . . . In mid afternoon, I left my barrack for a little while, and when I was coming back it happened. I heard bullets buzzing through the air and saw a bent figure in a khaki uniform running on the other side of the barbed-wire fence in the direction of one of the observation towers. It seemed that he had a machine gun in his hand. Then a huge tank rolled through the middle of the roll-call area, with an armored car at its side and we knew immediately what it meant. We were free!¹

AFTER LONG MONTHS OF captivity, Leokadia Rowinski could rejoice with the other women of the Warsaw Uprising who were liberated from the Oberlangen POW camp along with her. The women sang, cried, prayed, and planned for the future. Soon, however, their happiness gave way to anxiety and even despair. As Leokadia and her friends pored over the suddenly available newspapers, they understood that “there was no place in the world for the likes of us. We had no country and no home to return to.”² The brutal and confusing reality of the Cold War thwarted the euphoria of freedom. The decision whether to repatriate to communist-dominated Poland or to embrace exile became the most difficult and painful choice that the refugees faced after the war. While waiting for repatriation or emigration, they stayed in displaced persons camps, which international organizations had created on German, Austrian, and Italian soil. For many of them, the sojourn in the DP camps lasted several months to several years.

Map 1. Major DP camps with Polish population in the occupation zones of Germany and Austria, 1945–1951. Map by Emil Pocock, Department of History, Eastern Connecticut State University, and the author

Poles were just a fraction of the approximately 10 million people who remained outside the borders of their home countries. In May 1945 “Europe was on the move.”³ Large numbers of refugees immediately undertook strenuous journeys home, either walking or catching rides on military transports, and the roads of devastated Europe filled with multilingual masses. Governments of western European countries promptly organized transport of their nationals, and the French, Danish, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, and Italians quickly found themselves on their way home. Among those who awaited repatriation were large contingents of Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Czech, Slovaks, Hungarians, southern Slavs, and many other nationalities.⁴ Their homes were in a part of Europe that was changing dramatically before their eyes, while borders moved, new communist governments formed, and the victorious Soviet army reigned unchallenged.

Before any transportation to central and eastern Europe could be provided, the destitute refugees needed immediate care: shelter, food, clothing, and medical attention. In the early period after liberation, care for the refugees was supervised by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) Displaced Persons Branch.⁵ Shortly thereafter the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an international organization created in the fall of 1943, took over SHAEF’s functions.⁶ In addition to relief work among the refugees, UNRRA’s main goal was the repatriation of the refugee population to their respective countries. Between the fall of 1945 and the end of 1946, UNRRA repatriated about 8 million people of different nationalities to their homelands. By June 1947 UNRRA had completed its activities,⁷ and at this time its responsibilities were taken over by the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization (PCIRO), a new international agency assigned to the task of resettling the remaining DP population. The International Refugee Organization (IRO) began its operations in July 1947 and completed them in December 1951.⁸ Since that time, refugee problems have been handled by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).⁹

In May 1945 nearly 1.9 million citizens of prewar Poland were in Germany: about 1.2 million in the British, American, and French zones of occupation and seven hundred thousand in the Soviet zone.¹⁰ Over 90 percent had been slave laborers in the economy of the Third Reich. The remaining 10 percent included prisoners of Nazi concentration camps and prisons, former POWs, and Poles who had been slated for Germanization. In the last stages of the war, several thousand soldiers of the Holy Cross Brigade (Brygada Świętokrzyska) of the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, or NSZ, a right-wing anticommunist military organization), who had left Poland under the pressure of the incoming Soviets, found themselves on the territory of Germany, as did inmates of concentration camps and prisons evacuated before the onslaught of the Red Army. Former Wehrmacht (German army) soldiers who had been forcibly conscripted from the population in Silesia and Pomerania were still in Germany, as was a smaller group of Poles deported from the territory annexed by the Soviet Union. Polish armed forces stationed in Germany in the spring of 1945 included about sixteen thousand soldiers and officers, representing the First Armored Division under the command of General Stanisław Maczek; the First Independent Parachute Brigade (Samodzielna Brygada Spadochronowa); Division 131 of the British Air Force of Occupation; and Polish land forces that had fought as part of the French army. Most of these units participated in occupation duties in various parts of Germany.¹¹ The ranks of Polish civilian refugees in the Western zones soon swelled with those who had escaped from the Soviet zone of occupation and escapees from Poland who had illegally crossed the border. These numbers increased further through the high birth rate among DPs.¹²

Most Polish displaced persons, like those of other ethnic groups, lived in assembly centers, or camps, created and supervised by UNRRA. According to UNRRA statistics, there were more than 250 camps in December 1945, and more than 700 in July 1947.¹³ Some Poles who could walk and who were determined to get back home as soon as possible set off on their way to Poland in the summer months of 1945. No coordinated repatriation action began until the fall, when train transports became available. By the end of December 1945, UNRRA had repatriated about 150,000 Polish DPs and provided care for 438,643 Poles in the territory of Germany and Austria. Statistics for December 1946, after the major repatriation action was over, showed that 278,868 Polish displaced persons remained in the DP camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy. All in all, between November 1945 and June 1947, some 549,998 Polish DPs were repatriated to Poland from the three Western occupation zones of Germany and 11,676 from Austria.¹⁴

Most of the available data on the internal structure of the Polish DP population comes from the period after the mass repatriation was over and the IRO had begun to compile statistics that could be used in the resettlement of the remaining 166,000 persons born in Poland. In 1947 data on the age structure of the Polish DP population indicated 9.5 percent were below two years of age; 6 percent were between two and seven; 4.5 percent were between seven and fourteen; 3 percent were between fourteen and eighteen; 69 percent were between eighteen and forty-five; 7 percent were between forty-five and sixty; and 1 percent were more than sixty years of age. There were more men than women in all three Western occupation zones.¹⁵ Data compiled by the IRO in March 1948 showed that 38 percent of Polish men had a background in agriculture and farming, about 30 percent were skilled workers, and about 6 percent were professionals. Many Polish women (33 percent) worked in agriculture and service, and, of these, almost 19 percent were domestic servants. Some 7 percent of Polish women had professional backgrounds. By comparison, the 1948 report estimated that the Polish group in the American zone included about 10,000 skilled farmers and the same number of unskilled agricultural workers; 10,000 skilled artisans and workers; 4,500 people in the professions; and 7,000 persons in various white-collar occupations.¹⁶ A different report, from the summer of 1949, assessed the class structure of the Polish DP group as follows: 68 percent farmers; 12 percent workers; 15 percent craftsmen and artisans; and 5 percent professional middle class (inteligencja).¹⁷ A registration of inteligencja undertaken in all three Western zones in 1946 revealed that the group included 3,500 commissioned officers, 2,870 civil servants, 1,480 economists and merchants, 640 teachers, 520 civil engineers and technicians, 340 lawyers, 260 medical doctors, 240 journalists, and 180 artists.¹⁸

TABLE 2.1. Polish displaced persons receiving UNRRA assistance in Germany, Austria, Italy, the Middle East, and China, December 1945–June 1947

Total for December 1945–September 1946 does not include displaced persons in Italy, for whom nationality breakdown is not available.

