Nazi treatment of ethnic Poles in Germany proper

[wm]

It is a traditional Polish saying, although old fashion and not well known. It wasn't used in the thirties, because at that time such inflammatory language wasn't allowed, and could have resulted in dragging the offender in to court. Not to mention that Polish-German agreement that additionally protected both countries leaders, and resulted in prosecution of people who dared to insult Hitler.
It wasn't used in the Communist era because then it was officially proclaimed The Pole was brother of the German. I can only image it was something well known, said and written during the occupation.

And the slogans don't mean the same thing anyway.
That statement said: The Pole is never your comrade! His position is below that of any fellow German on your farm or in your factory. it clearly means the Pole can't be your work friend, work buddy. You are the boss, he is your peon.
The Polish saying is general, it means those people are so dangerous or so different that they are useless.

So you are saying that was a Soviet plan alone, not something done in consultation with the Germans?

Yes, it was their plan alone, although the Germans were aware of it thanks to the Soviet propaganda efforts against the Polish underground.

[pugsville]

"The "Polenerlasse" were a product of the state of war between Germany and Poland, not of National Socialist racial theories"

I think not. treatment of Poles was radically different from treatment of British, French. There was a National Socialists racial theory component. Racism was a core component of the Nazis and there treatment of various groups was very different.

[Halibutt]

I said that in implementing anti-Polish policies, the Germans used slogans that were a reversal of Polish anti-German slogans. Although there were certain similarities between the aims of the respective policies, ie to push out the unwanted ethnic group, the German policies imposed on Poland were far more savage and brutal than anything the Polish Government had previously done to its German minority in the inter-war period.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I still believe that your statements are an overstretch, but at least they're not offensive Now seriously, the "Polish anti-German slogans" you speak about are late 19th century propaganda from the times of the Kulturkampf. They're a great source of all those "the German shall not spit in our faces" and whatnot. However, I doubt WWII Nazis knew enough of Polish 19th century history to model their ideas on Polish journalists of 60 years before. I doubt the two phenomena were related in any way.

As for the quotation, I do not doubt that it had its origin in a 17th Century poem that nobody in Poland today knows. But it is common for lines in literature to become common sayings, used by all sorts of people who do not know their origin. Just think of all the English-speakers who have never read a Shakespeare play but quite commonly use lines from his plays, such as "it's all Greek to me". It is apparent that the line from Potocki's poem passed into common use, and was often quoted by Polish nationalists of the anti-German, Dmowskiite variety.

Yup, but the problem with this text is that barely anyone knows it. It never passed into common usage for the reason I mentioned above. Perhaps the only text with clear anti-German undertones I can think of that actually did pass into common knowledge was the 1908 Rota, but it's kind of a different matter (and it was turned down as a possible national anthem of Poland precisely for the anti-German tone, however justifiable it was at the time Konopnicka wrote it)

In fact, I did not come across the quotation in Potocki's poem, but in a history book about Polish-German relations through the ages.

Care to share the title and author?
Cheers

[michael mills]

This book:

"Das Ende Preussens in polnischer Sicht : zur Kontinuitaet negativer Wirkungen der preussischen Geschichte auf die deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen", by Andreas Lawaty.

It is in footnote 51 on page 37, where it is stated that the saying might date from the 16th Century.

You can read it on Google Books, here:

http://books.google.com.au/books?prints ... em&f=false

[4thskorpion]

Schaubild_der_Woche_02.png (400.1 KiB) Viewed 1038 times

Caption reads: ”One should not forget to keep the required distance during the utilisation of Polish people in industry and farming. Only Germans should be company at your dinner table!”

Below: Young Polish boys sent to work on a German farm.

Below: A group of Polish forced workers in Germany. The group includes uniformed PoWs also wearing the discriminatory, and mandatory, letter <P> patch for Poles working in Germany.

Polish-letter_P_group117.png (502.38 KiB) Viewed 1038 times

Below: Polish forced worker. Wearing the letter <P> and registration number pinned to his clothes, this photo is from his "Arbeitskarte" document.

letter_P_039.png (292 KiB) Viewed 1038 times

[michael mills]

I think this thread is supposed to be about ethnic Polish citizens of Germany, not about People from German-occupied Poland sent to work in Germany.

There were over one million ethnic Polish citizens of Germany, concentrated in Upper Silesia and the southern part of East Prussia. During the National Socialist period, they had the status of Germans, ie they retained their full German citizenship. There was no legislation imposing a lower juridical status on ethnic Polish German citizens, nothing like the anti-Jewish legislation which deprived German Jews of their citizenship and made them wards of the State.

Ethnic Polish German citizens served in the Wehrmacht and even the SS. A number of the staff of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp were ethnic Poles from Silesia.

[4thskorpion]

I think this thread is supposed to be about ethnic Polish citizens of Germany, not about People from German-occupied Poland sent to work in Germany.

