The Exile Mission. Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann
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