SOURCE: George Woodbridge, UNRRA: The History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 3:423.

DPs of the same ethnic background immediately began to seek out their fellow nationals. Separation into nationalities proceeded spontaneously but was also encouraged by the occupation and UNRRA administrations for reasons of convenience and control. Clusters of Balts, Ukrainians, Poles, or Slovaks formed in various locations and, as the word spread, attracted more and more of their countrymen. Initially, Jews were placed together with DPs of other nationalities. Prompted by the so-called Harrison report and responding to the pressure from Jewish organizations and Jewish DPs themselves, American and British authorities organized separate Jewish centers beginning in the fall of 1945.¹⁹ Separate camps ensured that DPs of the same background could find comfort and support, and develop national cultures in exile and common political programs. Both the military and UNRRA/IRO teams found the day-to-day management of ethnically homogeneous camps less troublesome. This arrangement reduced opportunities for ethnic animosities and conflict, and allowed repatriation actions and emigration programs to be executed more easily.²⁰

TABLE 2.2. Occupational skills of Polish refugees in Austria, Germany, and Italy by major occupational groups, March 1948

SOURCE: Louise W. Holborn, The International Refugee Organization, a Specialized Agency of the United Nations: Its History And Work, 1946–1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 305.

The separation of ethnic groups, however, was never total. Many camps continued to house refugees of different nationalities, and most large cities had several camps, giving the DPs ample possibility to interact. These interactions often reflected the multiethnic makeup of prewar Poland. For example, DPs who could read Polish borrowed books from Polish libraries and subscribed to the Polish press. Ukrainian, Belorussian, and sometimes Jewish students attended Polish schools, and foreign student organizations at German universities often gave mutual support. Scouting and sports became another arena for collaboration and exchange of friendly visits.²¹

Differences among ethnic groups, generally rooted in the complicated past, often had deepened during the war years and were revived by competition for better living conditions in DP camps or for available resettlement opportunities. DPs of different ethnic backgrounds understood, however, the basic need to present a common position before international agencies, occupation authorities, or forced repatriation efforts. For example, some Russians and Ukrainians slated for repatriation to the Soviet Union found refuge and false papers in Polish camps. Polish and Ukrainian journalists organized meetings during which they discussed the situation of the DP press and the most important DP issues. Meetings of the International Bureau for DP Collaboration (Międzynarodowe Biuro Porozumiewawcze DP) attracted representatives of as many as ten different ethnic groups and debated common issues of DP camp life, emigration opportunities, and cultural exchanges. They also worked on ways to improve interethnic relations and to secure a positive DP image, necessary for successful emigration.²²

Conditions in the DP Camps

Displaced Poles undertook community-building efforts immediately after liberation. Both SHAEF and UNRRA provided an organizational framework, but grassroots initiatives accounted for the spontaneous creation of the first Polish communities, which mushroomed all over Germany despite very difficult conditions. One of those in charge of organizing a DP camp was Wacław Sterner, an officer of the Polish Home Army and a soldier in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Captured after the suppression of the uprising, he was a prisoner in the German Oflag in Sandbostel until its liberation in May 1945. The British military authorities appointed Sterner komendant (officer in charge) of a hastily assembled displaced persons camp in Buchhorst, which housed over five hundred Poles and small groups of French and Hungarians. People found refuge in the chambers of a brick factory’s blast furnace and in the unwalled wooden shelters used for drying bricks. Sterner remembered that in those first weeks

People camped there like nomads, in conditions contrary to any basic human needs. . . . There were no sanitary installations whatsoever. The entire area was covered by several dozen little campfires. Pots or kettles with water stood on bricks over [these fires] for people to prepare meals or warm water to wash or to do laundry. A striking sight was a large number of women. Taking advantage of the cloudless weather, they cooked, washed, sewed, and hurried around the grounds of the brick factory. Altogether it resembled a huge Gypsy camp.²³

Another Polish former POW, Jan Michalski, spent the entire war in a German Oflag. He also was recruited for the post of DP camp komendant. His new assignment was Geesthacht: a large territory of shabby wooden barracks built for foreign workers around a munitions factory that had been almost completely destroyed by bombing. About two thousand Poles lived there along with a large group of Yugoslavs, also former slave laborers for the Reich. The camp was closed before winter because the barracks in Geesthacht and in neighboring Krümmel did not have any heating.²⁴

Some DPs had more luck, if only temporarily. A third camp in that same area, in Spackenberg, boasted a clean and neat settlement of small one-story houses surrounded by little gardens, built before the war for young couples— members of the Hitlerjugend, the Nazi youth organization. The camp had a spacious old Kulturhaus (community center), which included guest rooms, a theater hall, and a large kitchen with adjoining dining hall.²⁵ In terms of the general living conditions of Polish DPs, however, Spackenberg was the exception rather than the rule.

