Polish occupation zone in Germany Polnische Besatzungszone Deutschlands Polska strefa okupacyjna w Niemczech | |||||||||
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Military occupation zone of the Polish government-in-exile part of Allied-occupied Germany | |||||||||
1945–1948 | |||||||||
Capital | Maczków | ||||||||
Area | |||||||||
• 1945 | 6,470 km2 (2,500 sq mi) | ||||||||
Population | |||||||||
• 1945 | 48 000 | ||||||||
History | |||||||||
• Type | Military occupation under administration of the Polish government-in-exile, within the British occupation zone in Germany | ||||||||
Historical era | Post-World War II era Cold War | ||||||||
• Established | 19 May 1945 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 10 September 1948 | ||||||||
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Today part of | Germany |
The Polish occupation zone in Germany [lower-alpha 1] was a military occupation area, under the administration of the Polish government-in-exile, located within the British Occupation Zone of the Allied-occupied Germany, that existed from 19 May 1945 to 10 September 1948. It was established from the territory of the British-controlled occupied Nazi Germany, following its surrender ending the World War II, and existed until 10 September 1948, when the administration of the area was given back to the United Kingdom. The zone was created for the Polish displaced people, consisting of those freed from German labour camps, and concentration camps, and the prisoners of war. [1] In 1945, it was inhabited by over 30,000 Polish civilians and around 18,000 soldiers, [2] and had an area of 6,470 km2, being located within the area of modern districts of County of Bentheim, Cloppenburg, Emsland, and Osnabrück, within Lower Saxony, Germany. Its seat was located in the town of Haren, then renamed to Maczków. [1]
At the end of World War II there were over 3 million Polish citizens in Germany, most of them displaced persons (DPs) who got there either as slave labourers, prisoners of German concentration camps or prisoners of war. As the political situation in Communist-controlled Poland was uncertain, the Allied authorities decided to create a Polish enclave in Germany that would serve both as a resettlement camp, local cultural centre and a station from which the DPs could further be dispatched to Poland or various western states. As Haren lay in the occupation zone administered by the Polish I Corps (and more specifically the Polish 1st Armoured Division), it was chosen as the most appropriate centre of a Polish enclave in Germany. [3] [4]
On 19 May 1945, the Polish 1st Armoured Division, a unit attached to the British Army moved all of the thousand families of Haren out to surrounding communities. Over 4000 Poles from Labor camps and prisoner-of-war camps in Northern Germany moved into the town. [5] Many of them had been members of the Polish Home Army, men and women, who had fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. [3] [4]
Initially, the new Polish enclave was named Lwów, after the city in South-Eastern Poland by then occupied and later annexed by the Soviet Union. However, under Soviet pressure the name was then changed to Maczków, in honour of General Stanislaw Maczek, the commanding officer of the Armoured Division and the local Allied occupation forces. [5] The streets in the town were renamed to Polish, either honouring various military units ( Legionów Str. , Artyleryjska Str.) or named after streets in Warsaw (Ujazdowskie Avenue). [3] [4]
During the next months, a Polish town with a Polish mayor, a Polish school, a folk high school, a Polish fire brigade and a Polish rectory were established. The latter registered 289 weddings and 101 funerals. 479 Poles have birth certificates showing Maczków as a place of birth. As there were hundreds of thousands of Poles in the area administered by the 1st Armoured Division, "Maczków" also served as a cultural centre: newspapers were being published there on a daily basis (Dziennik and Defilada eventually reaching 90 thousand copies), a theatre was opened (led by Leon Schiller) and concert halls were active. Among the most notable events held in the Polish enclave was a 1947 concert by Benjamin Britten and Lord Yehudi Menuhin. [3] [4]
In the Autumn of 1946, the Polish forces stationed in North-Western Germany started to be demobilised and ferried back to the United Kingdom. Also, the civilian inhabitants started to return to Poland or move to other European states. Eventually, by the end of 1948, the town was returned to the original inhabitants (and renamed back to Haren). [3] [4]
The Polish 1st Armoured Division was an armoured division of the Polish Armed Forces in the West during World War II. Created in February 1942 at Duns in Scotland, it was commanded by Major General Stanisław Maczek and at its peak numbered approximately 18,000 soldiers. The division served in the final phases of the Battle of Normandy in August 1944 during Operation Totalize and the Battle of Chambois and then continued to fight throughout the campaign in Northern Europe, mainly as part of the First Canadian Army.