Mea maxima culpa.

[wm]

Although the Poles there were considered Reichsbürgers (Reich citizens) of racially related blood, and possessed the full rights of citizenship it wasn't worth much, because even the Germans themselves basically didn't have any rights. Even the rights they supposedly had were subjected to the whims of the Nazis.

Additionally the Germans, and the Poles were subjected to intense indoctrination through the compulsory, years-long participation in Jungvolk, Hitlerjugend, Landjahr, and Reichsarbeitsdienst (the Poles were exempted from Landjahr thanks to a successful intervention of the Union of Poles in Germany, but not from Reichsarbeitsdienst).
As one the main aims of those organizations was to create a better German (i.e. a better Nazi) it's obvious that being a Pole in the Nazi Germany wasn't fun at all. Especially that the Polish minority was only legally recognized in Upper Silesia, those living outside were forced to declare German nationality.

The Poles in Germany were subjected to constant administrative and judicial harassment. In 1937 the Union of Poles in Germany amassed six volumes of such cases (3208 pages in small print).
A good example of that harassment is the number of Polish institutions in the Nazi Germany (in parentheses German institutions in Poland):
elementary schools = 58 (432)
gymnasiums = 2 (27)
cooperatives = 34 (856)
periodicals = 14 (78)
It should be mentioned that the the German minority (0.7 million) was much smaller than the Polish minority (1.6 million).

[michael mills]

A good example of that harassment is the number of Polish institutions in the Nazi Germany (in parentheses German institutions in Poland):
elementary schools = 58 (432)
gymnasiums = 2 (27)
cooperatives = 34 (856)
periodicals = 14 (78)

What of it?

Were ethnic Polish children in Germany permitted to receive an education in the schools provided by the German state? If so, there was nothing to complain about.

Were ethnic Polish children in Germany prevented from attending the State secondary schools? If not, there was nothing to complain about?

Were ethnic Poles in Germany allowed to be members of German cooperatives? If so, there was nothing to complain about.

Were ethnic Poles in Germany permitted to read German periodicals? If so, there was nothing to complain about.

[wm]

A German was allowed to be himself, i.e. a German, a Pole wasn't. So he had less rights than a German. Paying taxes, doing mandatory military service weren't enough - you had to be a German, or better - a Nazi.

[GregSingh]

There was no legislation imposing a lower juridical status on ethnic Polish German citizens

What about this one from 27th of February 1940:
Verordnung über die Organisationen der polnischen Volksgruppe im Deutschen Reich

[..]
§ 1
(1) The activities of the organizations of the Polish ethnic group in Germany (associations, foundations, companies, cooperatives and other companies) are prohibited. New organizations of Polish ethnic group can not be established.
[..]

Verordnung über die Organisationen der polnischen Volksgruppe im Deutschen Reich

[michael mills]

Totally irrelevant.

That ordinance merely prohibited the creation of Polish separatist organisations in Germany, which was quite reasonable, given that Poland was an enemy state. Before the war, Polish organisations in Germany had usually been run by persons with a Polish nationalist outlook, and hence had a subversive character.

Nothing in the ordinance prevented German citizens of Polish ethnicity from participating to the full in the life of the German nation. Such citizens were not excluded from participation in the German economy, or from education on German schools, or from the German health system.

You need to simply accept that German citizens of Polish ethnicity simply were not persecuted in the way that German Jews were. There were no laws creating a dividing line between such German citizens and the main body of German citizenry. Thus, there were no laws defining whether a person was a Pole rather than a German, analogous to the laws defining Jewishness by descent.

[henryk]

Has any read this article:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-18420105.html

The Poles in Germany, 1919-1939
East European Quarterly June 22, 1996 | Wynot, Edward D., Jr. | Copyright

Since the conclusion of World War II, Polish and non-Polish authors alike have written exhaustively on the subjects of German-Polish diplomatic relations during the decades between the world conflicts, as well as the position of the German population included within the borders of the resurrected Polish state following the Versailles settlement. However, the fate of the Polish minority living within the truncated German state has not received an equal amount of balanced treatment. To be sure, Polish scholars and writers have focused considerable attention on this population group, in the process producing a body of literature occasionally overwhelming in its minute details. German scholars have displayed far less interest in the Polish minority, and when it appears in English-language works, it does so either as a sub-theme in a broader study of German-Polish foreign relations or, as in the recent work by Richard Blanke on the German minority in Poland, as a factor influencing intergovernmental minority policy.(1)

This paper attempts to fill that apparent gap in scholarship by providing an overview of the Polish minority in inter-war Germany. After presenting its demographic profile, the paper will offer a survey of the population's social, cultural and economic life, as well as its political activities within Germany. Considerations of time and space require only a cursory discussion of the highlights in each category, and the omission of any treatment of its role in international relations.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE POLISH MINORITY