The largest Polish camp in Germany was Wildflecken, where more than twenty thousand Polish DPs lived at any given time. Truppenlager Wildflecken, hidden in the mountains and forests of northeast Bavaria, had been an SS training camp. It resembled a town made up of huge military facilities and covered an area of about fifteen square miles.²⁶ Poles quartered there gave Wildflecken a new name, Durzyń, which derived from the name of the Durzyńcy, a Slavic tribe that had lived in that part of Bavaria in the fifth and sixth centuries AD before being pushed to the east by German tribes.²⁷ The scale of operations in Durzyń can be illustrated by just one example: the camp bakery prepared more than nine tons of bread daily.²⁸ At Durzyń UNRRA/IRO worker Kathryn Hulme was struck by the bleakness of the large rooms filled with dozens of iron beds assigned for single men. Other halls were partitioned with stacked-up luggage to create family cubicles. Families who shared such quarters usually hung army blankets to make additional “dividing walls.” Hulme saw those “khaki labyrinths” as “the last ramparts of privacy to which the DP’s clung, preferring to shiver with one less blanket on their straw-filled sacks rather than to dress, comb their hair, feed the baby or make a new one with ten to twenty pairs of stranger eyes watching every move.”²⁹

Another large Polish refugee community in Germany was formed in Haren on the river Ems, where the Polish First Armored Division was stationed, after the British authorities expelled the German population from the town. In June 1945 Haren was renamed Maczków in honor of the revered commander in chief, General Stanisław Maczek. Between 1945 and 1947, when the division was transferred to Great Britain, an entirely Polish town council governed a population consisting of military personnel and their families as well as civilian DPs. The town boasted its own Roman Catholic parish as well as its own schools, theater, publishing house, police, fire brigade, and hospital. Maczków earned the name “the capital of Little Poland,” the state in exile created by Polish refugees in occupied Germany. In the American zone of Austria, the Polish camp in Ebensee played a similar role.³⁰

The training centers of the Polish Guard Companies (Kompanie Wartownicze) in the American zone in Germany were a different type of large Polish DP community. These units, employing DPs and organized in a military fashion, were formed in 1945 to relieve American soldiers from some of their occupation duties, such as guarding military supplies, constructing and conserving airfields, and maintaining military installations and vehicles. By the fall of 1945, 75,000 Polish men were employed in these formations. Between 1946 and 1947 the number fluctuated around 40,000, and dropped to about 11,500 in March 1948. The mere existence of Polish Guards units became a bone of contention between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet Union, which saw them as hampering repatriation. The Soviets even accused the Guards of housing “fascist elements” among the DPs. In order to accommodate these protests and to emphasize the civilian character of the units, the American military changed the color of the guards’ uniforms from khaki to black and replaced badges bearing the word “Poland” with the letters “CG” (Civilian Guard).³¹

The training center for Polish Guards in Mannheim-Kafertal (named “Kościuszko” by the Guards) distinguished itself with its high degree of internal organization and activism, encouraged and facilitated by the American military. The Polish Guards published their own newspaper, Ostatnie Wiadomości (Latest News), and, due to their secure pay, could sustain many cultural and social initiatives. The financial basis of the Guards’ activities was the Fundusz Społeczny (Social Fund), which collected 2 percent of the Guards’ salary. Money from the fund supported numerous causes, such as DP welfare funds and Polish schools.³²

In general, living conditions in Polish DP camps varied in different locations throughout the entire DP period. For example, a report on the camps in northern Bavaria prepared in November 1947 for the Polish Union in Germany revealed multiple problems with housing for Polish DPs. The authors of the report indicated that only one camp, in Coburg, had decent housing. At the Amberg military base, the buildings were dirty, worn out, lacking adequate sanitary installations, and very overcrowded. Wooden barracks at the Weiden and Hohenfels camps were unsuitable for winter weather.³³ Moreover, frequent transfers from camp to camp hurt DPs and became a source of frustration and bitterness:

DPs transferred to a different camp almost always get buildings in condition not suitable for living. Making them into adequate living quarters requires a lot of work and money. Recently, just a month ago, relatively well-organized camps from Auerbach and Flossenburg were transferred to the dirty and damaged military buildings in Amberg, with electrical installations destroyed, toilets clogged, pipes and taps in bathrooms partially missing, huge and undivided halls for families to live in, and no outlets for stoves to heat the halls during the coming winter.³⁴

Population transfers from camp to camp were the scourge of refugee existence. At first, UNRRA moved DPs as camps were established and reorganized. After UNRRA launched its repatriation action, however, DPs interpreted frequent moves as a not-so-subtle attempt to make their lives so unbearable that they would volunteer to return to Poland. DPs charged that UNRRA officials tried to unsettle and destroy DP community structures to compel them to repatriate, and complained of UNRRA’s abuse of power and mistreatment of refugees.³⁵ Unfortunately, the ordeal did not end after the IRO took over, although transfers from camp to camp lost their political dimension. Now camps were being closed and consolidated because of emigration. New transition camps functioned as temporary stops in which DPs waited for emigration processing.

Next to living conditions, food was the issue that was of utmost importance to the malnourished camp inhabitants. Problems with the quantity and quality of food remained high on the agenda of all DPs, whether they lived inside or outside the camps. The average daily calorie intake for DPs fluctuated between two thousand and twenty-five hundred in 1945; it dipped to less than sixteen hundred in 1947 and 1948 and increased again to two thousand the following year.³⁶ The undernourished DP population often received food that included only small amounts of meat and shortening and an inadequate supply of vegetables. Fruit was virtually unobtainable. Complaints about shipments of rotten food or of just one type of food for an entire week echoed throughout all the camps.³⁷ Parcels from the Red Cross and CARE, an international humanitarian organization, improved the situation slightly, and were distributed to the DPs either in full or after being divided into separate products.³⁸ Despite a ban on black market activities and the prosecution of those apprehended, many DPs traded food products with the local German population. Theft of food from German farms also became a problem in some areas.³⁹ Some smaller camps with land available for cultivation established little gardens to supplement the DP diet. In later periods of the camps’ existence, DPs were allowed and encouraged to establish their own cooperatives to improve the food situation. Camp inhabitants also focused a lot of attention on the proper functioning of the camp kitchens. For example, during a meeting in the Polish camp at Altenhagen on August 8, 1945, nearly two hundred people participated in a “kitchen crisis” that investigated the honesty and qualifications of the cook and the camp director.⁴⁰

