Perhaps the most significant and urgent area of work for the PU and the entire Polish DP population was welfare. UNRRA and IRO material support left gaps that had to be filled by the ethnic groups themselves. The Polish community in Germany met the goal of care for the most needy among them on several different levels. Regional groupings of Polish DP camps formed special commissions, and, in November 1948, a separate Referat Opieki Społecznej (welfare division) created by the executive committee of the PU took over control of the welfare issue. The PU organized frequent collections for impoverished Polish students, summer camps for children, widows and orphans of Polish soldiers, handicapped veterans, Polish inmates in German prisons, the elderly, those unable to work, and patients in hospital care.82 The PU approached the Polish government in London for funds and appealed to other charitable organizations, including Rada Polonii. It cooperated closely with the Polish Red Cross, Społeczny Komitet Pomocy Obywatelom Polskim w Niemczech, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, Caritas, Fundusz Społeczny Kompanii Wartowniczych (Welfare Fund of the Polish Guards), Fundusz Społeczny Stowarzyszenia Polskich Weteranów (Welfare Fund of the Polish Veterans Association). Reports of the PU indicate that the aid received from various sources in the years 1945 and 1946 far exceeded the levels of aid available for the following years, as the Polish Red Cross and Rada Polonii decreased their involvement and as emigration drained the human resources of the Polish DP camps. The financial situation of the remaining DP population made the collections for charitable purposes very difficult.83
Some smaller welfare organizations focused on work with particular target groups within the Polish community. For example, Polska Pomoc Społeczna (Polish Welfare) in Stuttgart secured both material and legal aid (screenings, applications for DP status, emigration procedures, and job searches) for Poles in the Württenberg and Baden areas who lived outside DP camps and were deprived of IRO support.84 In 1947, after the closing of camps in the Western occupation zones to escapees from behind the Iron Curtain, Komitet Pomocy Uchodźcom (committee to aid refugees) aimed at helping the new arrivals.85 A report from northern Bavaria emphasized the special need to care for Poles in hospitals and prisons. The report gave the example of one Captain Jan Passowicz, who had remained in the hospital since the end of the war. He had been wounded in the 1939 campaign and later fought in Egypt and Italy until being captured and imprisoned. “He does not have any family who could take care of him,” the report read. “For more than two years he has been condemned to insufficient food and clothing; he does not receive any cigarettes and does not have anything to read.” The report also called for care for inmates who found themselves in prison as a result of “demoralization caused by long stays in forced labor camps or concentration camps.” They were doing “truly hard penance for their guilt,” the report continued, and were in dire need of help to “return to an honest life after they leave prison.”86
Local welfare committees were also active within individual camps. According to a report from the Hohenfels (Lechów) DP camp, each member of its welfare committee had about one thousand persons in his or her care: “Each lady [from the Committee] has a certain number of barracks to visit twice during the week, looking after the children and asking whether there are any problems that [the Committee] could solve.” Committee members prepared lists for the distribution of goods, cared for the sick in the hospital, worked to obtain artificial limbs and special shoes for the handicapped, and decided on financial aid for families in particularly hard conditions.87
With the passing of time, the need to care for those who could not emigrate from Germany became even more apparent and urgent. In 1948, for example, the PU issued a report identifying welfare problems resulting from increased emigration:
People who are young, healthy, single and have job training leave to settle in the free world. . . . The old people, the sick, those burdened with families, and those without job training stay behind, because countries admitting immigrants treat the DP masses in a purely selfish, human-market-like way, instead of with a humanitarian and social attitude. The ratio of the young and healthy to the old and unable to work gets worse almost by the hour. So far the healthy ones have helped the sick ones, and there is care from the IRO, as well as from Polish social and charitable organizations. However, this help is becoming insufficient. The governments of the Polish centers, impoverished after the reform of the German currency, remain in difficult a financial situation and can hardly solve the welfare problem. Those who need help include people who are blind, deaf, mentally ill, terminally ill— especially those with TB—handicapped, and old people who can’t work. These people lost their health in concentration camps, as political prisoners or fighting for Freedom and Independence, or in POW camps . . . , or as civilian laborers forced to work in Germany.88
In these circumstances the PU authorities adopted a number of decisions making welfare issues their first priority.89 The Polish-American press received repeated appeals for help from American Polonia. The fear of being left behind at the mercy of a hostile German administration was overwhelming.90 Care for those in need and self-help also became the main goals of the PU’s successor, Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech.91
One of the most interesting initiatives of the PU was the establishment of a citizens’ court. The Polish Union’s bylaws for the American occupation zone formulated the court’s main goals as deciding in cases that involved Poles committing acts “contrary to the recognized customs of Polish public life; harmful to Polish organizational life; and violating public interests of the Polish emigration.”92 The court was to make pronouncements in matters of ethics and defamation relating to the PU members and activists. The PU Supreme Council had the power to appoint judges and counselors of the court for one year. The details of the court’s activities and responsibilities were regulated by the court’s own bylaws.93
The court’s design is in itself another indication of a conscious effort to organize the Polish DP community in Germany in an orderly fashion. Through the court, people who had survived in abnormal conditions and with an undetermined status could assume agency and strive for some semblance of normalcy. Forced to function in a reality defined by military authorities, international agencies, and hostile local administrations, Polish DPs clung to their own independent institutions, even though their range of effectiveness and their legality were rather limited in practice. The PU, in close contact and cooperation with the Polish government in exile in London, consciously supported the implementation of the ideals of the exile mission, including the concept of creating Little Poland in exile. Educational goals and directives aimed at the patriotic and anticommunist upbringing of the Polish youth also came from the political circles of the London Poles.94 Leaders of the PU and the Roman Catholic Church, while performing the everyday functions of their offices, imbued the DPs with the political meaning and dimension of their experience, propagated ideals of the exile mission, and modeled attitudes and behaviors to be adopted in the diaspora after the resettlement.
DP Organizations
The PU was not the only organization performing the double function of meeting the needs of refugee existence and spreading the exile mission. A multitude of other DP organizations were active in Polish DP camps, including trade unions, schools, scouting organizations, publishers, cultural and sporting organizations, veterans associations, and political parties. All of them carried out some elements of the exile mission and were particularly visible during large national celebrations observing anniversaries of historical events. Respect for history also drove Polish DPs to frequently evoke the lessons of the national past and to secure protection for the