Any scholar attempting to profile population groups in inter-war Central and Eastern Europe must preface the discussion with a caveat regarding the validity of figures drawn both from official government sources and from claims made by specific ethnic groups concerning their "actual" (as opposed to "reported") numbers. The case of the Poles in Germany is no exception. The official government censuses in 1925 and 1933 differentiated the population by nationality according to language.(2) These totals found 301,968 Polish-speakers in 1925, but only 113,010 in 1933; when bilingual speakers (Polish-German, Polish-Mazurian) were added, the totals rose to 1,525,556 (1925) and 440,168 (1933). In either case, the government noted a clear decrease in its Polish population over less than one decade. Predictably, both contemporary and post-war Polish observers have contested those figures. Starting with the last pre-war German census of 1910 and limiting it to the final post-war borders as set in 1922, they have arrived at dramatically higher totals. Using natural population growth rates combined with migration trends, they calculate that in 1925 ethnic Poles (irrespective of language spoken) totaled 1,414,000 - a figure that had risen to 1,593,000 by 1935 and projected to 1,658,000 on the eve of World War II.(3) Splitting the difference gives an approximate figure of 1,000,000 Poles in Germany that is probably close to reality.

Whatever its actual size, the German Polish population was internally differentiated in terms of both geographical dispersal and socio-economic profile. By far most lived in areas that adjoined the Polish Republic. The largest segment (600-800,000) lived in German Upper Silesia.(4) Most were rural dwellers (approximately 80%), mainly smallholding peasants without any defined sense of national identity, while the remainder lived in cities as industrial workers, craftsmen or small shopkeepers; the urban residents tended to be heavily Germanized. Next in size came the Mazury-Warmia-Powisle area of East Prussia, with a Polish population estimated in the 400550,000 range.(5) This group tended to be the most diverse in Germany, including in its ranks a few large landowners and small groupings of intellectuals, craftsmen and industrial workers, although once again, most were smallholding peasants or farm workers. The Lower Silesian Poles (60,000) tended to concentrate in and around the city of Breslau/Wroclaw, where they were either industrial workers, craftsmen, farm workers or smallholders.(6) The final group in this category lived along the border of the Poznan/Pomorze region (22,500-27,000), where, for the most part, they formed Polish islands surrounded by a German sea. The majority were peasants, with a smattering of small shopkeepers and craftsmen sprinkled among their midst and a colony of about 2,000 workers living in the port of Stettin/Szczecin.(7)

Additional groups of Poles lived apart from the contiguous border regions. About 120-150,000 lived in Berlin and the states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, where those residing in cities belonged to either the industrial worker or intellectual class while the rest were farm workers.(8) Finally, about 95-120,000 Poles lived in the western regions of the Ruhr and Westphalia, where they were mainly seasonal industrial workers with a few small shopkeepers and crafts men.(9)

Just as the German Poles displayed great geographical and occupational diversity, so did their religious affiliations differ within the inroad community.(10) While most adhered to Roman Catholicism, substantial numbers of Poles -in Lower Silesia, the Mazurian portion of East Prussia, and Westphalia were Protestants. Moreover, many Polish Roman Catholics belonged to parishes administered and staffed by German clergy, which severely restricted the assistance that the Church traditionally extended its Polish faithful in defense of their national identity; this was especially true in East Prussia.(11) The Nazi period witnessed a slight shift-in attitude by the German clergy, which after 1933 saw the Catholic Poles as possible allies against a hostile central government. Hence, the Church hierarchy cautiously promoted better relations and closer cooperation with its Polish flock against a common foe. But traditional animosities and mutual suspicions were so deeply rooted that the Church could not bring itself to turn over its operations completely to Polish clergy-even at the lowest levels, while for their part the Poles remained very reluctant to trust a consistent foe of Polish identity.(12)

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE

Irrespective of the time frame, German Poles lived in a state system fundamentally hostile to the revived Polish state and thus, by association, to them. While pressure on their often fragile communal organizations intensified after 1933, it posed a constant threat to the survival of a Polish national identity where one already existed, or the creation of one among residents lacking any sense of Polish ethnicity. …

[michael mills]

The Wynot article seems to treat the survival of Polish national identity within Germany as an indicator of the treatment of German citizens of Polish ethnicity.

But that is essentially irrelevant. What is relevant is whether individual German citizens of Polish ethnicity were subjected to official persecution after the advent to power of the National Socialist Government, similar to the official persecution meted out to German citizens of Jewish ethnicity.

So far I have not seen any evidence of such persecution.

[GregSingh]

You need to simply accept that German citizens of Polish ethnicity simply were not persecuted in the way that German Jews were.

Has anyone suggested otherwise?
But this topic is not about Polish or German Jews.