Clothing was yet another nagging problem for the Polish DP population. Most slave laborers had only rags at the time of liberation, and concentration camp prisoners had only pasiaki, the striped camp uniform. UNRRA/IRO provided a certain amount of secondhand clothing for their charges (in part confiscated from the German population), but the supply never came close to the demand. The DPs themselves had to improvise. The skilled hands of Polish women dyed and fitted German military coats, converted sheets and blankets into usable outfits, and used any other available piece of fabric, including parachute silk, for children’s or adults’ garments. Shoes were harder to produce in the camps, so DPs acutely felt any shortage of seasonal footwear. Soldiers from the Second Corps organized clothing and shoe drives and shipped the shoes to the impoverished camps in Austria.⁴¹ American Relief for Poland and the NCWC sent parcels from the United States. Despite all these efforts, the condition of the DP wardrobe remained below reasonable standards and became a source of frustration for those who were getting ready to emigrate. “I took a coat, a radio, and clothes on credit, not to look like a DP from Europe,” wrote one Polish DP already resettled in the United States, expressing a widespread feeling that DP clothing had become a visible symbol of their misfortune and poverty.⁴²

In the period directly following liberation, the health needs of the displaced persons became particularly pressing. A very high percentage of DPs suffered from malnutrition and exhaustion, and many children were affected by anemia and rickets. There were numerous cases of tuberculosis, venereal disease, heart disease, dental problems, and outbreaks of typhus. In time these health problems diminished, in large part due to an effectively functioning network of UNRRA health care centers and hospitals, as well as the efforts of the Polish Red Cross.⁴³ Other types of care, such as counseling and intervention for crisis situations, depression, and posttraumatic disorders that required professional attention, were mostly unavailable. Some dangers to the refugee psyche stemmed from the prolonged sojourn in the camps: the lack of privacy, the paternalism of charitable organizations, idleness, and uncertainty about the future.⁴⁴ Many contemporary witnesses reflected on the mood of discouragement and melancholy prevalent in the camps. The collective symptoms observed in the European DP camps after the summer of 1947 (when the major repatriation action was already finished, but resettlement schemes were not yet fully developed) were described as “DP apathy.” It manifested itself in various neurotic behaviors, a rising crime rate, absenteeism from work, procrastination, and a decreasing interest in camp affairs, entertainment, and cultural events.⁴⁵ The UNRRA personnel, for the most part not qualified for this type of social work and preoccupied with the problems of day-to-day existence, were not able to address such problems.⁴⁶

The DPs themselves had to transform the camps into communities. Concerns about peace and morality in the camps remained high on the agenda. In the first few months following liberation, some DPs, acting on long-repressed feelings of hatred, took justice into their own hands, meting out revenge to the oppressors and killing at least several dozen Germans. Cases of plunder and theft from German businesses (mainly food and clothing), underground production of illegal papers and moonshine, and trade on the black market usually received disproportionate attention from the German authorities and press. Polish DPs often protested against German accusations and stereotyping of the DPs as a criminal element, and objected to particularly harsh prison sentences for minor crimes.⁴⁷

The truth of the matter was, however, that within the camps violence, petty crime, and the abuse of alcohol, were on the rise, especially during the first two years after the end of the war. The number of extramarital relationships and births of children out of wedlock also increased. Concerns about morality led the clergy, schools, and social organizations to sponsor campaigns under the banner of the “struggle with crime and demoralization.” Both the Polish DP press and social organizations signaled the urgent need to counteract individual behaviors that hurt the image of the community and presented it in an unfavorable light to outsiders.⁴⁸

Personal conflicts and infighting particularly plagued camp life. Unavoidable in any large population, they thrived among people suffering from a lack of meaningful occupation and frustrated by their ambiguous situation. In DP camps, gossip that would be totally harmless in a different place and time could turn deadly. Because qualification for emigration depended on multiple and detailed screenings by the immigration authorities, allegations of collaboration or an unfounded denunciation from an undisclosed source could block a DP’s chances for emigration.⁴⁹ The Polish DP councils tried to deal with the inundation of accusations in their own way. Special disciplinary committees, which included persons of uncompromising character, remained busy with investigations of malevolent charges.⁵⁰ Okólnik (Circular), a publication of the Polish Union in the U.S. zone of Germany, recommended as a good example the policies of one DP camp council president who demanded that accusers repeat and support their charges during public meetings for everyone to judge: “Very shameful moments: a gossiper, ‘pressed to the wall,’ twists and fidgets, trying to find justification, but the pillory of public opinion is terrible. There is no mercy, and memory is long. When a gossiper is identified, he has to work on righting [his] wrongs in order to regain his good name. Nothing goes unpunished.”⁵¹ In Ludwigsburg the disciplinary committee issued statements that announced the results of investigations and required false accusers to retract their accusations publicly.⁵² Ill will, revenge, jealousy, or bitterness caused by the accuser’s own misfortune stood behind most cases of unfounded incriminations.

Although conditions of life in the camps were the first concern of the DPs, the camps were gradually transformed into communities, and DP organizations took on new functions. DP leaders consciously politicized the DP masses and prepared them to embrace the exile mission.

Building the Community

Following the concept of Little Poland in exile, the Polish government in London strongly discouraged repatriation and tried to retain abroad as large a representation of the Polish nation as possible. Liaison officers were first charged with the task of carrying out antirepatriation propaganda on behalf of the government. These officers were recruited from the Polish forces under British command stationed on German territory.⁵³ Later, after these positions had been eliminated, London Poles communicated directly with DP leaders, sending them instructions and directives, and assuming supervision over DP organizations.⁵⁴ Camp governments and a multitude of DP organizations played major roles in the transformation of coincidental groups of refugees into effectively functioning communities. Many individuals were motivated in their activities by a conscious sense of responsibility for the displaced Polish masses. The nineteenth-century exile mission called for work for Poland and for the preservation of all things Polish by Poles abroad; DP leaders invoked and revived this mission in the conditions of postwar displacement. Work that initially aimed at making the difficult life in the DP camps more tolerable, gradually acquired historical significance as the political situation put the displaced population at the forefront of the struggle between communism and the free world. The exile of Polish refugees became their symbolic statement to the international community.

The leaders of the displaced Polish community were mostly surviving members of the inteligencja. The Nazi authorities had targeted that social stratum during the war because they understood its leadership tradition embedded in Polish history. Members of the inteligencja, particularly those who participated in the resistance movement, were prosecuted vigorously and placed in German prisons and concentration camps as political prisoners. The Oflagen supplied a large group of commissioned officers, as well as draftees and volunteers of 1939 who in civilian life had worked in the professions. The creative energy that had been pent up during years of submission and slave labor could finally be released and put to good use. Lack of employment and the boredom of DP camp life were trying for individuals used to being active and productive. Their abilities and leadership skills could be utilized for the good of the community, so they threw themselves into organizing groups of refugee Poles into Polish communities in exile. Their activity brought a sense of normalcy after the nightmare of the war and helped to relieve the grief, frustration, and loneliness of the postwar period.

