Polish zone of occupation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Polish soldier in a captured Wehrmacht uniform while checking documents on May 7, 1945

The Polish zone of occupation was a special area within the British zone of occupation in Germany from 1945 to 1948 and was located in the central northern area of ​​today's Emsland district and in the area of Oldenburg and Leer . It bordered on the Netherlands and covered an area of ​​6470 km². The zone with a camp for displaced persons was administered by the Polish government in exile . The administrative center of this Polish zone was the city of Haren . During this time it was named Maczków after Stanisław Maczek . Other places that had to be evacuated by the German population were parts of Papenburg and Friesoythe (the Neuvrees district was renamed Kacperkowo and still has a so-called "Polenkirche" from this time). The street village of Völlen was not evacuated, but here the population groups were separated along the middle of the street: the population of German origin was merged onto the eastern side of the street, while Poles moved into the empty houses on the western side of the street.

The new population of Polish origin was made up of around 30,000 displaced persons, mainly former prisoners from the Emsland camps - these included members of the Warsaw uprising of August 1944 - and 18,000 Polish soldiers . Since the overwhelming majority came from the former Polish voivodeships of Lemberg and Stanislau , today's Ivano-Frankiwsk , the city of Haren was first renamed Lwów . The main streets of the city were given Polish names of these places. After just one month, the name was changed again on June 24, 1945 under Soviet pressure. The city was now named after the Polish General Maczek , who with his tank brigade had liberated the surrounding prison camps. Since a large part of the Polish intelligentsia interned in German camps then settled in Maczków, the place developed very dynamically into the center of the Polish administrative area, behind which the anti-communist Polish government in exile stood. The Polish government-in-exile is said to have even thought about building the enclave to up to 200,000 Poles in order to be able to exert indirect pressure for free elections in Poland.

The Polish zone of occupation in Emsland, administered by the Polish government in exile, was intolerable for the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Soviet Union asked the British authorities to disband the Polish zone. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not respond to the demands during his tenure. Following the Labor Party's electoral success in the British general election, Clement Attlee became Prime Minister in July 1945. Great Britain recognized the People's Republic of Poland and now had the goal of persuading refugees to return to their home countries. This also happened in view of the increasing discontent of the German population. At the instigation of the British government, the first Polish troop units began to be relocated from the Emsland to Great Britain in autumn 1946, where they were dissolved. On September 10, 1948, the last Polish soldiers left the area, mainly for Poland or the Commonwealth countries . The city of Maczków was placed under German administration and was given its original name back on September 10, 1948.

Graves from this period are under the protection of the Polish consulate in Hamburg and the local community of Haren.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ There are many reasons for the creation of the Polish zone of occupation. On the one hand, Polish troops made a significant contribution to the liberation of northern Germany from the Nazi dictatorship and suffered heavy losses in the process. However, many soldiers were unable or unwilling to return to their homeland, which was now dominated by communists. In addition, tens of thousands of "Displaced Persons" of Polish origin were still living in the National Socialist camps at the end of the war. The emergence of the Polish zone of occupation began when the local German population (around 3,500 people) was informed that they would leave the undestroyed town of Haren within 24 hours. The displaced people found accommodation in 30 neighboring towns, some of which were quartered in stables. Further information from Karl Forster, Haren - Lwów - Maczków - Haren. A Polish city in Germany .
  2. ↑ Karl Forster is editor-in-chief of the magazine "Polen und Wir", the German-Polish Society of the Federal Republic of Germany .
  3. ↑ Kolja Mensing, The Legends of the Fathers - Three Generations of Life Story, written like a novel: In 1946 a child was born in northwest Germany. The father is Polish, a soldier in the Polish occupation army, which operates in the British occupation zone, the mother German. Love fails, the soldier goes back to Poland, and the child - a son - grows up without a father. Contact is only established many years later. And many years later, Kolja Mensing, the grandson, goes on a search for clues in Germany and Poland. He discovers that family stories are never as clear as they are told, and that the war and the occupation still shape his generation.

Web links