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Kleine
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Dokumentations- und Informationszentrum (DIZ) Emslandlager |
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Andreas Lembeck
"... to set up a Polish enclave in
Germany."
Displaced persons in the Emsland
1945-1950
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
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