When the newly approved komendant, Jan Michalski, arrived in Geesthacht, his camp at Sandstrasse already had elected a camp committee to serve as an executive body. Only reluctantly did the council give up its authority to the new military commander and accept a more limited role as a camp council, an advisory body to the komendant and his deputy. In the following months, the power struggle between the camp council and the officers in charge abounded in drama.⁵⁵ The authority of the komendant, however, was supported both by the Allied military government of the occupation zones and by the Polish liaison officers. In the American zone of Austria, Polish officers from the Murnau Oflag in Bavaria organized several local Polish refugee centers, and in the British zone a group of Polish liaison officers from the Second Corps helped to establish camp councils in Karyntia.⁵⁶

In practice, a camp komendant in the early period of the DP camps did not have much legal power, which rested instead with the occupation armies; but the responsibilities of these komendanci, although vaguely defined, were extensive. The internal organization of the camps; the registration of displaced persons; and relationships with the military and UNRRA as well as with the local German government and population all remained in the hands of the komendanci. The effectiveness of their work and the authority of their positions depended almost entirely on individual personalities and experience in dealing with large and diversified groups of people. By the end of 1945, when UNRRA took over the management of the camps from the military, the position of the officer in charge had gradually disappeared.

UNRRA/IRO employees, in close cooperation with the occupation authorities, headed the camps’ administration but usually left enough space for self-government by camp councils (rady obozowe), executive boards (zarządy obozowe), or committees (komitety obozowe) elected by the DPs themselves.⁵⁷ The specific structure of governing bodies in Polish camps, as well as their names, differed from camp to camp and changed as time went by. The relationships between the elected camp authorities and UNRRA employees also differed. For example, a report from a meeting of Polish camp representatives in Northern Bavaria in May 1947 assessed the relationships between DP governments and UNRRA workers as ranging from “nonexistent contacts” (Furth/Bay), to “hostile” (Auerbach/Pegnitz), to “indifferent” (Weiden-“La Guardia”), to “friendly” (Aschaffenburg).⁵⁸ The report also made it clear that UNRRA interfered with the DP councils’ functions and tried to limit their authority. For example, the council in the Polish DP camp in Coburg protested an UNRRA welfare officer’s claim of the power to decide on expenditures from a council fund established from individual DP contributions and ticket sales to cultural events.⁵⁹

The responsibilities of self-governing bodies in Polish camps were very diverse and often depended on the size of the camp and the degree of organization within its population. Their main duties included organization and support of the militia (camp guards) and civil courts, as well as control over the economic well-being of the DPs, that is, the maintenance of kitchens and systems of distribution for food and material goods. The councils were also responsible for cultural and educational activities in the camps. Council members presented the needs and demands of the camp population to the military, UNRRA, and the IRO, and generally acted as brokers between the DPs and any outside authorities.

Elections for the councils were an important exercise in democracy. Detailed reports from council meetings indicate that great significance was attached to protocol and that minute infractions of the bylaws caused vehement opposition and frequently resulted in demands to repeat the elections. Bureaucracy flourished, and the governing bodies grew in size, assigning posts in numerous committees to anyone willing to serve. Personnel changes occurred frequently, either because of abuse of power or through repatriation and emigration. According to a report from the Polish camp in Ludwigsburg covering the nine-month period between October 1948 and August 1949, the camp committee convened eighteen times in regular sessions and organized three additional plenary meetings and two informational meetings. Every day the chairman of the committee held a conference with the executive director (kierownik) of the camp to discuss current problems. Several special commissions were elected: an examination commission to determine the legality of the committee’s activities; a disciplinary commission to deal with problems of order in the camp; a commission to control the repertoire of the theater and movies; a commission to carry out new elections in the camp; and, finally, an appeals commission. During the time covered by the report, about thirty people held posts in the Ludwigsburg camp government.⁶⁰

The Ludwigsburg camp committee also had the authority to give out concessions for private “businesses,” such as canteens or little stores for the camp inhabitants, to assign extra supplies to boy and girl scout troops, to make loans to private persons, to prepare papers for those ready to emigrate, and to organize cultural events and national celebrations. Additionally, Ludwigsburg’s camp government organized information services, for example, the reading of news through the camp megaphones. Special initiatives, such as making crosses and nameplates for cemeteries where Poles were buried, also needed the camp council’s approval and support.⁶¹

In 1946 the city council in the Polish DP camp in Durzyń adopted laws regarding mandatory work for all camp inhabitants. Every DP between the ages of sixteen and fifty was obliged to work for the camp one day a week without regard to any official position they held within the community. Only pregnant women, mothers with children below ten years of age, the sick and the crippled, and school-aged youth were released from this duty. Those caught avoiding work for the community were punished by the cancellation of extra rations of cigarettes, coffee, or dried fruit. Camp governments assigned similar one-day-a-week work duties to the inhabitants of Hohenfels (Lechów), Weiden-“La Guardia,” and possibly other camps.⁶² It is difficult to determine how or even whether those laws were implemented and how long they functioned in Polish DP communities in Germany.

