"...
to set up a Polish enclave in Germany."Displaced persons in the Emsland
1945-1950 by Andreas
Lembeck
"...
to set up a Polish enclave in Germany."Displaced persons in the Emsland
1945-1950 by Andreas
Lembeck
click
on cover to see larger image
At the end of World War
II, there were more than seven million men and women living in Germany who had
been deported to the German Reich as slave labourers or prisoners of war. The
Allies used the term "Displaced Persons" (DPs) to describe people who,
because of the war, were not resident in their own country and wanted to return
or to find a new home but could not do so without help. Almost six million DPs
were repatriated in the five months from May to September 1945. The vast
majority of those who went home came from the Western European countries and the
Soviet Union. This Allied policy neglected other large national groups,
especially Polish and Baltic DPs. During the period from June to September 1945
only 75,000 Poles had been repatriated from the Western zones of Germany. Some
800,000 remained in Allied-occupied territory and refused repatriation in the
autumn of 1945.
On May 19th 1945,
the 2nd Canadian Army decided to set up a Polish colony in the Emsland. The new
national enclave was to be controlled by the 1st Polish Armoured Division. In
June General Montgomery, the British Commander-in-Chief, gave his permission to
continue with the project of evacuating the German population in order to create
a Polish enclave. Within the context of this operation the British military
government brought Polish DPs from other camps in the British zone to the
Emsland region.
The plan to set up a
Polish enclave was cancelled in mid-June 1945. By then, seven German villages
had already been evacuated, so that the thousands of Polish DPs were able to
settle in the Emsland. This development plus the fact that the 1st Polish
Armoured Division had taken up occupation duties in May 1945 exerted a magnetic
appeal to thousands of Polish DPs and former prisoners of war from the outside.
At the end of 1945 the proportion of foreigners accommodated in former
concentration camps, POW camps and in requisitioned houses in the Emsland region
was between 10 (Lingen district) and 28 percent (Aschendorf-Hümmling district).
For the DPs the Emsland served as a transit and the DP camps became waiting
rooms. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) took
care of these people, as did the soldiers of the Polish Division helping their
countrymen.
By January 1946 the
British military government had set up 15 Polish DP camps, five ex-prisoner of
war camps and one DP-camp for Baltic nationals in the Emsland region. Maczków,
the former German town of Haren (Ems), was the most renowned with a population
of around 3.500.
32 pages, with photos and
facsimiles, DIZ Emslandlager, Papenburg 2001; EURO 4.00
ISBN 3-926277-09-2
Available
from Dokumentations- und Informationszentrum (DIZ)
Emslandlager, Papenburg