The Upper Silesia plebiscite was a plebiscite mandated by the Versailles Treaty and carried out on 20 March 1921 to determine ownership of the province of Upper Silesia between Weimar Germany and Poland. The region was ethnically mixed with both Germans and Poles; according to prewar statistics, ethnic Poles formed 60 percent of the population. Under the previous rule by the German Empire, Poles claimed they had faced discrimination, making them effectively second class citizens. The period of the plebiscite campaign and inter-Allied occupation was marked by violence. There were three Polish uprisings, and German volunteer paramilitary units came to the region as well.
Szymon Askenazy was a Jewish-Polish historian, educator, statesman and diplomat, founder of the Askenazy school.
Zygmunt Wojciechowski was a Polish historian and nationalist politician. Born in 1900 in then-Austria, he obtained a doctorate from medieval history at Lviv University. In 1925 he moved to Poznań, where he became a full professor in 1929. In 1934-1939 he became politically involved with the nationalist party Endecja. During occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany he worked in Polish underground opposing German genocide of Poles by providing underground teaching, which was banned by German state and worked on future concept of Polish borders that would provide Poland with safety against any further German aggression. He supported an alliance with Soviet Union and after the war he continued to work as historian in People's Republic of Poland and headed Western Institute that studied former Polish territories recovered from Germany and history of Polish-German relations. He was a recipient of Commander's Cross and Officer's Cross of Order of Polonia Restituta.
Skwierzyna is a town of 9,671 inhabitants (2019) in Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland, the administrative seat of the Gmina Skwierzyna. It is located at the confluence of the Obra and Warta rivers, about 18 km (11 mi) north of Międzyrzecz and 23 km (14 mi) south-east of the regional capital Gorzów Wielkopolski. The town is situated in a particularly green part of Poland. Extensive forests and numerous lakes can be found in the vicinity.
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Displaced persons camps in post–World War II Europe were established in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the former inmates of the Nazi German concentration camps. A "displaced persons camp" is a temporary facility for displaced persons, whether refugees or internally displaced persons. Two years after the end of World War II in Europe, some 850,000 people lived in displaced persons camps across Europe, among them Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Yugoslavs, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Czechoslovaks and Belarusians.
The entirety of Germany was militarily occupied by the Allies from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. After Nazi Germany (1933–1945) of the German Reich (1871–1945) surrendered to the Allies and collapsed on 8 May 1945, the four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty with the Allied Control Council (ACC) at the 1945 Berlin Declaration. At first, defining Allied-occupied Germany as all territories (1922–1938) of the former German Reich before the Nazi annexing of Austria and later at the 1945 Potsdam Conference of the Allies themselves, the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August decided the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into the four occupation zones for administrative purposes under the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. Although the three of Allies agreed about the occupation, division, and border of Germany in the 1943 Tehran Conference in Iran before, the four occupied zones located in Germany were only agreed by the three Allies at the February 1945 Yalta Conference.
Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp was a displaced persons (DP) camp for refugees after World War II, in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. It was in operation from the summer of 1945 until September 1950. For a time, Belsen DP camp was the largest Jewish DP camp in Germany and the only one in the British occupation zone with an exclusively Jewish population. The camp was under British authority and overseen by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) with camp directors that included Simon Bloomberg. Today, the camp is a Bundeswehr barracks, having been a British Army base until 2015.
Sh'erit ha-Pletah is a Hebrew term for Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.
Haren is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany in the district of Emsland.
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The 11th Carpathian Infantry Division, was a tactical unit of the Polish Army in the interbellum period, which fought in the Invasion of Poland in 1939. Elements of the unit would go on to serve in the Polish Armed Forces in the East.
The 3rd Polish Infantry Brigade was a Polish infantry brigade which served during World War II. Together with the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade they formed part of the 1st Polish Armoured Division and was created from Polish soldiers who had already escaped from Poland to France, and after the fall of France made their way to Great Britain. Their wartime headquarters were in Biggar High School, South Lanarkshire
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