Discipline and safety within the camps received special attention from the camp governments. Most camps had guard units made up of young men trained and supervised by a leader with a military background. One of the militia’s most important functions was to unload trucks with UNRRA supplies and to protect their contents in camp warehouses. Other duties included patrolling the camp area to prevent black-market activities by DPs or the German population, detecting thefts and alcohol distilleries on the camp grounds, as well as watching for roaming groups of former SS troops. Militia teams did not carry weapons, but some of the more energetic officers did manage (at least in the first weeks after the end of the war) to arm their “boys” with handguns.⁶³

From the first days of freedom, Polish DPs organized religious life within the camps, building improvised chapels or at least field altars. The need for spiritual care and religious expression was great. Throughout the war, the Nazis had persecuted the Polish Roman Catholic clergy.⁶⁴ At the end of the war, there were about 900 Polish priests in Germany, 761 of them liberated from wartime imprisonment in the Dachau concentration camp. By the end of 1945, about 250 priests had emigrated to different countries and some 100 had returned to Poland. The remaining group immediately plunged into religious service. In June 1945 the pope appointed Józef Gawlina, the Field Bishop of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, an ordinary for the Polish refugee population and entrusted him with a mission to organize religious care for the displaced Poles.⁶⁵

Priests often worked around the clock to meet the needs of tens of thousands of inhabitants in many different camps. Since they did not receive any pay for their work from international organizations, their support depended on the generosity of the DP congregations. The statistics for the British zone for the year 1947, cited by Naród Polski (Polish Nation), illustrate the scope of the priests’ commitment: 126 Polish priests served 255 camps with a total population of nearly 140,000; they taught religion in 125 elementary schools, 13 high schools, 101 kindergartens, and 168 special classes; and they cared for patients in 78 hospitals.⁶⁶

Among the most needed services were weddings and baptisms. The Nazis had not allowed prisoners or laborers to marry, and many people had to wait for the official recognition of their relationships. In the atmosphere of long-awaited freedom, some young people felt that they had to make up for lost time. Others, who had lost their families in the war, wanted to start new lives.⁶⁷ The DP population in general showed a large increase in birth rates. According to a report from the Polish DP camp in Hohenfels, the camp parish registered 914 weddings and 890 baptisms during the first four years after liberation.⁶⁸ A great majority of Polish DPs participated in Roman Catholic services, and many were active in numerous religious organizations, including church choirs and Caritas, a charitable group started by the Catholic clergy in Germany. The Hohenfels camp could boast of six different religious organizations, and Altenstadt had nine. Some camps had more than one chapel, and services were celebrated twice a day. Additional religious education for the DPs and their children was also available, and some priests succeeded in organization of pilgrimages to religious shrines in Germany and Italy.⁶⁹ The responsibilities of priests increased even more as emigration began and refugees asked for “certificates of moral standing” that could attest to their piety, Christian values, and involvement in the church. They were also swamped with requests for birth, marriage, and death certificates—essential documents for emigration processing.

Polish priests also organized schools and taught religion to Polish children, prepared them for sacraments, and provided religious instruction and activities, such as scouting. Special publishing houses put out hundreds of thousand copies of Catechisms, prayer books, holy pictures, and hymnals. The religious press included at least eight different newspaper titles aimed at general readers as well as children and military personnel.⁷⁰

The influence of the Polish clergy in the DP camps was considerable. Despite a certain degree of anticlericalism among some members of the intelligentsia, the peasant majority of the DP population followed the leadership of the priests. Through their own wartime suffering, Polish priests shared a bond with the people and a deep understanding of the problems faced by the DP population.⁷¹ The Polish clergy consciously participated in the strengthening of the exile mission by tying religious feelings and traditions to patriotic messages. Most of the national celebrations incorporated religious elements. Priests were invited to honorary committees, led invocations and prayers, gave speeches, and celebrated solemn masses included in the program. On the other hand, members of DP organizations, such as the Home Army Association or Scouting, prepared public declarations of appreciation, support, and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church for its activities in exile as well as in Poland.⁷²

Civic leadership in DP camps belonged to a number of organizations that strove to build and rebuild refugee community structures despite the difficulties of displacement and the hostility of some UNRRA officials. After years of horror and chaos, the DPs yearned for an internal organization that could provide them with the semblance of a normally functioning society. They also needed representation. The microcosm of the refugee world had to withstand the multiple pressures from complex levels of authority: the military in the occupation zones, international and charitable organizations, local German or Austrian officials, representatives of national governments and repatriation missions, and recruitment officers during the resettlement stage. The DPs protected themselves by establishing associations that could look after the interests of all or particular groups of DPs. Moreover, these organizations provided outlets for the pent-up energy and activism of a large leadership group. They offered companionship and camaraderie, and they reunited members of similar social and professional circles. Most of all, however, these DP organizations built a sense of the exile mission, explained it, and propagated it within the community; in this way, they politicized the masses and transformed them into conscious political refugees.

Zjednoczenie Polskie w Niemczech (Polish Union in Germany, PU) was the largest Polish organization in the three occupation zones in Germany. From mid-1945 on, Polish DPs had spontaneously created local organizations in individual camps for the purpose of self-help and representation of their interests to the occupation authorities. In the British zone, local and regional initiatives coalesced into a single organization, Główna Komisja Porozumiewawcza Środowisk Polskich (Main Commission for the Coordination of Polish Communities), formally established at a meeting of local representatives in Bardowik-bei-Lüneburg in October 1945. In August 1945 Zrzeszenie Ośrodków Polskich Bawarii Północnej (Union of Polish Centers in Northern Bavaria) became the first regional organization for Polish DPs in the American zone. Similar unions formed in southern Bavaria, Hessen, and other areas, and in December 1945 in Durzyń came together as Zjednoczenie Polskie w Amerykańskiej Strefie Okupacji Niemiec (Polish Union in the American Zone of Occupation in Germany). The French zone did not produce a separate organization but joined the activities of the American centers. As a result of cooperation between the British and American zone organizations, the Polish Union in Germany came into being in January 1946 and became the single representative of Polish DPs in all zones of Germany.⁷³

The structure of the PU had five levels. The first level was that of the individual camp and its government; the second took in camps located within the same town or in the nearby area. The third coincided with the administrative and military divisions within an occupation zone; the fourth represented a zone in its entirety; and, finally, the fifth level included the all-zone Supreme Council of the PU with its executive commissions.⁷⁴ This complicated and extensive organizational pyramid slowed down the process of decision making and engulfed it in bureaucratic red tape. On the other hand, because the structure of the PU reflected that of the administrative and military divisions within postwar Germany, the organization could better represent the interests of the Polish DP population at each level. Despite the constant process of closing camps and transferring people from place to place, this structure allowed some degree of continuity in organizations and activities. Last but not least, it created positions for all who were ready and willing to serve in the Polish Union’s ranks.

The membership of the PU included both individuals and organizations, and assumed that each Pole (without regard to citizenship) who lived in a DP camp was automatically a PU member. Those living outside the camps had to register with the PU authorities to obtain membership.⁷⁵ At the beginning of the PU’s existence, its activities were financed mostly by donations from the Społeczny Komitet Pomocy Obywatelom Polskim w Niemczech (Social Committee to Aid Polish Citizens in Germany), an organization with its headquarters in Great Britain. The majority of its financial transactions were carried out in cigarettes, which were a form of currency at that time in Germany.⁷⁶ A decrease in cigarette donations and the reform of the German mark in July 1948 threatened the economic basis of the PU. The PU executive committee issued a dramatic appeal to all members, explaining the difficult situation of the organization and pleading for membership dues, which were established at one German mark a month for an employed person and twenty pfennigs for an unemployed person.⁷⁷ The following years brought further budget cuts resulting from dwindling membership and declining profits from subscriptions to the Orzeł Biały (White Eagle), a PU sponsored journal.⁷⁸ The emigration of Polish DPs from the territory of Germany systematically deprived the PU of its members, and these changed conditions called for a redefinition of the organization’s goals and structure. In 1951, the PU transformed into the Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech (Union of Polish Refugees in Germany), an organization based on individual membership and designed to unify all those who could not or did not want to emigrate from Germany.⁷⁹

The Polish Union was the largest and most significant organization which shaped the internal life of Polish DP camps. Practically all DP associations sooner or later entered the PU and relied on its financial and organizational support. The PU leaders represented Polish DP interests to the UNRRA/IRO authorities and remained in direct contact with the Polish government in exile in London.⁸⁰ They also represented Polish DPs from Germany and their problems in the broader forum of the Polish postwar diaspora. In November 1946, during a meeting in Brussels, representatives of Polish war refugees from all over the world established Zjednoczenie Polskiego Uchodźstwa Wojennego (ZPUW, Union of Polish War Emigration), unifying Polish war refugees into one international organization. The largest delegation at the Brussels meeting came from Germany.⁸¹

Perhaps the most significant and urgent area of work for the PU and the entire Polish DP population was welfare. UNRRA and IRO material support left gaps that had to be filled by the ethnic groups themselves. The Polish community in Germany met the goal of care for the most needy among them on several different levels. Regional groupings of Polish DP camps formed special commissions, and, in November 1948, a separate Referat Opieki Społecznej (welfare division) created by the executive committee of the PU took over control of the welfare issue. The PU organized frequent collections for impoverished Polish students, summer camps for children, widows and orphans of Polish soldiers, handicapped veterans, Polish inmates in German prisons, the elderly, those unable to work, and patients in hospital care.⁸² The PU approached the Polish government in London for funds and appealed to other charitable organizations, including Rada Polonii. It cooperated closely with the Polish Red Cross, Społeczny Komitet Pomocy Obywatelom Polskim w Niemczech, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, Caritas, Fundusz Społeczny Kompanii Wartowniczych (Welfare Fund of the Polish Guards), Fundusz Społeczny Stowarzyszenia Polskich Weteranów (Welfare Fund of the Polish Veterans Association). Reports of the PU indicate that the aid received from various sources in the years 1945 and 1946 far exceeded the levels of aid available for the following years, as the Polish Red Cross and Rada Polonii decreased their involvement and as emigration drained the human resources of the Polish DP camps. The financial situation of the remaining DP population made the collections for charitable purposes very difficult.⁸³

Some smaller welfare organizations focused on work with particular target groups within the Polish community. For example, Polska Pomoc Społeczna (Polish Welfare) in Stuttgart secured both material and legal aid (screenings, applications for DP status, emigration procedures, and job searches) for Poles in the Württenberg and Baden areas who lived outside DP camps and were deprived of IRO support.⁸⁴ In 1947, after the closing of camps in the Western occupation zones to escapees from behind the Iron Curtain, Komitet Pomocy Uchodźcom (committee to aid refugees) aimed at helping the new arrivals.⁸⁵ A report from northern Bavaria emphasized the special need to care for Poles in hospitals and prisons. The report gave the example of one Captain Jan Passowicz, who had remained in the hospital since the end of the war. He had been wounded in the 1939 campaign and later fought in Egypt and Italy until being captured and imprisoned. “He does not have any family who could take care of him,” the report read. “For more than two years he has been condemned to insufficient food and clothing; he does not receive any cigarettes and does not have anything to read.” The report also called for care for inmates who found themselves in prison as a result of “demoralization caused by long stays in forced labor camps or concentration camps.” They were doing “truly hard penance for their guilt,” the report continued, and were in dire need of help to “return to an honest life after they leave prison.”⁸⁶

Local welfare committees were also active within individual camps. According to a report from the Hohenfels (Lechów) DP camp, each member of its welfare committee had about one thousand persons in his or her care: “Each lady [from the Committee] has a certain number of barracks to visit twice during the week, looking after the children and asking whether there are any problems that [the Committee] could solve.” Committee members prepared lists for the distribution of goods, cared for the sick in the hospital, worked to obtain artificial limbs and special shoes for the handicapped, and decided on financial aid for families in particularly hard conditions.⁸⁷

With the passing of time, the need to care for those who could not emigrate from Germany became even more apparent and urgent. In 1948, for example, the PU issued a report identifying welfare problems resulting from increased emigration:

People who are young, healthy, single and have job training leave to settle in the free world. . . . The old people, the sick, those burdened with families, and those without job training stay behind, because countries admitting immigrants treat the DP masses in a purely selfish, human-market-like way, instead of with a humanitarian and social attitude. The ratio of the young and healthy to the old and unable to work gets worse almost by the hour. So far the healthy ones have helped the sick ones, and there is care from the IRO, as well as from Polish social and charitable organizations. However, this help is becoming insufficient. The governments of the Polish centers, impoverished after the reform of the German currency, remain in difficult a financial situation and can hardly solve the welfare problem. Those who need help include people who are blind, deaf, mentally ill, terminally ill— especially those with TB—handicapped, and old people who can’t work. These people lost their health in concentration camps, as political prisoners or fighting for Freedom and Independence, or in POW camps . . . , or as civilian laborers forced to work in Germany.⁸⁸

In these circumstances the PU authorities adopted a number of decisions making welfare issues their first priority.⁸⁹ The Polish-American press received repeated appeals for help from American Polonia. The fear of being left behind at the mercy of a hostile German administration was overwhelming.⁹⁰ Care for those in need and self-help also became the main goals of the PU’s successor, Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech.⁹¹

One of the most interesting initiatives of the PU was the establishment of a citizens’ court. The Polish Union’s bylaws for the American occupation zone formulated the court’s main goals as deciding in cases that involved Poles committing acts “contrary to the recognized customs of Polish public life; harmful to Polish organizational life; and violating public interests of the Polish emigration.”⁹² The court was to make pronouncements in matters of ethics and defamation relating to the PU members and activists. The PU Supreme Council had the power to appoint judges and counselors of the court for one year. The details of the court’s activities and responsibilities were regulated by the court’s own bylaws.⁹³

The court’s design is in itself another indication of a conscious effort to organize the Polish DP community in Germany in an orderly fashion. Through the court, people who had survived in abnormal conditions and with an undetermined status could assume agency and strive for some semblance of normalcy. Forced to function in a reality defined by military authorities, international agencies, and hostile local administrations, Polish DPs clung to their own independent institutions, even though their range of effectiveness and their legality were rather limited in practice. The PU, in close contact and cooperation with the Polish government in exile in London, consciously supported the implementation of the ideals of the exile mission, including the concept of creating Little Poland in exile. Educational goals and directives aimed at the patriotic and anticommunist upbringing of the Polish youth also came from the political circles of the London Poles.⁹⁴ Leaders of the PU and the Roman Catholic Church, while performing the everyday functions of their offices, imbued the DPs with the political meaning and dimension of their experience, propagated ideals of the exile mission, and modeled attitudes and behaviors to be adopted in the diaspora after the resettlement.

DP Organizations

The PU was not the only organization performing the double function of meeting the needs of refugee existence and spreading the exile mission. A multitude of other DP organizations were active in Polish DP camps, including trade unions, schools, scouting organizations, publishers, cultural and sporting organizations, veterans associations, and political parties. All of them carried out some elements of the exile mission and were particularly visible during large national celebrations observing anniversaries of historical events. Respect for history also drove Polish DPs to frequently evoke the lessons of the national past and to secure protection for the records documenting their DP experience.

In 1946 the PU in the American zone initiated a Polish Council of Trade Unions (Polska Rada Zawodowa) in order to coordinate the activities of professional associations. The council contributed to the establishment of two mass unions for farmers and workers. Its journal, Załoga (Crew), provided information to all Polish trade unions in Germany.⁹⁵ The Trade Union Council’s stated ideological goals corresponded to the exile mission of the Polish postwar political diaspora:

The decision of the masses of Polish emigrants to remain in exile in 1945 was a result of the occupation and annexation of the eastern territories of our country by Soviet Russia. It was the only way to express in front of the Western allies our protest against the violence done to our country. There was also a tendency to create a center for independent political thought and struggle for the rights of the nation. The basic tasks then, in addition to current organizational and political problems, included groundwork preparing the Polish emigrant masses to work in professions and to resettle successfully abroad. If conditions for survival of the Polish communities abroad are positive, Polish immigrant groups will be able to fulfill their duties in the broader politics of the struggle for independence.⁹⁶

The practical goals of the trade unions and professional associations included verification of members’ qualifications, issuance of proper papers and documents for emigration processing, and, above all, continuing education and vocational training. Trade unions sponsored vocational classes and published textbooks and other educational materials. Union activities connected people of the same profession and gave them a chance to continue their vocations in at least a limited way.⁹⁷ Perhaps the most explicit function of the trade unions was protection of a professional middle class whose future in exile was especially difficult and unclear, since emigration schemes openly favored blue-collar workers. Trade unions also were an arena in which to exchange ideas and to offer assistance to those in need.⁹⁸

The first trade union to be established (November 1945), and in many ways the most active one, was Zrzeszenie Kół Techników Polskich (Association of Circles of Polish Technicians), which united engineers and others with technical and mechanical professions and trades in the American zone of occupation. The association verified the qualifications of about three hundred members in 1946 and focused on educational activities, considering them most beneficial for those emigrating abroad. Polish engineers taught in the Polish Technical College in Esslingen, organized courses in many DP centers through the association’s section for vocational training, and published textbooks prepared by the publishing section. The association also remained in close contact with a similar Polish organization of international scope in London.⁹⁹

Two organizations with mass membership conducted their activities among skilled workers and farmers. Związek Rolników Polskich (Union of Polish Farmers) formed in April 1947 and in the summer of that year claimed a membership exceeding twenty-seven hundred people. Its headquarters in Durzyń coordinated the organization of agricultural courses for more than a thousand participants and provided professional literature on farming and agriculture.¹⁰⁰ Beginning in 1947, Związek Rzemieślników i Robotników Polskich (Union of Polish Artisans and Workers) issued documents for more than fifteen hundred of its verified members. These documents became the basis of admission to labor unions in several countries of resettlement.¹⁰¹

Three other active professional associations—Zrzeszenie Prawników Polskich (Association of Polish Lawyers), Zrzeszenie Wydawców i Księgarzy (Association of Publishers and Booksellers), and Syndykat Dziennikarzy Polskich w Byłej Rzeszy (Syndicate of Polish Journalists), were all established in 1946. The Association of Polish Lawyers considered its major goal to be legal representation for Polish DPs and members of the Guards in the courts of the military governments. In addition, the lawyers, whose union was officially recognized by all administrative and occupation authorities, provided legal advice for Polish inmates in German prisons and for escapees from Poland who did not receive DP status and were charged with illegal crossing of the German border. In order to curtail crime among Poles, the lawyers worked on creating a register of Poles charged with crime in Germany. In 1947 the association had more than a hundred members.¹⁰²

The Association of Publishers and Booksellers, although numerically considerably smaller (about thirty members in 1947), sustained a number of important activities, such as the organization of a network of retail bookstores and a wholesale business. Realizing the significance of documenting the history of the DP period, the association compiled a bibliography of all Polish publications in the territory of Germany and sent single issues of many of them to Polish libraries abroad.¹⁰³

Members of the Syndicate of Polish Journalists initiated a similar action to preserve the historical documents and records of the Polish community in DP Germany by sending archival documents to Polish research centers in the United States. The syndicate controlled the quality of the Polish press in Germany and defended its interests, especially in the face of closings of Polish newspapers and their numerous financial and administrative problems.¹⁰⁴