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
