World War II evacuation and expulsion: Encyclopedia II - World War II evacuation and expulsion - Europe

World War II evacuation and expulsion - Europe

World War II evacuation and expulsion - Deportation of Jews

After the September Campaign Western pre-WWII Polish territories were incorporated in the German Reich The area was subdivided into three Regierungsbezirke ("administrative districts") – Poznan, Inowroclaw, and Łódź. On September 1, 1939, it had 390,000 Jews (including 4,500 in Poznan, 54,090 in Inowroclaw, and 326,000 in the Łódź district – 233,000 in the city of Łódź). Like all Polish areas incorporated into the Reich, Wartheland was from the beginning designated to become judenrein (Reinhard Heydrich's "Schnellbrief" of September 21, 1939). In a secret order to the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Main Office) and the high SS and police officials, issued on October 30, 1939, Heinrich Himmler fixed the period of November 1939 - February 1940 for clearing the incorporated areas of their entire Jewish population and the majority of their Polish population as well. A similar decree was issued on November 4, 1939, by Wartheland's Gauleiter Arthur Greiser. Arrangements were made for the transfer of 100,000 Jews from its territory during this period. In fact, more than 50 Jewish communities were deported wholly or in part to the Lublin district between the Fall of 1939 and May 1940; the larger communities among those deported were Poznan, Kalisz, Ciechocinek, Gniezno, Inowroclaw, Nieszawa, and Konin.

In some towns the deportation was carried out in stages, with a small number of Jews remaining, engaged in work for the Nazi authorities. In some instances, the regime of terror drove the Jews to desperation, so that they chose "voluntary" exile. This happened in Lipno and in Kalisz, where many Jews, unable to withstand the persecution, fled from the city in October and November 1939. In Łódź, over ten thousand Jews, including most of the Jewish intelligentsia, were deported in December 1939. For weeks the deportees were kept at assembly points, and had to supply their own means of subsistence, though they had been deprived of all their valuables. Large assembly points were located at Kalisz, Sieradz, and Łódź. There, the "Selektion" ("selection") took place in which able-bodied men, aged 14 and over, were sent to labor camps which had been established in the meantime, while women, children, and old men were deported in sealed freight cars to the Lublin and Kielce areas. This occurred in the severe winter of 1939-1940, and upon arrival at their destination, some of the deportees were dead, others nearly frozen, or otherwise seriously ill. The survivors were bereft of clothing, food, and money. A few found refuge with relatives or friends, but most of them had to find places in the crowded synagogues and poorhouses. For the Jewish communities of the Lublin and Radom districts, the influx of deportees was a very heavy burden. Most of the deportees perished before mass deportation began.

World War II evacuation and expulsion - Deportation of Poles

The Germanization of the annexed lands also included an ambitious program to resettle Germans from the Baltic and other regions on farms and other homes formerly occupied by Poles and Jews. The action started in the summer of 1939 with mass arrest and confiscation of property of Polish minority in Germany. Following the Polish Defensive War and the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, mass expulsions started in various parts of the country.

Since October of 1939, the Wehrmacht, SS and other Nazi organisations began to expel Poles and Jews from the Wartheland, Pomerania and other parts of Poland directly incorporated into Nazi Germany. The modus operandi was similar for all areas: the German officials used to surround a village or a town and announce that in certain amount of time (usually between 15 minutes and 1 hour) all the non-German inhabitants are to pack their personal belongings (usually no more than 15 kilograms per person), clean the house and leave it with the doors open and all the keys on the table. Then the civillians were rounded up and transported to transfer camps, from where they were usually deported to various final train stations within the so-called General Government. By the end of 1940, the German authorities had expelled approximately 325,000 people without warning. Their property was either confiscated by the authorities and sent to Germany or given to German settlers.

Many elderly people and children died en route or in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Toruń. In 1941, the Germans expelled 45,000 more people, but they scaled back the program after the invasion of the Soviet Union in late June 1941. Trains used for resettlement were more urgently needed to transport soldiers and supplies to the front. However, the resettlement of Poles of all denominations continued, mostly in Silesia and the area of Żywiec, from where 19,000 people were deported in October of 1940.

At the same time Nazi Germany faced the problem of Germans forcibly resettled from parts of Romania annexed by the Soviet Union. As most of the gauleiters of the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany refused to accept large number of reffugees, on July 15, 1942 Odilo Globocnik announced that the area of Zamość was planned as a place of settlement of Transilvanian Germans. The city of Zamość itself was to be renamed Himmlerstadt and become a part of the Reich. Although the name shift did not succeed, the expulsions of Poles and other nationalities proceeded as planned. Until 1943 more than 116,000 people were expelled from their homes.

Altogether, during the German occupation of Poland, it is estimated that between 1,6 and 2 millions of people were expelled from their homes during the 1939-1944 period. This number does not include millions of people arrested by the Germans and sent to German concentration camps. According to Czesław Łuczak, the number could be broken down as follows:

• Wartheland - 630,000 people
• Silesia - 80,000
• Pomerania - 124,000 (the number is disputed by prof. Bogdan Chrzanowski who sees it at ca. 140,000)
• Białystok and Ciechanów areas - 50,000 - 54,000
• Zamość - 116,000
• Warsaw - between 450,000 and 500,000

In addition, several hundred thousands of people were expelled by the local administration, outside of the official expulsions or were caught in łapankas and sent to Germany as slave workers.

World War II evacuation and expulsion - Deportation of Germans and Others

In May 1945, over 40 million displaced people were estimated to be in Europe, excluding Germans who fled the advancing Soviet armies in the east and foreign forced labourers in Germany itself. There were also some 13 million ethnic Germans who were expelled from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, pre-war German territory and other European countries (see German expulsions).

Another nearly 11.5 million forced labourers and displaced persons were found in the territory of the former German Reich, millions of Polish, Ukrainian and Russian people who had been taken to Germany to work in labour camps.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Europe", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki