The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in postwar Europe, 1944-49

The Disentanglement of Populations

Also by Jessica Reinisch: PUBLIC HEALTH IN GERMANY UNDER ALLIED OCCUPATION With Mark Mazower and David Feldman, POSTWAR RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE: International Perspectives, 1945–1950 With David Cesarani, Susanne Bardgett and Johannes-Dieter Steinert, SURVIVORS OF NAZI PERSECUTION IN EUROPE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR: Landscapes after Battle, Volume 1 With David Cesarani, Suzanne Bardgett and Johannes-Dieter Steinert, JUSTICE, POLITICS AND MEMORY IN EUROPE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR: Landscapes after Battle, Volume 2 Also by Elizabeth White: THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE TO BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921–1939

The Disentanglement of Populations Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Post-War Europe, 1944–9 Edited by

Jessica Reinisch Lecturer in European History, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

and

Elizabeth White Lecturer in International History, University of Ulster, UK

Editorial matter and selection © Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White 2011 All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–22204–5

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Maps, Illustrations and Tables

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Acknowledgements

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Notes on Contributors

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Introduction Jessica Reinisch

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Part I Explaining Post-War Displacement 1 Trajectories of Population Displacement in the Aftermaths of Two World Wars Peter Gatrell 2 Reconstructing the Nation-State: Population Transfer in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–8 Matthew Frank

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Part II Expulsions and Forced Population Transfers 3 Forced Migration of German Populations During and After the Second World War: History and Memory Rainer Schulze 4 The Exodus of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia, 1945–56 Gustavo Corni 5 Evacuation versus Repatriation: The Polish–Ukrainian Population Exchange, 1944–6 Catherine Gousseff

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Part III National and Ethnic Projects 6 ‘National Refugees’, Displaced Persons, and the Reconstruction of Italy: The Case of Trieste Pamela Ballinger

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7 Return, Displacement and Revenge: Majorities and Minorities in Osnabrück at the End of the Second World War Panikos Panayi

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8 Stateless Citizens of Israel: Jewish Displaced Persons and Zionism in Post-War Germany Avinoam J. Patt

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Contents

Part IV Labour and Employment 9 Refugees and Labour in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945–9 Jessica Reinisch

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10 From Displaced Persons to Labourers: Allied Employment Policies in Post-War West Germany Silvia Salvatici

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11 British Post-War Migration Policy and Displaced Persons in Europe Johannes-Dieter Steinert

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Part V Children 12 The Return of Evacuated Children to Leningrad, 1944–6 Elizabeth White 13 Relocating Children During the Greek Civil War, 1946–9: State Strategies and Propaganda Loukianos Hassiotis

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Epilogue 14 A Disorder of Peoples: The Uncertain Ground of Reconstruction in 1945 Geoff Eley

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Bibliography

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Index

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List of Maps, Illustrations and Tables Maps 1 ‘Europe 1944–9’, produced by John Gilkes (Courtesy of John Gilkes, reproduced with permission)

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2 ‘Germany – Zones of Occupation, February 1947’. Department of State, Map Division (Courtesy of the British Library, reproduced with permission) 3

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‘Julian March – Ethnographic Map’, from: Ethnographical and Economic Bases of the Julian March (1946) (Courtesy of the British Library, reproduced with permission)

4 Linguistic map of the German military zone of the Julian March in 1944 ‘Sprachenkarte der Operationszone’, from: Ethnographical and Economic Bases of the Julian March (1946) (Courtesy of the British Library, reproduced with permission)

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Illustrations 1 ‘Changing Trains’, photograph by John Vachon, in: Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, 1995), p. 110 (Courtesy of Ann Vachon, reproduced with permission) 2 ‘Repatriate family living in Boxcar’, photograph by John Vachon, in: Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, 1995), p. 117 (Courtesy of Ann Vachon, reproduced with permission) 3 ‘German deportees, Wrocław’, photograph by John Vachon, in: Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, 1995), p. 142 (Courtesy of Ann Vachon, reproduced with permission) 4 ‘School in Lampertheim DP camp, Germany’ (National Archives & Records Administration, US (NARA), 260-MGG-1061-02)

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viii List of Maps, Illustrations and Tables

5 ‘DP children in Wiesbaden, Germany’ (NARA, 260-MGG-1061-04) 6 ‘Rosenheim, Germany’ (NARA, 260-MGG-1062-08) 7 ‘Wetzlar, Germany, 9 April 1945’ (NARA, 331-CA-5A-6-657) 8 ‘Attendorn, Germany, 17 April 1945’ (NARA, 331-CA-5B-6-796) 9 ‘Neuweide, Germany, 28 March 1945’ (NARA, 331-CA-5B-6-828)

Tables 7.1 Changing composition of Osnabrück’s population, 1939–45 11.1

The placing of European Volunteer Workers in industry (First placings to 27 January 1951. Westward Ho and Balt Cygnet)

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Acknowledgements Our thanks go above all to the contributors in this volume for sharing their research on post-war displacement and migration; this collaboration would not have worked without them. Nor would this book have been possible without the support of all our archivists and librarians, or without the many former refugees who were willing to talk to us about their lives. The editors’ thanks also go particularly to David Feldman, who was actively involved with the book from the start and who has offered invaluable advice and encouragement. We are also very grateful to Mark Mazower for his support throughout the Balzan Project. The enthusiasm of colleagues who have participated in the Balzan workshops has been extremely stimulating; in addition to the contributors they include Richard Bessel, Daniel Cohen, Ralph Desmarais, David Edgerton, Orlando Figes, Christian Goeschel, Simon Kitson, Jan Rueger, Lucy Riall, Ben Shephard, Naoko Shimazu, Timothy Snyder, Adam Tooze, Frank Trentmann, Nik Wachsmann, Waqar Zaidi and Tara Zahra. Colleagues at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck have helped to refine our ideas at both formal occasions and countless informal ones. Two groups of Birkbeck graduate students have challenged some of our assumptions about population movements in recent European history, and their enviable focus on ‘the point’ has been very constructive. Palgrave Macmillan’s two anonymous readers have made some valuable suggestions which we hope we have done justice to. At Palgrave Macmillan, Michael Strang and Ruth Ireland have shown interest in and encouragement of this project from a very early stage and have been supportive throughout. We are also grateful to Ann Vachon for giving us permission to use her father’s photographs. Finally, our sincere thanks go to Eric Hobsbawm, who donated his Balzan Prize to the research of these issues.

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Notes on Contributors Pamela Ballinger is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College. She holds degrees from Stanford University, Cambridge University and Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton, 2003). She has published articles in a wide range of journals, including Comparative Studies in Society and History, Current Anthropology, History and Memory, Journal of Genocide Research, Journal of Modern Italian Studies and The Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans. Gustavo Corni is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Trento. He is a specialist on German history, especially on the Nazi dictatorship, and has worked on the comparative history of Europe in the inter-war period. He has held fellowships at Frias Freiburg, the Oxford Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies and the Humboldt Foundation, and has been Visiting Professor in Vienna. His most recent publications include Hitler’s Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society (London, 2002), Il ‘sogno del grande spazio’: Politiche d’occupazione nell’Europa nazista (Rome, 2005), Popoli in movimento (Palermo, 2009). Geoff Eley is the Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Most recently he is the author of Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford, 2002); A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor, 2005); (with Keith Nield) The Future of Class in History: What’s Left of the Social? (Ann Arbor, 2007) and (with Rita Chin, Heide Fehrenbach and Atina Grossmann), After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (Ann Arbor, 2009). Matthew Frank is Lecturer in International History at the University of Leeds. He has published widely on German, Central and Eastern European history. He is author of Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer (Oxford, 2008). Peter Gatrell is Professor of Economic History at the University of Manchester. He is the author of several books including A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War 1 (Bloomington, 1999), Russia’s First World War (Harlow, 2005) and (as co-editor) x

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Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London, 2004) and Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–1950 (Palgrave, 2009). He has just completed a book titled Free World? The Campaign to Save the World’s Refugees, 1956–1963, as well as a global history of the twentieth century entitled The Making of the Modern Refugee. Catherine Gousseff is an historian at the Centre National de la Recherche scientifique (CNRS). Since 2006 she has also been affiliated with the Marc Bloch Center of Berlin. As a specialist in Soviet and East-European history, her research interests lie particularly in forced migration in these areas. She has worked on Russian refugees from the Civil War, the repatriation of French prisoners of war from the USSR, and the deportations from the Polish territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940/1, and is now writing a book on the establishment of the Curzon line. She is author of L’exil russe 1920–1939: La fabrique du réfugié apatride (Paris, 2008). Loukianos Hassiotis is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has worked as a research fellow of the Institute for Balkan Studies, Thessaloniki, and the University of Western Macedonia, Florina. He is the author of various articles in Greek, English and Spanish, and two books in Greek: The ‘Eastern Confederation’: Two Greek Federalist Organizations at the End of the 19th Century (Thessaloniki, 2001), and Greek–Serbian Relations, 1913–1918. Priorities and Political Competition between Allies (Thessaloniki, 2004). His forthcoming monograph is a comparative study of children during the Spanish Civil War and the Greek Civil War. Panikos Panayi is Professor of European History at De Montfort University in Leicester, and a corresponding member of the Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkutulturelle Studien at the University of Osnabrück in Germany. His publications include: Ethnic Minorities in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Turks and Others (London, 2000); Life and Death in a German Town: Osnabrück from the Weimar Republic to World War Two and Beyond (London, 2007); Spicing Up Britain: The Multicultural History of British Food (London, 2008, 2010); and An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism Since c.1800 (London, 2010). Avinoam J. Patt is the Philip D. Feltman Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the

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University of Hartford, where he is also Director of the Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization. Previously he worked as the Miles Lerman Applied Research Scholar for Jewish Life and Culture at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is the author of Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Detroit, 2009) and is the editor of a collected volume on Jewish DPs, We are Here: New Approaches to the Study of Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Detroit, 2009). He is currently writing a new source volume, entitled Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution, 1939–1940, to be published by the USHMM and Rowman & Littlefield. Jessica Reinisch is Lecturer in European History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Previously she has held a Research Fellowship on the Balzan Project on Postwar Reconstruction and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. She has published on European reconstruction after the Second World War, population movements and displacement and internationalism and international organisations. She is author of Public Health in Germany under Allied Occupation (Rochester, 2011). With Mark Mazower and David Feldman she is editor of Postwar reconstruction in Europe (Oxford, 2011). With David Cesarani, Susanne Bardgett and J-D Steinert she edited two volumes on survivors of the Holocaust, entitled Landscapes after battle (London, 2010 and 2011). She was guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History (July 2008, Vol. 43, No.3) on ‘Relief work in the aftermath of war’. Silvia Salvatici is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Teramo, Italy. She has been Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America (Columbia University) and Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence); she is Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology of Birkbeck College. Among her recent publications are ‘Le Gouvernement anglais et les femmes réfugiées d’Europe après la Deuxième guerre mondiale’, in Mouvement social, Autumn 2008 and Senza casa e senza paese. Profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra (Bologna, 2008). Rainer Schulze teaches Modern European History at the University of Essex and is currently the Head of the Department of History. He has published widely on the British military occupation of Germany, West German reconstruction after the Second World War, regional structural change and German collective memory and identity, and was involved in the development of the new permanent exhibition at the

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Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen, which opened in October 2007. He is a member of the International Advisory Board for the Gedenkstätte and the founder and editor of the new journal The Holocaust in History and Memory (vol. 1, 2008). He is currently preparing a monograph on the history and memory of Bergen-Belsen. Johannes-Dieter Steinert is Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. He has published widely on German, British and European social and political history, with special emphasis on international migration and minorities, forced migration, child forced labour, survivors of Nazi persecution and international humanitarian assistance; and has co-organised four major international multidisciplinary conferences on ‘European Immigrants in Britain 1933–1950’ (2000), and on ‘Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution’ (2003, 2006 and 2009). His main publications include: Nach Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Britische humanitäre Hilfe in Deutschland. Die Helfer, die Befreiten und die Deutschen (Osnabrück, 2007). Germans in PostWar Britain: An Enemy Embrace (London, 2005). Migration und Politik. Westdeutschland – Europa – Übersee 1945–1961 (Osnabrück, 1995). Elizabeth White is Lecturer in International History at the University of Ulster. As well as working on post-war Leningrad, she has recently published a monograph on Russian revolutionary politics, The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevism: The Socialist Revolutionary Party in Emigration, 1921–39 (London, 2010). Her current research is on childhood in the Russian emigration, focusing on cultural practices and national identity.

Introduction Jessica Reinisch

Millions of Europeans were uprooted by flight, evacuation, deportation, resettlement or emigration during the Second World War. These population movements, together with the ethnic policies and genocidal programmes of the 1930s and early 1940s, radically changed the demographic structure of many countries on the Continent.1 Nor did the end of the war bring an end to these population upheavals. A multitude of refugees and displaced persons (DP) continued to trek through the rubble and ruins well into the post-war era: ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from their former homes in Central and Eastern Europe and moved westwards into the defeated rump of Germany; surviving Jews fled their native countries to seek refuge in western parts or to settle in the US or Palestine; millions of Soviet citizens were moved through state resettlement programmes or deportations to underpopulated parts of the country; Italians were expelled from Yugoslav territory, just as subjects of the former Italian colonies made their way to the ‘motherland’ in search of housing, work and education; and Poles had to leave the area east of the Bug now no longer part of Poland and populated the new western territorial additions to their country. Millions of civilians were uprooted through organised population transfers with neighbouring states, where national frontiers failed to conform to the distribution of ethnic, linguistic or religious groups. In addition, a whole panoply of people now made their way back to the areas they had considered home before the war, among them disbanded soldiers and prisoners of war, evacuees, liberated forced workers, concentration camp survivors and exile governments – just as the Allied armies moved into place to set up military governments and armies of relief workers began to flood the field to organise refugee camps.2 The fourteen chapters in this book examine some of these movements, both forced and voluntary, within the broader context of Europe in the aftermath of the war and its various reconstruction programmes and agendas. They describe how, as these millions of people swept across the war-torn continent, efforts to house and feed them soon gave way to deliberations about longer-term problems, such as their repatriation or resettlement and their lasting integration into post-war societies. Problems of absorption and integration particularly faced the vast numbers of people who now found themselves on foreign soil and for whom xiv

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a return to their pre-war homes and lives was unfeasible. They had often been caught directly in the racial conflicts of the previous decades, and their prospects were shaped by high-level political decisions about their countries, national borders and citizenship. But problems of readjustment to peacetime life also affected people who tried to return to their former residences (and whose communities and families had often changed beyond recognition in their absence), or who emigrated in search of a better life. Importantly, many of these movements progressed just as the remarkable post-war economic boom got underway; and the presence of refugees and displaced people significantly shaped their host nations’ prospects for economic renewal and reconstruction. In 1946, when many of these movements were still in progress, George Orwell criticised the extent to which so many commentators used dead and anaesthetised terms to describe these events. ‘Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry’, he wrote, and ‘this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers’. Such euphemisms, he argued, deliberately served to disguise the invariably violent nature of the processes and masked their political underpinnings and implications.3 This book is concerned both with the phenomena themselves (with why and how individuals, populations and borders moved, and with the consequences), as well as with their political and historiographical afterlife. This second purpose involves not only turning again to the classic studies on war and post-war ethnic and demographic policies – among them the works by Joseph Schechtman, Eugene Kulischer, Jacques Vernant, Malcolm Proudfoot and Louise Holborn4 – but also assessing the political uses to which resettlements, transfers and migrations, and the memory of these events, have been put. In spite of growing academic interest in both the post-war period and in migration in European history there is to date still no consistent historiography that looks at the many different kinds of refugees and dislocated people in the same context. Some national historiographies have by now documented at length their own citizens’ experiences, particularly in the German and Italian cases.5 But this national focus has distorted our understanding of the phenomena and the issues at stake, not least since after the war countries such as Germany and Italy actually housed a range of different nationalities, ethnicities and groups of refugees, and their co-existence was often by no means a peaceful one. The national lens also fails to overcome the problem that other areas and population movements have long escaped academic attention. Many of those individuals or groups who moved between countries

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or who failed to acquire champions in the academy often still remain out of sight.6 The contributors in this volume try to offer possibilities for a broader perspective. Many of the chapters present case studies of population movements and policies in specific areas, which, when seen together, shed light on both parallels and local or national particularities. Some chapters also offer wider, conceptual assessments of population questions and potential solutions in post-war Europe. Together, the contributions provide new opportunities for comparison and for overcoming the widespread limitations of local or national narratives of displacement. The book has its origins in a conference held in London under the auspices of the Balzan Project at Birkbeck, set up by Eric Hobsbawm with his Balzan Foundation’s prize for outstanding achievement. The Balzan Project focused on the years immediately following the Second World War and the often difficult and prolonged transition from war to peace in the devastated and occupied countries of Europe. Indeed, it is thus no surprise that one of the themes that unites the chapters is their concern with war and its social, political and demographic consequences. If war and post-war chaos is a recurring theme of twentieth-century European history, so is, as the chapters show, mass displacement and the appeal of demographic solutions to political problems. The research presented in this volume helps to illuminate the relationship between these intertwined phenomena of war and displacement. Population movements were a central feature of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the chapters portray the roles played by refugees, returnees and other newcomers in the period of post-war rehabilitation and reconstruction. To authorities and local administrators, these dislocated people primarily represented mouths to be fed and bodies to be housed, whose presence demanded the provision of local and state welfare. But their roles far exceeded that of a commonly portrayed drain on resources. Refugees and displaced people became carriers of ethnic and national identities, who at times challenged ideas of nationality and the cultural majority, or represented deliberate means to alter it. At the same time they also made up enormous pools of mobile labour, whose presence enabled – or whose absence hindered – their host states’ capacity for rapid reconstruction and economic growth. The essays in this volume look at the aftermath of war in different parts of Eastern, Western and Southern Europe. There are unfortunately (but unavoidably) some notable gaps in the volume’s geographical coverage. Nonetheless, by studying the ‘disentanglement of populations’ (to use Churchill’s phrase) in some of the areas most affected by brutal

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military and racial conflict, civil war and struggles for sovereignty, the essays help to show how, in the light of population upheavals, the legacy of war was debated and managed, and whether and how a new ‘normality’ (or ‘normalities’) was eventually created. Moreover, a number of authors also use the focus on war and its aftermath to reflect on longer lines of continuity and disjuncture in Europe’s twentieth century. They demonstrate that the ethnic tensions, expulsions and relocations of the 1940s often had their direct origins in the political settlements after the end of the First World War. Some chapters also emphasise the importance of the mobilisation of apparent precedents to justify current action, such as the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations agreed at Lausanne in 1923.7 While some contributors identify a number of broad continuities in twentieth-century thinking about population management, others point to important differences between the two post-war scenarios – not least in the institutional responses and solutions available to the population question and in relief workers’ and diplomats’ mindsets. Whereas in 1919 the League of Nations system inaugurated a new era of the protection of minorities within multi-ethnic states, political realities and priorities after the Second World War had changed radically: nation-states were now to be rebuilt on nationally and ethnically homogenous lines, an ambition which in some areas could only be achieved through a series of planned resettlements and population exchanges. The chapters show how population movements during and after the war became central to the construction or re-invention of both nationstates and international organisations after 1945. Moreover, although millions of people were forced to leave their homes during the war, the essays in this volume reflect on the fact that there was often no straightforward ‘return’ afterwards, since many Germans, Italians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews ended up in so-called homelands they had never set foot in before. The issue of return was thus complicated by the fact that incoming ‘national refugees’ were formally of the same nationality and spoke the same language as the natives, but in reality this disguised significant religious, ethnic, economic and cultural divisions. Nonetheless, strategies of integration and absorption of newcomers often began from a question of nationality and drew upon notions of citizenship, entitlement and deserving, even if, as Geoff Eley and others observe in this volume, clear, fixed national identities were often absent. The language of ‘return’ itself was crucial. Perhaps taking their cue from Orwell’s attack on narcotised words to describe politically loaded processes, a number of the contributors consider the significance of

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attempts to find new terms to describe both the population movements and the people taking part in them. As Matthew Frank notes, the notion of ‘population transfer’ initially carried connotations about its positive outcomes and progressive methods, which distinguished it from coerced processes such as ‘expulsion’ and ‘deportation’. Yet it was precisely the underlying political judgement which led to frequent condemnation of Churchill’s apparent callousness in his talk about ‘a clean sweep’ to end the German problem once and for all. He was, Churchill declared in the House of Commons in December 1944, ‘not alarmed by the prospect of the disentanglement of populations, nor even by these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they ever were before. The disentanglement of populations which took place between Greece and Turkey after the last war […] was in many ways a success, and has produced friendly relations between Greece and Turkey ever since’.8 This language implied that the end surely justified the means.9 Similarly, as Catherine Gousseff observes in her essay, the exchanges between Polish and Ukrainian populations became a process of ‘evacuation’ for the Ukrainians, but one of ‘repatriation’ for the Poles (who thus ‘returned’ to the ‘recovered lands’). The terms coined to describe the new arrivals in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany also had clear implications: here the bedraggled refugees from the East became ‘resettlers’ or ‘new citizens’, to underline the permanence of their new circumstances – in contrast to their fellow ‘expellees’ in the western occupation zones, whose label might have implied a sense of rough justice and potential demands for redress.10 In all these settings, words could accentuate the apparent legitimacy of the processes and attempt to make them seem normal, permanent, irreversible. At the same time, the refusal by some groups to accept these labels and their fates, and their insistence on seeking national or ethnic salvation, generated their very own terminology. The memory of previous population movements and past wars (above all the First World War and its aftermath) clearly cast a shadow over possibilities in 1945, but what exactly was remembered and why, and by whom? And to what use was this memory put? In their analyses of both memory and amnesia, the authors build on recent historiographical insights. Bessel and Schuman, for example, have already noted that silence was often a public reaction to the shocks and terrors of the Second World War and its spectacular violence, albeit ‘a silence occasionally broken and mixed with selective appreciations of the suffering of specific groups of victims’.11 Similarly, Tony Judt has identified the ‘curious “memory hole”’ into which collective awareness of past

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conflicts, violence and crimes disappeared.12 Perhaps nowhere was this as visible as in the population movements during and after the Second World War, the memory and remembrance of which was influenced by individuals’ attempts to build new, stable, post-war lives – and forgetting, together with a very partial and skewed remembering, often proved the most effective way of achieving that. It also proved invaluable for strengthening groups’ identities and claims to recognition. Rainer Schulze comments on the image of treks of German refugees escaping in wintry landscapes, which became imprinted upon German collective memory, ‘although it was actually a minority who fled in this manner’. In West German public discourse in post-war decades, he notes, there is clear evidence of ‘highly selective acknowledgement and thus a highly selective remembering’. This was followed by a strange ‘re-discovery’ of long-told narratives of expulsion and flight.13 Corni observes that the ‘Exodus’ of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia was long repressed in Italian collective memory. As Eley makes clear, the Cold War froze not only ethnic tensions and political disputes, but also shifted priorities of memory and silence.14 The chapters in this volume examine problems of population movements, migration and strategies of replacement from a number of different perspectives and viewpoints. At one end of the scale, many contributors analyse national and international frameworks for displacement and reconstruction, and place different national and local contexts side by side. Eley’s essay, for example, considers international and global dimensions of post-war recovery and population questions, and reminds us that the subjects of labour recruitment and economic migration, expulsions and flight, transfers and population management were all by definition transnational in character and thus benefit from a broad, comparative perspective. At the other end, a number of chapters illustrate the ways in which individual action was often severely constrained by state policies and Allied declarations and diplomatic decisions. Nonetheless, as Gatrell, Patt, Ballinger and others show in their essays, within these constraints refugees and displaced people actively made decisions about their futures and their needs. Throughout the volume the perspective of institutions and individuals who managed the population upheavals is thus counterpointed by the voices of the displaced, their experiences and memories. Some of the contributors conducted interviews with refugees, others reconstructed their stories through diaries, letters and court files. The volume is divided into five narrative parts. Part I contains two attempts to present broad, analytical frameworks within which the

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subsequent case studies of displacement can be located. Peter Gatrell surveys the literature on post-war population upheavals and identifies the most important ‘transformative moments’ concerning migration and displacement in Europe. By contrasting the aftermaths of the two world wards he also brings into focus the problem of a ‘violent peacetime’, a notion which might be usefully applied to many of the subsequent chapters in the book. In Chapter 2 in this section, Matthew Frank then examines the political and intellectual solutions to the refugee problem at the disposal of planners and decision makers. Frank explores the background and post-war context of a number of states’ attempts to exchange and transfer their minority populations, but concludes that this procedure ultimately only offered a limited solution to the problems resulting from ethnic heterogeneity. But as Frank shows, the idea that planned exchanges could offer relatively easy and painless solutions to ethnic tensions nonetheless had a significant afterlife. Both chapters lay out the intellectual and historiographical context for the series of case studies developed in the subsequent chapters. Part II puts three examples of forced population movements side by side. The forced redistribution of ethnic groups in the aftermath of war was unprecedented in scope, and Rainer Schulze demonstrates that the most spectacular result of this movement was the almost complete elimination of German minorities in Europe. He re-examines the chronology of expulsion and the expellees’ subsequent integration into post-war West Germany. Gustavo Corni looks at the less well-studied case of the mass departure of Italians from Yugoslavia and shows that a myriad of economic, political and ethnic factors underlay these resettlements. He identifies broad historiographical trends in the study and assessment of the ‘Exodus’ and the political uses to which these expulsions have been put. Finally, Catherine Gousseff examines the population exchanges between Poland and the Ukraine in the aftermath of the war. Like Corni and Schulze, Gousseff also considers how these forced resettlements or expulsions have been remembered (or rather, forgotten) and explores the role of the archival record, memory and oral testimony for historical research. Part III offers different perspectives on nationalism and the politics of ethnicity from the perspective of the cities of Trieste, Osnabrück and a variety of DP camps in Germany. Pamela Ballinger focuses on the strategies of absorption and integration of newcomers in the city of Trieste, and contrasts the fate of ‘foreign’ displaced persons with that of the newly arriving ‘Italian’ nationals fleeing from Yugoslavia and the former Italian colonies. Ballinger thus picks up directly where

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Corni left off, and shows that whereas the Italian newcomers could be integrated relatively straightforwardly and received Italian citizenship, only very few of the foreign refugees could hope for naturalisation. Panikos Panayi, in turn, presents a snapshot of a German city in transition from war to peace. Here, the return of native inhabitants who had fled or were evacuated during the bombing was accompanied by the arrival of German refugees from Eastern Europe (as Schulze has shown), just as the thousands of liberated DPs and POWs were to undertake the opposite journey. Like Ballinger, Panayi explores the brief synchronicity of these very different dislocated ethnic groups. Avinoam J. Patt then turns to the histories of the Jewish DPs in the DP camps in Germany and explains their embrace of Zionism as a pragmatic political choice, which offered most hope for their current material needs and empowered them to take charge of their futures. All three chapters examine the consequences of not just the temporary coexistence of different nationalities and ethnicities in particular localities, but also of the creation of a new ‘refugee ethnicity’ in post-war Europe in this period. The three chapters in Part IV assess the significance of the economics of integration and assimilation by looking at the role of labour and employment in the post-war management of refugees. My own chapter focuses on the Soviet zone of Germany and the various efforts to integrate the newly arriving expellees: they were to be given work and tied into reconstruction policies and programmes. Although the focus was here on integration rather than further resettlement, as was the case with DPs in the western German occupation zones, the posited moral and psychological benefits of labour in some respects mirrored British and American assessments there, which are discussed in Salvatici’s chapter. However, the integration of the expellees into the workforce proved in practice problematic for many years. Silvia Salvatici, in turn, considers Anglo-American approaches to the DPs in the western zones of Germany. Vocational training and organised employment opportunities appeared central to resettlement schemes for DPs and became instilled with political and moral virtues. Nonetheless, the issue of employment helped to accentuate gender and national inequalities and severely penalised the old and immobile ‘hard core’ left behind in the DP camps. Johannes-Dieter Steinert then examines some of the consequences of the DP resettlement programmes from the point of view of one of the receiving countries, the UK. He shows that recruitment of foreign workers from the DP camps to jobs in Britain was motivated primarily by economic requirements, but had the effect of racialising potential migrants through the introduction of ethnic and political

xxii Introduction

selection criteria. Economic demands associated with reconstruction and efforts to integrate the newcomers into their new post-war homes thus presented two overlapping dynamics. Part V turns to one particular category of displaced people: children. States’ concern for their children first expressed itself in the form of wartime evacuation schemes. As fears about a generation of ‘feral’ or ‘warhandicapped’ children intensified in the aftermath of the war, children often continued to feature as a special category in state programmes. Elizabeth White’s chapter investigates why the Soviet state forbade the return of evacuated children to Leningrad for over a year after the Blockade was lifted in January 1944, and concludes that this stemmed partly from fears over the accumulation of unsupervised children in the destroyed city. These same fears also meant that local authorities made great efforts to reunite biological families and to promote adoption and fostering. Loukianos Hassiotis examines the conflicts between the Greek Communist Party and the Greek government over the fate of the Greek children who were either internally displaced in special ‘children’s towns’ or evacuated (or abducted) from Greece to other People’s Republics during the Civil War. The struggles over the representation and sovereignty of Greece were thus played out directly in the struggle over the nation’s children. Geoff Eley’s epilogue considers the problems of migration and displacement within the wider context of post-war reconstruction in Europe. He firmly anchors the phenomena in a much broader history of economic transformations, empire-building, population politics and social engineering, which, he argues, extended backwards to the 1880s and forwards to the end of the twentieth century. Eley also reflects on the role of the end of the Cold War on the historiography and historical memory of this problem, and asks why historians have only recently begun to revisit the distinctiveness of the Second World War and its aftermath. Post-war Europe, Eley maintains, was a laboratory for the peaceful coexistence of Europe’s ethnically, religiously and culturally divided populations. He also argues for the importance of taking seriously the moment of optimism and belief in genuine change and progress in the years immediately after the war. Like Gatrell, he thus shows that this traumatic period of chaos, deep disruption and transformation should be understood, at least in part, in terms of opportunities and new possibilities. But where Gatrell points to the global scale of post-war displacement, Eley describes a ‘genuinely European context’ of the post-war reconstruction programmes. Both Gatrell and Eley call for further research, especially on those areas not covered here and on

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broad comparative and Europe-wide analyses. This volume will have achieved its purpose if it enables readers to make new comparisons and connections and rouses researchers to plough some of those new fields. Saskia Sassen has noted that ‘[d]isplaced, uprooted, migratory people seem to have dwelled in the penumbra of European history, people living in the shadows of places where they do not belong’,15 and the editors and contributors hope to have illuminated at least some of those shadowy places in Europe’s post-war years.

Notes 1. Particularly of Poland, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. See Jan Gross, ‘War as Revolution’, in N. Naimark and L. Gibianskii (eds), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 17–40; Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 2. On the provision of aid and relief to refugees and displaced people in Europe, see the special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History, July 2008, which highlights the links between short-term relief and longer-term reconstruction efforts. See Jessica Reinisch, ‘Relief Work in the Aftermath of War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 43, No. 3, July 2008, 371–404. 3. George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, Horizon, April 1946. Also see Mark Kramer, ‘Introduction’, in: Philip Ther and Ana Siljak (eds), Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 2. 4. See Peter Gatrell’s chapter in this volume. 5. See particularly the chapters by Rainer Schulze and Gustavo Corni in this volume, as well as the recent volume edited by Pertti Ahonen, Gustavo Corni, Jerzy Kochanowski, Rainer Schulze, Tamas Stark and Barbara Stelz-Marx, People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and Its Aftermath (Oxford: Berg, 2008). The state of the Italian scholarship is described in Guido Crainz, Raoul Pupo and Silvia Salvatici (eds), Naufraghi della pace: il 1945, I profughi e le memorie divise d’Europa (Rome: Donzelli, 2008). 6. See the chapters by Catherine Gousseff, Gustavo Corni and Pamela Ballinger on long-term neglects in historical scholarship. On the invisibility of the fate of the Sinti and Roma in the historiography of Nazi genocide, see, for example, Michael Marrus, ‘Reflections on the Historiography of the Holocaust’, The Journal of Modern History, 1994, Vol. 66, No. 1, 92–116. Susan Tebbutt (ed.), Sinti and Roma: Gypsies in German-Speaking Society and Literature (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998). On Britain’s Gypsy Traveller community, see, for example, Becky Taylor, A Minority and the State: Travellers in Britain in the Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). 7. See Matthew Frank’s chapter in this volume. 8. Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, 15 December 1944, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States

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9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

Diplomatic Papers, 1943, vol. III, p. 15; Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Fifth Series, Official Report, House of Commons, vol. 406, col. 1484. Widely quoted, for example, in: Elizabeth Wiskemann, Germany’s Eastern Neighbours: Problems Relating to the Oder-Neisse Line and the Czech Frontier Regions (Oxford: OUP, 1956), 82. He also talked about the ‘disentanglement of populations’ on earlier occasions, for example, compare 1 December 1943 (75). Critical readings of this statement are particularly prevalent among those writing about the fate of German refugees; see, for example, Alfred M.de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans (London: Routledge, 1977). See my own chapter in this volume. Bessel and Schumann, Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute Washington/CUP, 2003), 4. Tony Judt, ‘Preface’, in István Deák, Jan T. Gross and Tony Judt (eds), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), xi. See Schulze’s chapter in this volume. On the frozen Cold War landscape, see especially the chapter by Geoff Eley in this volume. Also see Tony Judt, Postwar (London: Heinemann, 2005), esp. ‘From the House of the Dead: An Essay on Modern European Memory’, 803–34. Saskia Sassen, Guests and Aliens (London: I.B. Taurus, 1999), 6.

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‘Europe 1944–9’, produced by John Gilkes (Courtesy of John Gilkes, reproduced with permission) Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of British Columbia Library - PalgraveConnect 2011-04-10

Introduction

Map 1

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of British Columbia Library - PalgraveConnect 2011-04-10

xxvi Introduction Map 2 ‘Germany – Zones of Occupation, February 1947’. Department of State, Map Division (Courtesy of the British Library, reproduced with permission)

Map 3 ‘Julian March – Ethnographic Map’, from: Ethnographical and Economic Bases of the Julian March (1946) (Courtesy of the British Library, reproduced with permission) Maps 3 and 4 are original maps which illustrate the complexity of the ethnic, linguistic and national divisions in the border region between Croatia, Slovenia and Italy, known as ‘Venezia Giulia’ in Italian and ‘Julijska krajina’ in Slovene and Croatian. The Western Allies adopted the name ‘Julian March’ as the most neutral name for the region. Since 1947 the Julian March does not constitute a separate administrative region.

xxviii Introduction

Map 4 Linguistic map of the German military zone of the Julian March in 1944 ‘Sprachenkarte der Operationszone’, from: Ethnographical and Economic Bases of the Julian March (1946) (Courtesy of the British Library, reproduced with permission) ‘The linguistic map of the German military zone of the Julian March in 1944. For the operations against the people of the Julian March, the German Military Government has made a linguistic map, which shows the territories of the Julian March compactly cohabited by Slovenes and Croats. The map was captured in the German military archives in Trieste, May 1945’.

Part I Explaining Post-War Displacement

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1 Trajectories of Population Displacement in the Aftermaths of Two World Wars Peter Gatrell

The death, destruction and displacement wrought by the Second World War are topics of undiminished interest to historians and to a wider public. The historiography frequently emphasises the transformative impact of the war in Europe, not only in terms of territorial adjustment but also in a series of social calamities, including the destruction of European Jewry, huge military losses (particularly in Soviet Russia), the rupturing of social ties in Central and Eastern Europe where social upheaval prefigured the formation of Communist governments, and the mass expulsion of people who were deemed not to ‘belong’.1 Recent scholarship suggests that these calamities had antecedents in programmes, practices and ideologies that can be traced back to the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the state entertained ideas about social and demographic engineering and population management, by conceiving of a ‘social body’. The modern state’s pursuit of perfection through reshaping social organisation and refashioning behaviour culminated in organised efforts to rid society of unwanted elements that did not correspond to that utopian vision.2 These projects, as is well known, came to terrible fruition in Hitler’s European empire.3 The 1940s also witnessed continued Soviet social and ethnic cleansing. The Bolshevik leadership targeted class enemies and engaged in a series of mass deportations, whose purpose was both punitive and developmental, in that remote regions of the Soviet land mass were opened up for economic transformation. During the 1930s entire nationality groups, including Koreans, Poles and Germans, were deported in order to secure the Soviet frontier.4 Violent dispossession and forced migration also characterised the management of Europe’s colonial possessions.5 In a broader and less tangible sense, the impulse to manage population also underpinned and shaped welfare programmes in non-totalitarian states during and after the Second World War.6 3

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This chapter surveys the historiography on war and population movements and provides a broad analytical framework for the following chapters of this volume. It identifies the most important transformative moments relating to population displacement in Europe at the end of the Second World War and makes comparisons with the aftermath of the First World War. By population displacement I seek to encompass not only the movement of people across national frontiers and within the borders of the state, but also the displacement that occurs when borders are redrawn around people who do not physically migrate. The use of this term does not presuppose that a distinction can easily be drawn between choice and compulsion, between ‘free’ and ‘forced migration’. Nor does it take for granted legal distinctions between ‘refugees’ and ‘internally displaced persons’, important though these have become. Population displacement instead suggests that legal and other categories must be problematised and contextualised.7 In some respects, of course, this is not uncharted territory. Although the history of population displacement in Europe after 1945 attracted only limited attention, several landmark studies stand out. Eugene Kulischer, Joseph Schechtman, Jacques Vernant, Louise Holborn and Malcolm Proudfoot contributed important works on the post-war era. These scholars emphasised institutional arrangements for the care and resettlement of refugees, but the level of detail is such that their work is an indispensable source for understanding the technologies for managing displaced persons.8 Other work had a more obviously political purpose, notably in the Federal Republic of Germany, where German expellee organisations sponsored a number of historical accounts of the Vertriebene during the 1950s and 1960s in order to keep them in the public eye.9 Studies by Polish and other scholars contributed to our knowledge of specialist topics, with the emphasis on administrative arrangements for ‘repatriating’ Poles from Soviet Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, and the ‘evacuation’ of Ukrainians from post-war Poland under the terms of the Soviet–Polish accord of September 1944.10 Studies appeared on the cultural life of displaced persons (DPs) in Europe, and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer contributed a pioneering book on DPs.11 But until the 1990s only his study and informative monographs by Michael Marrus, Gérard Noiriel and Mark Wyman shared the spotlight on a stage notably devoid of substantial fresh work on the social, economic and cultural history of population displacement in Europe.12 The situation changed after 1989, partly as a result of a flurry of stimulating work by social anthropologists and sociologists and partly because of the political and demographic consequences of the collapse

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of Communist rule in Russia and Eastern Europe and the intellectual shift it helped unleash. A series of articles by Liisa Malkki stands out because it is historically and theoretically informed.13 Several valuable administrative histories have continued to detail the origins, objectives and practices of international institutions and non-governmental organisations involved in refugee relief.14 Many contributors to the present book have been influenced by this body of work and have themselves made important contributions to understanding the politics of displacement and relief work. Inspired by the work of Zygmunt Bauman and Michel Foucault, and by rediscovering the classic study by Hannah Arendt on the origins of totalitarianism first published in 1951, historians began to explore the consequences of the Second World War for ‘population politics’ along the lines sketched out above. This shift in the historiography was also characterised by questions about how to locate the war in a broader chronological perspective. A synthesis by Mark Mazower and specialist studies by Jan Gross and Norman Naimark are particularly important, but scholars such as Amir Weiner, Kate Brown, Timothy Snyder and Peter Holquist have contributed monographs and articles on this theme. As yet, however, very little attention has been given to direct comparisons between the First World War and the Second World War in terms of the nexus between population, territory and state.15 A growing number of works on the First World War provides the basis for such a comparison.16

Violent peacetime It is worth remembering that the displacement of population during and immediately following the two world wars took place on a global scale.17 In Europe, this complex process had its origins in wartime mobilisation in the belligerent states where men and women were conscripted as armed combatants or for work in the war economy. Migration was a corollary of states’ recourse to forced labour, as in the deportation to Germany in both world wars of Belgian and Eastern European adults, or the labour drafts in Europe’s colonial possessions.18 Belligerent states also targeted ethnic groups that were deemed politically ‘unreliable’. This happened in both world wars. Stalin, for example, followed in the footsteps of Nicholas II in demonising long-established German settlers and deporting them to Central Asia. Similarly, the violence inflicted on Crimean Tatars, Chechens and others for their supposed ‘treason’ during the Great Patriotic War echoed Tsarist military commanders’

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propensity to target Jews and Poles as fifth columnists. In each instance the state drew no distinction on grounds of age, gender or occupation but instead launched indiscriminate assaults on entire communities.19 This style of ‘population management’ reached its terrifying conclusion in the Holocaust when the displacement and incarceration of Jews culminated in mass murder. Jews in Eastern Europe had also suffered greatly during and after the First World War, but many of them sought refuge in central Russia; by contrast, only a tiny minority managed to escape the Nazi onslaught by fleeing to Soviet Russia in 1940–1. These organised programmes support the view that population displacement was not a sideshow or a disastrous by-product but a constitutive element of war, a project that states and armies practised as an integral technique to mobilise society.20 The conclusion of hostilities in 1918 and 1945 did not bring an end to population displacement. To be sure, most displaced soldiers and civilians managed to return to their homes, but this bald summary discounts a great deal of migration and human misery, including the mass flight of Germans and others in the face of the Red Army’s march across Eastern and Central Europe in 1945. German prisoners of war languished in remote Russian camps until the 1950s, and several thousand Polish deportees were only repatriated from Soviet prison camps ten years after the war ended.21 Hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians remained in camps and other settlements in Germany, some of them until the 1960s. What is more, renewed conflict erupted in Europe after both world wars. The First World War was followed by the Russian civil war and the Polish–Soviet War, and by the Greek–Turkish war in 1921–2; and the Second World War by the bitter Greek civil war and the partisan wars in the sovietised Baltic states, while continued conflict on the Ukrainian–Polish frontier prompted further population displacements that only came to an end in 1955. These examples could be multiplied. Localised violence had devastating results, as in Poland where the Kielce pogrom in July 1946 compelled 170,000 Jews to migrate from Eastern Europe. These mass population movements were the product of what I term ‘violent peacetime’.22 Violent peacetime also entailed deliberate state intervention to adjust the relationship between population and territory by means of population transfers and expulsions. This process took a dramatic form in Palestine and in India, with huge loss of life. Its most extreme manifestation in Europe occurred when Germans were expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia and during the exchange of population in Poland and Ukraine in 1945. Post-war transfer policy was sometimes driven by ideas of order, rationality and prophylaxis that had longer antecedents, but

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it owed a good deal to a directly punitive ethos.23 No equivalent onesided transfer took place following the First World War; the organised population exchange between Greece and Turkey was mutually agreed by both states and endorsed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The successor states created in 1918 at the expense of Germany and AustriaHungary included large minorities, and the post-war settlement did not directly lead to mass migration, with the exception of the flight of Magyar refugees from Romania to the defeated rump state of Hungary and Bulgarian refugees from Western Thrace.24 The magnitude of displacement in 1945 beggared belief. Some 23 million people were uprooted in the final stages of the Second World War and as a result of repatriations, territorial readjustments and the transfers of population following the Allied deal at Potsdam. Two million Poles and Ukrainians were caught up in the transfer agreed between the USSR and Poland.25 Nine million ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Czechoslovakia also expelled 200,000 Hungarians under the Košicky Programme, although some of them managed to remain by acquiring Slovak citizenship.26 The number of DPs in Germany stood at close on 1.5 million in September 1945; two years later, notwithstanding action by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the Soviets, some 650,000 DPs remained on German and Austrian territory. Those who could not take advantage of various schemes of organised emigration to third countries (see below) acquired the demeaning label of ‘hard core’.

Trajectories of displacement One way of understanding this complex field of activity with its multiple networks of officials, experts and displaced people is to think of the trajectories to which displacement gave rise and how they were invoked by those most directly involved. Informed observers had a clear sense of the dimensions of displacement and understood how it related to previous ruptures of space and time. Appropriately enough, for example, the fledgling World Council of Churches acknowledged the global scale of displacement. Meeting in Amsterdam in 1948, its Ecumenical Refugee Commission drew attention to the dire consequences of recent and current upheavals in and beyond continental Europe. Members lamented the impact of Potsdam but found examples of misguided policy still further afield: ‘recalling that the origin of the Refugee Division was the concern of the churches for Jewish refugees, [we] note with especially deep concern the recent extension of the refugee problem to

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the Middle East by the flight from their homes in the Holy Land of not less than 350,000 Arab and other refugees’.27 At times the displacement of population in Europe impinged directly on geographically distant parts of the globe, as when 12,000 Polish soldiers – including family members – ended up in Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia having left the Soviet Union or Romania and travelled via Cyprus, Egypt and Mozambique.28 Contemporary opinion was also aware that the aftermath of the First World War cast a shadow over the peacetime settlement in 1945 even as fresh crises of displacement came to the fore. For example, no permanent solution had been found (or would be found) for Russian refugees who lived an uncertain existence in China.29 The World Council of Churches gathered a series of human interest stories that revealed the legacy of the Great War, as in the trajectory of ethnic Greeks who had been obliged to move from Asia Minor to Romania in 1922, but who fled to Greece to escape persecution by the Groza Government in 1947. Around 5000 of them lived in refugee camps in Greece before eventually being resettled in North America or Australia. One ‘case’ concerned Angela H. (I have disguised her name) who lived in the Aktaion Refugee Settlement, Greece: A refugee from Asia Minor disaster in 1922, whose husband was assassinated by the Turks, Mrs H. sought asylum in Romania in search of better opportunities to assist her and her son resettle. The change of the regime in Romania in 1945, however, made life impossible for her and her son. Being of Greek origin they were both asked to evacuate the country with only 30 kilos of personal belongings with them. Refugees for a second time in their lives, Mrs H. and son were offered support by the Greek government and placed at the end of a long corridor of a huge building, transformed into a Refugee Settlement. Angela H. left for Australia under the auspices of the US Escapee Program to join her son who had already emigrated. The clerk who assembled her personal record noted that ‘the refugee does not object to the publication of her story with name and photograph’. Her file exemplified the trajectory of many others who were given the opportunity to start again after completing a formulaic account of starvation, harassment, torture, corruption, expropriation and eventual rescue that served a Cold War purpose as well as establishing a link with past episodes of displacement.30

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Officials in the early years of the ILO approached former League of Nations staff members to ask what lessons might be drawn from the inter-war period. The reply concentrated on the differences. One official argued that the chief difference in 1945 was that most displaced persons wished to return to their homes, whereas after 1918 the Nansen Office dealt with Russians and Armenian refugees who: had of course permanently lost the protection of their home government. Except possibly in a few cases, the prisoners, internees and displaced persons in Axis or Axis-occupied countries will be able sooner or later to rely on their own governments; this will greatly facilitate the problems of identification, communications, travelling papers, personal finance.31 More striking was this official’s confident assertion that other displaced persons would follow them eastwards, until one recalls that UNRRA officers were guided by the same expectation. To be sure, large numbers of DPs did decide to repatriate, and we should not assume that they were all duped by Soviet repatriation officers or compelled to return by insistent UNRRA officials.32 Soon, however, Western governments renounced repatriation as a policy objective and instead began to cultivate an image of the DP as the embodiment of Soviet oppression of Eastern Europe. Only a handful of early dissenters pointed out that incarcerating DPs in refugee camps and other settlements hardly squared with ideas of freedom, but this point soon became the common currency of DP spokesmen as well as lobbyists in North America and Western Europe.

Nations and geopolitics The connection between domestic politics, international relations and the creation and relief of refugees is well established in the social science literature. Legal scholars and historians have traced the important shift in international doctrine: during the inter-war period the emphasis was on specific categories (Russians, Armenians and Assyrians) who had lost the protection of a state, whereas after 1945 the doctrine gained ground that recognition should be extended to the individual refugee who suffered persecution for ‘reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’. Geopolitical considerations were paramount.33 The spirit of managing civilian populations in wartime encouraged belligerent governments either to claim or to disclaim displaced people

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Trajectories of Population Displacement

as the Second World War came to an end. Nationalist sentiment was again invoked, as in Eastern Europe after the First World War, when the flight to Bulgaria of 250,000 ethnic Bulgarians from Thrace, Macedonia and Dobrudja (territory assigned to Yugoslavia and Greece) led the Bulgarian government to expel 33,000 White Russian refugees.34 After the Second World War, victorious and defeated states engaged in the same merry-go-round. Germany and Italy accepted responsibility for their ‘national refugees’. In the case of Germany this category comprised ethnic Germans who were expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Italy’s ‘national refugees’ included ethnic Italians from its former colonies as well as refugees from Venezia-Giulia who were either expelled or hurriedly left from territory assigned to Yugoslavia, but non-ethnic Italians who wished to leave the colonies could not claim Italian citizenship.35 The nationality factor also operated in Communist states such as Poland, whose leaders wished to create a more ethnically homogeneous country by ridding itself of ethnic Ukrainians. The latter were given just a few hours notice to quit and were forced to identify themselves by means of the letter ‘U’ that appeared on the identity papers issued by the recently dislodged Nazi occupation regime.36 From a national perspective, displacement was a contested issue. Certainly it entailed ideas of national suffering that were most evident in respect of Armenian refugees but also evoked by Baltic, Polish and Ukrainian DPs. Under what conditions could the nation recover and survive? Who had the greater claim to represent ‘real’ Estonia – exiled Estonians in Sweden or those who kept the national spirit alive even under Soviet occupation?37 The future prospects for Armenians provoked division rather than national unity: were they best guaranteed in Soviet Armenia or elsewhere? What would dispersal cost when entered on the national balance sheet? After the First World War, Marshall Fox, a Quaker relief worker in Egypt, advised Nansen to recommend to Armenian refugees the ‘free life of Australia’, which would: give the young a chance of developing as far away as possible from the Turks and from the race hatred of the past [...] There are, as you know, vast tracts of land in Australia quite unoccupied – they want a white Australia – and the difficulties, if great, need not be considered insuperable. In this vision, displacement had the advantage of keeping Australia white (the same impulse lay behind organised recruitment schemes after the Second World War) and of keeping Turks and Armenians

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well apart. But Fox’s vision did not commend itself to the Armenian diaspora, much to his annoyance: ‘It seems unfortunate that the leadership of the Armenian race as a whole appears to rest with a few politicians who have been much more intent upon the preservation of a nation as such than upon the good of individuals’.38 At the same time, the politics of displacement extended beyond issues of national affiliation and survival. Political upheavals following both world wars led directly to a refugee exodus. Russians opposed to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 fled to the Far East, the Middle East or to Europe. Chinese opposed to Communist rule fled to Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1949. There was a clear link between revolutionary state-building, displacement and the geopolitics of national security. Bourgeois governments feared that Soviet agents had infiltrated the Russian refugees; more prosaically, refugees were believed to ‘engage in plotting and to stir up trouble’.39 In the inter-war period, the Kremlin identified fifth columnists among Russians who returned to the USSR after spending several years in exile.40 Similarly Anglo-American opinion expressed apprehension about the political dangers posed by Communist infiltration of DPs, and similar anxieties surfaced within the Nationalist government in Taiwan. In each case displacement served as grounds for interrogating and ‘filtering’ individuals to weed out ‘subversive elements’.41 Hence the importance officials attached to the DP camp as an administrative device. But by the same token, other refugees served a useful purpose in the intensified propaganda war, affirming the oppressive nature of new Communist regimes. A broader security perspective emerged in comments made by Sir John Hope Simpson, author of the most important pre-war study of the ‘refugee problem’, in respect of German expellees: there is, he said, ‘no peace safe while masses of people live in conditions intolerable in a civilised era. In Central Europe the ground lies ready prepared for the seed of revolutionary propaganda’. An article titled ‘Heirs of Potsdam’ spoke of ‘a human mass of this size, [which] if it is allowed to remain unanchored, destitute and hopeless, may easily become a very dangerous political element. Unless somehow “integrated”, it is almost bound to gravitate to extremism, either of the Right or the Left’. The Methodist preacher Henry Carter warned that ‘any delay in healing socially diseased areas in Western Europe will but serve to increase the dangers of economic failures and of harmful political influences’. Elfan Rees added another element. In his view, the tense relations between the local population in Austria and DPs meant that ‘it is indeed dangerously possible

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that the “DP” today may provide that scapegoat for German ills which the Jew did yesterday’.42 Anxieties about social breakdown and potential tensions arising from the Cold War were nothing new; the Bolshevik Revolution poisoned international relations throughout the 1920s and coloured attitudes towards Russian refugees. All the same, DPs became a significant contributory factor to the intense East–West confrontation in the years following 1945, partly because both sides believed that they had considerable propaganda value and partly because DPs were regarded as an economic resource. When Soviet diplomats and others accused the capitalist West of exploiting refugees as a source of cheap labour they drew attention to the fact that there is an economic history of population displacement as well.43

Economic histories of displacement The displacement of population had a pronounced impact on the economic life of European countries. Deportations and transfers raised questions about the ownership and use of the land that was forfeited, and about the resources required to support displaced persons at subsistence level or above. In Communist countries these issues were not openly discussed. No-one seriously calculated the economic consequences of expropriating and deporting ‘kulaks’, since the main aim was punitive; besides, officials took it for granted that socialised farming would deliver superior results in the newly sovietised Baltic lands or western Ukraine.44 Settling accounts after the war had other economic consequences. Much of the adult male population of Upper Silesia was expelled when the Red Army occupied Silesia in 1945, in order to make way for Polish incomers from the east, but the loss of an experienced workforce had a detrimental impact on the local mining industry.45 Punishment for some meant rewards for others. In post-1945 Poland, for example, the new state needed to accommodate ethnic Poles who were hastily transferred from the eastern borderlands after this territory was assigned to the USSR. They were settled on land vacated by the expelled German farmers, partly to help Polonise the so-called recovered lands, and partly to address the problem of underdevelopment in Eastern Europe. The initial results were chaotic, particularly in urban areas where many Poles moved from place to place in search of work and food, a difficult task given the devastation wrought by Hitler’s troops and then by the Red Army. One contemporary described how he

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could only ‘squat’ in Zielona Góra, because it was simply impossible to resolve one’s future. Basic tasks often fell to women because able-bodied men had been conscripted into Soviet labour battalions.46 With government rations virtually non-existent in 1945–6, Polish workers had to rely upon their own resources in order to make ends meet. Wrocław (formerly Breslau) became a frontier city, a site of uncertainty both about one’s personal economic prospects and about the status of the city itself.47 Not surprisingly, many displaced people survived only by means of illegal transactions. Bribery was commonplace; Polish repatriants spoke of having to pay train drivers to continue the journey to their prescribed destination in the western territories. The main agency for repatriation (Pan´stwowy Urza˛d Repatriacyjny, PUR) had insufficient funds to support the newcomers. Polish inhabitants of Wrocław – who included many arrivals from the rural eastern regions of Poland and from Ukraine – initially appropriated foodstuffs, clothes, furniture, radios and typewriters from the homes abandoned by their German owners, while gangs of ‘fixers’ (szabrownicy) thereafter controlled the black market in the absence of even rudimentary political authority. This ‘Wild West’ economy (the term became a journalistic cliché) lasted until the end of 1947. DPs in Berlin and other urban centres also engaged in black market transactions.48 The longer this behaviour continued, the more it fed anxieties about displaced persons who ran amok, and the louder the calls for closer supervision of ‘spontaneity’. It was also a high-risk tactic that, if detected, would jeopardise their prospect of resettlement, as many ‘hard core’ families subsequently found to their cost. Meanwhile some municipalities (such as Trieste) were virtually kept afloat for a while by UNRRA resources and thereafter by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) money; others struggled to obtain resources. The process of repatriating, resettling and integrating displaced persons was closely entwined with issues of economic reconstruction. After the First World War, League of Nations officials hoped that shortages of skilled labour would encourage states to invite Russian refugees to work in forestry and railway building. France encouraged Armenians to work in motor manufacturing and in mining.49 At the end of the Second World War most countries required labour to help rebuild the infrastructure or to work in mines and factories. When Soviet forces recaptured the Latvian city of Daugavpils in 1944 they admitted that ‘we did not expect to meet such destruction; we had no plans for reconstruction; we began work with empty hands’.50 Reconstruction focused attention on the needs of industrial centres. Poland, for example, became a building site whose workforce

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was composed of migrants from the countryside as well as forced labourers and others who chose to return from Germany, Belgium, France and other countries. In 1947 the new government in Warsaw also actively encouraged ‘Westphalian Polish’ workers in the British zone of occupation to return to ‘their native land’ in order to alleviate the chronic labour shortage in the domestic coal industry, even though their credentials as ethnic Poles were contested. But the British had no intention of letting them go and depriving the Ruhr of its workforce. Other German-speaking residents of the ‘recovered lands’, Mazurians and Kashubians, were allowed to remain in the new state, as ‘re-polonised’ workers.51 Less war-ravaged countries such as Britain embarked on the complex task of economic reconstruction by importing labour from DP camps in Germany under various organised recruitment schemes that put Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles and Ukrainians to work in textiles, forestry and other occupations. Critics accused British authorities of organising something akin to a ‘slave market […] horribly reminiscent of another similar offer made by the Germans not so very long ago’, and similar complaints were made by Soviet observers. More recently scholars have highlighted the gendered and racist dimensions of these schemes.52 In France, which also suffered labour shortages, local initiatives helped revive the rural economy by installing refugees in depopulated villages, such as in the Vaucluse where refugees from Romania became known as ‘les Français du Banat’, descendants of German-speaking families who had left Alsace-Lorraine for land in Austria-Hungary only to be dispossessed by the Communists in 1945. This example reinforces the links between episodes of displacement.53 Other countries such as Italy faced the opposite problem of overpopulation; there were complaints that the refugees in Trieste contributed to a housing shortage, and as late as 1959 ‘national refugees’ from the ex-colonies were believed to constitute ‘a threat to their compatriots in the already overcrowded labour and housing markets’.54 Considerable investment was thus required before the integration of displaced persons could be regarded as complete, but it is important to recognise that refugees themselves helped create the necessary resources in the first place.

Institutional intervention If the scale and scope of displacement were bewildering, so, too, was the plethora of international, governmental and voluntary agencies (‘volags’) that became involved in the care of refugees and displaced persons. The end of the war witnessed a corresponding efflorescence of governmental, inter-governmental and voluntary organisations to cope

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with displacement on this scale. A good deal is now known about the operations of UNRRA and the IRO which replaced it in July 1947, whose sponsors sought to establish relief activity on less ad hoc foundations than those of the 1920s.55 Dozens of secular and religious organisations also attended to the needs of displaced persons after 1945; many of these agencies, such as the Society of Friends (Quakers), the American Joint Distribution Committee, Save the Children and Zemgor could trace a history of involvement in the relief of Russian, Armenian, Jewish and Polish refugees during and after the First World War.56 Others, like the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches, appeared on the scene for the first time. It is worth remembering that the officials, professional experts and voluntary workers who exercised power over displaced people had themselves become used to spending months and even years in strange and difficult circumstances. Their interaction with refugees is now beginning to receive the attention it deserves.57 The international agency responsible for ‘certain classes of refugees’ after the First World War was the Office of the League of Nations High Commissioner which, under Fridtjof Nansen, provided legal protection to stateless Russians and Armenians and helped coordinate measures for temporary relief and employment in the host country. Nansen also explored potential opportunities for resettlement including, in the case of Armenians, their settlement in Soviet Armenia.58 Nansen’s Office, which was regarded as temporary, received only administrative expenses from the League of Nations and therefore relied heavily on the personnel and financial contributions of non-governmental organisations which registered, clothed and fed refugees.59 The post-Second World War agencies supported a large staff to manage far greater numbers of displaced persons. UNRRA’s DP field operations relied on around 5600 people; IRO employed similar numbers.60 The League of Nations ruled out repatriation (only by stretching a point could resettlement in Armenia be regarded as ‘repatriation’) because it would have exposed Russian returnees to Bolshevik persecution. Simpson concluded that repatriation ‘can be ignored as an important element in any future programme of international action aiming at a practical liquidation of the existing refugee problems’. After 1945 the victorious Allies agreed to confine DPs to camps in order to facilitate their repatriation to the homes from which the Nazis had wrenched them as forced labourers. By contrast, there was no point in incarcerating Russian and Armenian refugees during the 1920s.61 Turning to the ‘volags’, Louise Holborn counted 35 societies that worked closely with the IRO and around 200 that assisted in field

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‘operations’. Each voluntary agency established its legitimacy, whether on grounds of ethnic affiliation, experience, ‘compassion’ or some combination of these attributes. This meant having a clear idea of the ‘issues’. The Quakers, for example, justified their claims to recognition by pointing to assistance they provided to displaced persons after the First World War, but also by promoting practical relief as a tangible indication of the potential for national reconciliation and internationalism.62 The appeal to experience raised interesting questions about the constitution of expert knowledge, with displaced persons as the object of professional intervention. Shortage of space permits only a brief mention of the proclivity of experts to engage with DPs by pathologising displacement. Issues of physical and mental health and welfare became prominent after 1945. To be sure, missionaries had pressed the League of Nations to consider the plight of Russian refugees in China and the risks associated with the spread of prostitution during the 1920s and 1930s.63 After the Second World War, child welfare, hygiene, diet and mental health attracted enormous interest among professional bodies where much ink was spilled over the new diagnosis of ‘DP Apathy’.64 In November 1946 the World Council of Churches noted ‘a growing depression amongst Refugees and DPs [at] having to spend a second winter in the camps or under other abnormal conditions’. Military authorities and UNRRA employed social workers in a new ‘Personal Counselling Service’. In 1948 the IRO took over this service, managing a ‘case load’ of DPs who required welfare advice prior to resettlement. By July 1949, IRO officials envisaged that each refugee should have an individual programme designed ‘to make some plan for his future’, something that the understaffed League of Nations would have found impossible to contemplate. In other instances, however, therapeutic intervention took a more conventional form. The Evangelical Refugee Commission spoke of needing to ‘find as many delegates of the Church as possible to live and to find work amongst the Refugees, in order to fight against demoralisation’. Other voices spoke of moving beyond ‘compassion’ to think of the displaced person as a prospective citizen whose rehabilitation involved vocational training and useful toil, and therefore invited the application of professional expertise to put the refugee back on track.65

Conclusions The displacement of population in the violent peacetime that followed both world wars resonated long after programmes of relief and rehabilitation came to an end. The echoes were most pronounced beyond Europe,

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in Palestine and in the Indian subcontinent. But as late as 1960, World Refugee Year reminded European public opinion of the enduring legacy of the war, in the form of 150,000 DPs who were still living in camps and other settlements in Germany, Austria and Italy.66 War-related migration continued, as with ethnic Italians who fled to Italy in the mid-1950s, once it became clear that Yugoslavia would not renounce Istria. These episodes require attention to issues of memory and commemoration that go beyond the scope of this chapter.67 The omnipresent Cold War continued to inflect discussions of the ‘refugee problem’ into the early 1960s, when Soviet commentators resurrected the charge that capitalist employers used DPs as a source of cheap labour. The accusation that the West had ‘skimmed the cream’ also resonated with critics in Western Europe who protested about the continued problems faced by the ‘hard core’.68 All the above suggests that historians need to look at the ways in which population displacement was represented by officials, volunteer relief workers and refugees at the end of both world wars and for many years thereafter. The vocabulary was often identical. General George Patton reportedly described as ‘locusts’ the Baltic DPs whom he encountered after the Second World War, precisely the term used by Tsarist Russian officials during the First World War who similarly found it difficult to think of displaced persons as human beings.69 It is worth adding that characteristics were ascribed to land as well as to people, as in assumptions about overcrowded land that needed clearing or empty land that might be settled by displaced people. Sometimes, as in ‘new Poland’ or in Turkey after 1945, where the government set aside land to provide for Turks expelled by Bulgaria, the land was only ‘empty’ because other people had been displaced to make way for the newcomers.70 Fuller account also needs to be taken of other kinds of representation, such as the ‘moral rehabilitation’ that accompanied ideas about labour and economic reconstruction. The emphasis on rehabilitation became widespread after 1945, but it appears to have entered the lexicon during the Second World War rather than earlier, as if the numbers of displaced persons and the pernicious psychological legacy of Nazi rule combined to give it a particular credence. Rehabilitation connected to ideas of individual improvement but also to the idea of resolution, both in a psychological and in a material sense. But what was meant by ‘refugee rehabilitation’? As the Second World War came to an end, its meaning appears to have been subsumed into a set of practices to which refugees had to submit.71 To be rehabilitated entailed a lengthy process

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of intrusive investigation about one’s political beliefs, health status, family circumstances and so forth. Against the backdrop of immediate post-war geopolitics, individual DPs who wished to be resettled rather than repatriated had to demonstrate their anti-communist credentials, to show that they would be good citizens, and to accept that their biography might be used by governments for propaganda purposes. The ‘resolution’ of the refugee crisis after 1918 betrayed no equivalent preoccupation with individual psychology.72 The links between geopolitical and domestic political considerations are also worth exploring further. A broad conception of state security expressed itself in governments’ insistence that they should control internal population migration in the interests of public order. Officials sometimes struggled to contain people’s movement; hence the diatribes against spontaneity, as in the Soviet castigation of the ‘suitcase mood’ that took displaced Leningraders back to ‘Piter’ from their temporary location in Siberia and that supposedly encouraged vagrancy and hooliganism. These assertions are reminiscent of widespread anxieties in Russia and elsewhere brought about by the mass movement of refugees during the First World War.73 Overcoming such anxieties is a thread that connects displacement during and after both world wars; the more extensive apparatus of control after 1945 corresponded not so much to governmental recognition of the ‘problem’ as such but rather to its unprecedented continental scale. We should also look beyond the ‘migration of misery’ to see how and by whom that misery has been framed.74 It is narrow-minded to accept the tragedy of displacement at face value, ignoring the range of experience articulated by displaced persons. An exiled woman (esule) from Fiume – who lived in cramped accommodation in a refugee camp in Trieste after 1945 – spoke of ‘the tragedy of the war [as] a curious adventure: bombs, fires, alarms and flights to the shelter seemed undecipherable episodes that didn’t endanger me but rather made my life more interesting’.75 The experience of displacement could also provide an intense political education, as in the DP camps. But too much adventure could be a disadvantage or a curse. Officials did not like nomads. They struggled to come to terms with the complex trajectories that connected one episode of displacement to another.76 Multiple interests were constituted by the frequent articulation of loss and despair. They include international relief organisations, professional experts and philanthropists who helped create the pervasive doctrine that refugees cannot act on their own behalf but must be acted upon; in other words, that they have needs rather than wishes.

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That assumption, along with the appropriation of refugees’ experience by external agencies, has proved remarkably durable. It transcends the options of repatriation, integration and resettlement that have been deployed to ‘solve’ the refugee ‘problem’. Critics of the current international refugee regime frequently point to the bureaucratic and quasi-military administration of relief whose standardisation can be traced back to the aftermath of the Second World War. However, to fully comprehend wartime population displacement and the styles of intervention to which it gave rise, it makes sense to go further back in time, as this chapter has endeavoured to demonstrate.77

Notes 1. A. J. Rieber (2000) (ed.) Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950 (London: Frank Cass); P. Ther and A. Siljak (2001) (eds) Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield); N. Naimark (2001), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); R. Bessel and D. Schumann (2003) (eds) Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History during the 1940s and 1950s (Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press); S. B. Várdy and T. Hunt Tooley (2003) (eds) Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (New York: Columbia University Press); J. Corsellis and M. Farrar (2005) Slovenia 1945: Memories of Death and Survival after World War II (London: I. B. Tauris); R. Melville, J. Pesek and C. Scharf (2007) (eds) Zwangsmigrationen im mittleren und östlichen Europa: Völkerrecht, Konzeptionen, Praxis 1938–1950 (Mainz: Von Zabern); G. Corni and T. Stark (2008) (eds) People on the Move: Population Transfers and Ethnic Cleansing Policies during World War II and Its Aftermath (Oxford: Berg). 2. A. Weiner (2003) (ed.) Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Many of the contributors to this collection of essays acknowledge a debt to social theorists including H. Arendt (1958) The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace) and Z. Bauman (1991) Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press), and to historians of other societies such as M. Poovey (1995) Making a Social Body (Chicago: Chicago University Press) and D. Horn (1994) Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction and Italian Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press). 3. M. Mazower (2008) Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Allen Lane); I. Kershaw (2008) Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution (London: Yale University Press). 4. T. Martin (1998) ‘The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, Journal of Modern History, LXX, no. 4, pp. 813–61; T. Martin (2001), ‘Stalinist Forced Relocation Policies: Patterns, Causes, Consequences’, in M. Weiner and S. Russell (eds) Demography and National Security (New York: Berghahn), pp. 305–39; P. Holquist (2001) ‘“To Remove” and “to Exterminate Totally”: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia’,

20

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Trajectories of Population Displacement in R. G. Suny and T. Martin (eds) A State of Nations. Empire and NationBuilding in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 111–44; M. Geyer (1989) ‘The Militarization of Europe, 1914–1945’, in J. Gillis (ed.), The Militarization of the World (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 65–102. For a starting point see M. Mazower (2002) ‘Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century’, American Historical Review, CVII, no. 4, pp. 1158–78; I. Hull (2004), Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press); J. Zimmerer (2005) ‘The Birth of the Ostland out of the Spirit of Colonialism: A Postcolonial Perspective on the Nazi Policy of Conquest and Extermination’, Patterns of Prejudice, XXXIX (2), pp. 197–219. M. Mazower (1998) Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane), and T. Judt (2005) Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London: Heinemann). See also P. Holquist (2003) ‘New Terrains and New Chronologies: The Interwar Period through the Lens of Population Politics’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, IV (1), pp. 163–75. For an approach along these lines see N. P. Baron and P. Gatrell (2003) ‘Population Displacement, State-Building and Social Identity in the Lands of the Former Russian Empire, 1917–1923’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History IV (1), pp. 51–100. The exception was E. M. Kulischer (1948) Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes 1914–47 (New York: Columbia University Press) who analysed migratory processes from a neo-Malthusian perspective. See also J. B. Schechtman (1946) European Population Transfers 1939–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press); J. Vernant (1953) The Refugee in the Post-War World (New Haven: Yale University Press); L. W. Holborn (1956), The International Refugee Organization: A Specialized Agency of the United Nations, Its History and Work, 1946–1952 (London & New York: Oxford University Press); M. Proudfoot (1957) European Refugees, 1939–1952: A Study in Forced Population Movement (London: Faber and Faber); G. Ginsbergs (1957) ‘The Soviet Union and the Problems of Refugees and Displaced Persons, 1917–1956’, American Journal of International Law LI (2), pp. 325–61. See the discussion in R. Moeller (2001) War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 51–87. The Polish government distinguished between ‘repatriants’ from Ukraine and Lithuania, and ‘displaced persons’ (przesiedlen´cy) who were resettled from central provinces to the newly acquired western territory. Key works on these topics include K. Kersten (1974) Repatriacja ludnos´ci polskiej po II wojnie swiatowej: studium historyczne (Wrocław: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich); S. Banasiak (1963) Działalnos´´c osadnicza Pan´stwowego Urze˛du Repatriacyjnego na Ziemiach Odzyskanych w latach 1945–1947 (Poznan´: Instytut Zachodni); and J. Czerniakiewicz (1987) Repatriacja ludnos´ci polskiej z ZSRR, 1944–1948 (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe Wydawnicestwo Naukowe). On the implementation of the 1944 agreement, see I. F. Evseev (1962) Sotrudnichestvo Ukrainskoi SSR i Pol’skoi Narodnoi Republiki 1944–1960gg. (Kiev: AN USSR). W. Isajiw, Y. Boshyk and R. Senkus (1992) (eds) The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War 2 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute

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13.

14.

15.

16.

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of Ukrainian Studies Press), the proceedings of a series of conferences that took place in the 1980s; W. Jacobmeyer (1985) Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum Heimatlosen Ausländer: Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland 1945–1951 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). M. Marrus (1985) The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press); M. Wyman (1985) DP: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (London: Associated University Press); G. Noiriel (1991) La tyrannie du national: le droit d’asile en Europe, 1793–1993 (Paris: CalmannLévy). See also A. Bramwell (1988) (ed.) Refugees in the Age of Total War (London: Unwin Hyman). L. Malkki (1992) ‘National Geographic: Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialisation of National Identity among Scholars and Peoples’, Cultural Anthropology VII (1), pp. 24–44; L. Malkki (1995) ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, Annual Review of Anthropology, XXIV, pp. 495–523; L. Malkki (1996) ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization’, Cultural Anthropology XI (3), pp. 377–404. Barbara Harrell-Bond, Elizabeth Colson and others also carried out pioneering work. G. Rystad (1990) The Uprooted: Forced Migration as an International Problem in the Post-War Era (Lund: Lund University Press); K. Salomon (1991) Refugees in the Cold War: Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund: Lund University Press); G. Loescher (2001) The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press). In addition to references cited above, see J. Gross (1997) ‘War as Revolution’, in N. Naimark and L. Gibianskii (eds) The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (Boulder: Westview Press), pp. 17–40; J. Gross (2002) Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press); A. Weiner (2001) Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press); T. Snyder (2003) The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press); K. Brown (2004) A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). The historical geographer Pavel Polian has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of forced population movements in the Soviet Union. P. M. Polian (2001) Ne po svoei vole: istoriia i geografiia prinuditel’nykh migratsii v SSSR (Moscow: OGI). A. Becker (1998) Oubliés de la grande guerre: Humanitaire et culture de guerre. Populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Hachette); P. Gatrell (1999) A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press); V. G. Liulevicius (2000) War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); B. Hoffmann-Holter, ‘Abreisendmachung’: Jüdische Kriegsflüchtlinge in Wien 1914 bis 1923 (Vienna: Böhlau); M. Ermacora (2007) ‘Assistance and Surveillance: War Refugees in Italy, 1914–1918’, Contemporary European History, XVI (4), pp. 445–60; J. Oltmer (1998) ‘Arbeitszwang und Zwangsarbeit – Kriegsgefangene und ausländische Zivilarbeitskräfte im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in R. Spilker and B. Ulrich (eds), Der Tod als Maschinist. Der industrialzimmisierte Krieg, 1914–1918 (Bramsche: Rasch Verlag), pp. 96–107; A. Prusin (2005) Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity,

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17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

Trajectories of Population Displacement and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press). See also M. Geyer (2006) ‘Endkampf 1918 and 1945: German Nationalism, Annihilation and Self-Destruction’, in A. Lüdtke and B. Weisbrod (eds) No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag), pp. 37–67. J. B. Schechtman (1949) Population Transfers in Asia (New York: Hallsby Press). The debates and tensions are examined by F. Cooper (1996) Decolonization and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The classic study of forced labour in Europe is U. Herbert (1997) Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labour in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), first published in German in 1985. E. Lohr (2001) ‘The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportations, Hostages, and Violence during World War I’, Russian Review, LX (3), pp. 404–19; N. Naimark (2001) ‘Ethnic Cleansing between War and Peace’, in Weiner (ed.) Landscaping the Human Garden, pp. 218–35; P. Gatrell (2008) ‘Refugees and Forced Migrants during the First World War’, Immigrants and Minorities, 26 (1), pp. 82–110. In addition to the references above, see S. Redlich (2002) Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press); A. Weiner (2001) ‘When Memory Counts: War, Genocide and Postwar Soviet Jewry’, in Weiner (ed.) Landscaping the Human Garden, pp. 167–88. Soviet officials combined punitive and economic motives in their plan to conscript five million German workers to produce goods and services for the USSR worth up to $40 billion, a figure that Stalin scaled back to $10 billion at Yalta. V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov (1996) Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 31. On German POWs in Russia see Moeller, War Stories, pp. 88–122; on Soviet POWs in Germany, see P. Polian (2001) Deportiert nach Hause: sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im “Dritten Reich” und ihre Repatriierung (München: Oldenbourg). On Polish deportees, see P. Polian (2005) ‘Optatsii: s kem i kogda v XX veke Rossiia obmenivalas’ naseleniem’, in O. Glezer and P. Polian (eds) Rossiia i ee regiony v XX veke: territoriia – rasselenie – migratsiia (Moscow: OGI), pp. 536–44. On violence after 1918, see R. Gerwarth (2008) ‘The Central European Counterrevolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War’, Past and Present, 200(1), pp. 175–209; P. Gatrell (2008) ‘War after the War: Conflicts, 1918–1923’, in J. Horne (ed.) Blackwell Companion to the First World War (London: Blackwell), pp. 558–75. On Kielce, see J. Gross (2006) Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House), pp. 81–117. On Ukraine, see J. Burds (2001) ‘The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948’, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies no. 1505 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh). The impact of the Greek civil war is traced in M. Mazower (2000) (ed.) After the War was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press) and in L. M. Danforth (2003) ‘“We Crossed a Lot of Borders”: Refugee Children of the Greek Civil War’, Diaspora XII (2), pp. 169–209.

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23. See the essays by Frank, Gousseff and Schulze in this book, as well as B. Frommer (2005) National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Post-War Czechoslovakia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 24. Kulischer, Europe on the Move, pp. 149–51, 168–9; I. Mocsy (1983) The Uprooted: Hungarian Refugees and Their Impact on Hungary’s Domestic Politics, 1918–1921 (New York: Columbia UP); R. Hirschon (2003) (ed.) Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey (London: Berghahn). 25. O. Subtelny (2001) ‘Expulsion, Resettlement, Civil Strife: the Fate of Poland’s Ukrainians, 1944–1947’, in Ther and Siljak (eds), Redrawing Nations, pp. 155–72; P. R. Magocsi (2002) Historical Atlas of Central Europe, 2nd edn (London: Thames and Hudson), pp. 190–3; Kulischer, Europe on the Move, pp. 286, 291–2. These figures omit internal resettlement. 26. P. Ther (1998) Deutsche und Polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). 27. D. P. Gaines (1966) The World Council of Churches: A Study of Its Background and History (Peterborough, NH: R.R. Smith), pp. 315–16. 28. J. Wróbel (1993) ‘Z dziejow polskiego uchodztwa w rodezji polnocnej (Zambii) w okresie II wojny swiatowej’, Przeglad Polonijny, XIX (3), pp. 133–45. Some 4000 were placed in a camp at Tengeru. 29. L. Goverdovskaia (2004) Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia i kulturnaia deiatel’nost’ russkoi emigratsii v Kitae v 1917–1931 gg. (Moscow: MADI); M. R. Ristaino (2001) Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press). During World Refugee Year, 1959–60, the UN publicised the plight of elderly White Russians in China. 30. WCC Archives, Geneva, Box 425.1.043, Human interest stories. 31. Fonds Nansen, Geneva, Box C1771, doc. 1771–1(1). A. Loveday, Director, Economic, Financial and Transit Dept, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, to H. F. Schoenfeld, State Dept, 17 July 1945. 32. M. Dyczok (2000) The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 123; Proudfoot, European Refugees, p. 256; J. G. Stoessinger (1956) The Refugee and the World Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 68–71. 33. C. Skran (1995) Refugees in Inter-War Europe: The Emergence of a Regime (Oxford: Clarendon Press); A. Zolberg, A. Suhrke and S. Aguayo (1989) Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World (New York: Oxford University Press). 34. Fonds Nansen, Box 1750, doc. 34280, Bulgarian Chargé d’Affaires, Berne, to Nansen, 28 February 1924. Bulgaria was also concerned about the presence of several thousand Armenian refugees. See T. Dragostinova (2006) ‘Competing Priorities, Ambiguous Loyalties: Challenges of Socioeconomic Adaptation and National Inclusion of the Interwar Bulgarian Refugees’, Nationalities Papers, XXXIV (5), pp. 549–74. 35. P. Ballinger (2007) ‘Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XL (3), pp. 713–41, and her essay in this volume. 36. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, pp. 197–8.

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37. M. Wulf (2009) ‘Locating Estonia: Perspectives from Exile and Homeland’, in P. Gatrell and N. P. Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in Soviet Eastern Europe, 1945–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 231–54. 38. Fonds Nansen, Box C1586 doc. 17729, Fox to Nansen, 7 January 1930. See also P. Gatrell (2007), ‘Displacing and Re-Placing Population in the Two World Wars: Armenia and Poland Compared’, Contemporary European History, XVI (4), pp. 511–27. 39. Fonds Nansen, Box 1750, doc. 37744, report from China, July 1924. 40. Nansen’s officials established to their own satisfaction that ‘the refugees in question were not only free but in the majority of cases, were contented with their lot’. Fonds Nansen, Box R1744, doc. 22278, Nansen to Major T F. Johnson, 7 January 1924; Johnson to M. du Chayla, 8 January 1924. 41. See the correspondence in December 1930, Fonds Nansen, Box C1586, doc. 24101. 42. H. Carter (1949) The Refugee Problem in Europe and the Middle East (London: Epworth Press), pp. 5, 19, 32, with a foreword by Simpson and including quotations from Rees. British views are set out in M. Frank (2008) Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 43. Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War, p. 189, quoting Andrei Gromyko. 44. G. Swain (2003) ‘Deciding to Collectivise Latvian Agriculture’, Europe-Asia Studies, LV (1), pp. 39–58. 45. B. Linek (2001) ‘“De-Germanisation” and “Re-Polonisation” in Upper Silesia, 1945–50’, in Ther and Siljak (eds), Redrawing Nations, pp. 121–34. 46. K. Malicki (1961) ‘Zielonogórskie wspominki’, in A. Kwilecki (ed.), Mój dom nad Odra˛, vol. 1 (Poznan´: Instytut Zachodni), pp. 78–9. Thanks to Chris Lash for this reference and other advice. 47. G. Thum (2003) Die fremde Stadt: Breslau 1945 (Munich: Siedler Verlag). 48. Thum, Die fremde Stadt, pp. 185–94, 260–6 (‘Wild West’). The daily struggle of Berliners to survive the aftermath of war is one theme of P. Steege (2007) Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 49. Fonds Nansen, Box R1744, doc. 21336, Secretary to the High Commission for Russian Refugees to Dr Bacilieri, Swiss Legation, Bucharest, 21 June 1922. 50. Quoted in G. Swain (2004) Between Stalin and Hitler: Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940–46 (London: Routledge), p. 157. 51. M. Fleming (2007) ‘Seeking Labour’s Aristocracy: The “Westphalian Incident” and Polish Nationality Policy in the Immediate Aftermath of War’, Nations and Nationalism, XIII (3), pp. 461–79. The Polish position was that Westphalian Poles had been forced by poor economic conditions in the interwar period to seek work in Germany, whereas the British argued that they had ‘enjoyed German nationality’ for more than a century. 52. Quotation from M. McNeill (1950) By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work among the Displaced Persons of Europe (London: Bannisdale Press), pp. 202–16. In addition to chapters in this book by Steinert and Salvatici, see L. McDowell (2005) Hard Labour: The Hidden Voices of Latvian Migrant ‘Volunteer’ Workers (London: UCL Press).

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53. ‘New Citizens are New Assets: A Footnote to Camp Clearance in Europe’, World Refugee Year Newsletter, WRY/INF/12 (1960). 54. ‘The Refugee Problem in Italy’, WRY/INF/47 (1960); Ballinger, ‘Borders of the Nation’, p. 738. 55. In addition to Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War, and Holborn, International Refugee Organization, pp. 152, 162–5, see J. Reinisch (2008) ‘Introduction: Relief in the Aftermath of War’, Journal of Contemporary History XL (3), pp. 371–404 and the other essays in this special issue. 56. Sir J. H. Simpson (1939) The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 172–90; Skran, Refugees in Inter-War Europe, pp. 78–83. Zemgor brought together the pre-revolutionary Russian Union of Towns and Union of Zemstvos; its post-war activities are described in C. Gousseff and O. Pichon-Bobrinskoy (2005) ‘The Invention of a Humanitarian Policy: Russian Refugees and Zemgor, 1921–1930’, Cahiers du monde russe, XLVI (4), pp. 667–72. 57. J-D. Steinert (2007) Nach Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit: Britische humanitäre Hilfe in Deutschland (Secolo Verlag: Osnabrück). See also P. Gatrell (2007) ‘World Wars and Population Displacement in Europe in the Twentieth Century’, Contemporary European History, XVI (4), pp. 415–26; P. Gatrell (2009) ‘From “Homelands” to “Warlands”: Themes, Approaches, Voices’, in P. Gatrell and N. P. Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in Soviet Eastern Europe, 1945–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1–22. 58. D. Kévonian (2004) Réfugiés et diplomatie humanitaire: les acteurs européens et la scène proche-orientale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne); Skran, Refugees in Inter-War Europe, pp. 173–7. 59. Fonds Nansen, Box C1771, doc. 1771-1(1). A. Loveday, Director, Economic, Financial and Transit Dept, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, to H F. Arthur Schoenfeld, State Dept, 17 July 1945. 60. Holborn, International Refugee Organization, p. 86. Many UNRRA staff were seconded from private organisations. 61. Simpson, The Refugee Problem, p. 529. M. Mandel (2003) In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth-Century France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 33–6, mentions Camp Oddo on the outskirts of Marseille, which operated from 1922 to 1927. Simpson made only brief mention of camps, when he called upon governments to admit refugees from Germany ‘and accommodate them, if necessary in camps, until they could be dispersed to countries of ultimate settlement’. Simpson, The Refugee Problem, pp. 548–9. 62. For an illustration of this ethos in a different context, see I. Feldman (2007) ‘The Quaker Way: Ethical Labor and Humanitarian Relief’, American Ethnologist, XXXIV (4), pp. 689–705. 63. Fonds Nansen, Box R5638, doc. 13321, correspondence with the Conference of Missionary Societies in GB and Ireland relating to Russian refugees in Manchukuo. 64. E. A. Shils (1946) ‘Social and Psychological Aspects of Displacement and Repatriation’, Journal of Social Issues, II (3), pp. 3–18; H. B. M. Murphy (1955), Flight and Resettlement (Paris: UNESCO); Vernant, The Refugee in the Post-War World, p. 17.

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65. WCC Archives, Box 425.1.031, ERC Fieldworkers 1947–1948; Holborn, International Refugee Organization, p. 267. 66. E. Rees (1959) We Strangers and Afraid (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). 67. V. Skultans (1998) The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia (London: Routledge); P. Ballinger (2003) History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Thum, Die fremde Stadt, pp. 497–526. 68. See the statement made by Auguste Lindt, UNHCR High Commissioner, to the Tenth Session of the ICEM, 9 April 1959, William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, Canadian Committee for World Refugee Year, McMaster University, Hamilton, Box 2, Folder 4. 69. Quoted in M. Eksteins (1999) Walking since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War 2 and the Heart of our Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin), p. 114. 70. Anon. (1959) International Migration, 1945–1957 (Geneva: ILO), pp. 57–61. 71. B. Shephard (2008) ‘“Becoming Planning Minded”: The Theory and Practice of Relief, 1940–1945’, Journal of Contemporary History, XLIII (3), pp. 403–19, esp. p. 412. The Indian government also adopted this term in order to characterise the remit of its chief agency for refugees created by Partition. U. B. Rao (1967) The Story of Rehabilitation (Delhi: Department of Rehabilitation). 72. Psychological expertise is explored by M. Thomson (2006) Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 73. R. Manley (2009) To the Tashkent Station: The Evacuation and Survival of Soviet Civilians during World War Two (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). See also the chapter by Elizabeth White in this volume. On anxieties in the First World War and beyond see Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, pp. 78–80 and D. Shearer (2004) ‘Elements Near and Alien: Passportisation, Policing and Identity in the Stalinist State, 1932–52’, Journal of Modern History LXXVI (4), p. 863. 74. This phrase appears in E. H. S. Chandler (1959) High Tower of Refuge: The Inspiring Story of Refugee Relief throughout the World (London: Odhams Press), p. 25. 75. Ballinger, History in Exile, 201. 76. For a superb discussion of trajectories, see D. Newbury (2005) ‘Returning Refugees: Four Historical Patterns of Coming Home to Rwanda’, Comparative Studies in Society and History XL (2), pp. 252–85. 77. Malkki, ‘Refugees and Exile’; J. Hyndman (2000) Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). The classic statement is B. Harrell-Bond (1985) Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

2 Reconstructing the Nation-State: Population Transfer in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–8 Matthew Frank

It is now almost axiomatic to state that, whereas after the First World War the framers of the European settlement sought to shift frontiers to fit populations, after the Second they resorted to shifting populations to fit frontiers. Although there is some truth in this attractively simple distinction, it overstates the contrast between the two post-war eras. Post-1945 Europe saw several major territorial readjustments – principally, in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union and along the Polish–German frontier – and it was from these areas that the vast majority of post-war population displacements took place. Indeed, where frontiers remained static, so, too, on the whole, did populations. It would be more accurate to say, then, that in 1945, unlike in 1919, there was more of a willingness to shift both frontiers and populations at one and the same time. The contrast between 1945 and 1919 is instead one of emphasis. Although in 1919 there was a general desire to see in the successor states of Central and Eastern Europe an overall reduction in the number of minorities compared to the multinational states they replaced, ethnic homogeneity took second or even third place behind strategic and economic concerns. By 1945, however, ethnic homogeneity was the geostrategic concern. Ethnic homogeneity had become the sine qua non of political stability and nation-state viability in Eastern Europe, owing to the failure of the post-1919 settlement and the part the so-called minorities problem had played in its undoing. In some respects, this ‘minorities problem’ became a scapegoat for the political failings of a generation, and for the frustrations and humiliations of domestic crisis, war and occupation. Throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the challenge for post-war national élites became not only how to re-establish political authority but, more fundamentally, how to reconstitute the 27

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nation-state by reconfiguring the relationship between the nation identified with the state and the national minorities – or non-state nations – within its borders. The goal, in other words, was to construct a nation-state in fact where previously there had only been one only in name. Wartime displacement and extermination of populations had already made the transition from a ‘state of nationalities’ to a ‘national state’ a reality. The aftermath of war provided further opportunities for facilitating it, and a central component of post-war programmes of national reconstruction and national revival, as well as a major source of their popular appeal, was the demand for the liquidation of the minorities problem. The post-war era, however, also imposed limitations on what states could do. What was feasible or permissible in time of war was not always so in time of peace. To this end, international schemes for the relocation of minorities – mass resettlement, that is, under the rubric of ‘population transfer’ – offered a way of carrying this process of ethnic homogenisation into the post-war era and – most importantly – completing it. This chapter looks at the role that ‘population transfer’ played in shaping the political settlement in Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, and how in practice international schemes for the resettlement of national minorities ultimately proved to be self-limiting measures. The three main population movements of the post-war era where the principle of population transfer was applied are examined: in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union; among German populations of Central and Eastern Europe; and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. The principal focus of this chapter is on the wider international context in which these population movements occurred, and on the points of divergence – and more significantly, convergence – between the great powers over the question of population transfer. The limits of the measure are assessed within the framework of deepening divisions in Europe – national as well as ideological – which population transfer had, in part, generated and continued to sustain well into the late 1940s. The concept of population transfer is a decidedly modern notion, the development of which should be traced alongside the rise of ethnolinguistic nationalisms and the disintegration of multinational empires. It emerged initially in response to the rapid retreat of the Ottoman Empire from south-eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, and from the fear that the minorities left behind – both Christian and Muslim – would continue to be a target of persecution and a focus of

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irredentism, and therefore a source of instability within the state and between states.1 The assumption, then, that lay behind the concept of population transfer was that where national groups were intermixed and competing nationalisms irreconcilable, it was in the interests of international peace and of the populations concerned for states to enter freely into agreements to relocate populations, either as a unilateral ‘transfer’ or a reciprocal ‘exchange’, so that a process of ethnic unmixing could be expedited in an orderly way with a minimum of violence, human suffering, economic disruption and public disorder. Over time, ‘population transfer’ came to denote, for those who invoked it, a separate – if sometimes vaguely defined – process, distinguishable from other coerced movements of population, such as ‘expulsion’ or ‘deportation’, by its intended outcomes (the diminution of international tension, prevention of massacre, the consolidation of the nation-state) and its supposedly progressive methods (inter-state treaty, bureaucratic frameworks for resettlement, financial compensation).2 Prior to the end of the Second World War, the concept of ‘transfer’ was behind four sets of population movements. A series of population exchanges between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey was organised in the wake of the Balkan Wars (1912/13) but were aborted when Turkey joined the Central Powers in November 1914.3 A second wave of transfers followed the First World War, again involving the same triangle of states: Greece and Bulgaria signed a treaty for ‘reciprocal emigration’ in November 1919 which resulted in the resettlement of some 46,000 Greeks (almost the entire minority in Bulgaria) and 92,000 Bulgarians (just over half the total number in Greece);4 while a much more farreaching ‘convention concerning the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations’ was reached under international auspices in January 1923. The Lausanne Convention was unique in making the element of compulsion explicit as well as retroactive (in other words, it also affected those already displaced which, in the case of the Greeks, was the vast majority of the 1.2 million who were eventually resettled), and it became the model for the forcible resettlement of minorities or what its proponents by the late 1920s were calling ‘population transfer’.5 The migration of Turkish minorities from the Balkans then continued into the 1930s and some 782,000 Turks were earmarked for resettlement under a series of agreements between Turkey and South-Eastern European states.6 This ‘recall’ of Turkish elements from South-Eastern Europe prefigured the bilateral agreements which Nazi Germany signed between 1939 and 1943 with its satellites and allies, including Italy and the Soviet Union, for the removal of German ‘splinters of nationality’

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(Splitter des deutschen Volkstums), as Hitler termed the German diaspora of Central and Eastern Europe.7 In some instances, resettlement was in exchange for non-Germans on Reich territory, but in most cases it was as a unilateral transfer.8 If the Lausanne Convention provided the model, then these heim ins Reich transfers established the pretext for the more extensive resettlement of German populations at the end of the Second World War.9 Each of these ‘population transfers’ involved a national minority – defined by ethno-linguistic criteria (or, in the case of the Lausanne Convention, religious affiliation) – and its permanent resettlement across an international frontier to the territory of the state with which the national minority was identified. In each case, the population transfer was formalised and given legality by treaty between two or more contracting parties representing or acting on behalf of the populations affected. These agreements set out the rights and obligations of the states and the populations involved, and covered – among other points of detail – the timing and organisation of resettlement, the criteria for selection, the facilities for transport and reception, baggage allowances, property rights and financial compensation, and provisions for the establishment of Mixed Commissions to oversee the process and to ensure the agreement was being adhered to. Population transfer involved, therefore, the establishment of an international bureaucratic and legal framework for managing the dispossession, resettlement and indemnification of national minorities. The Soviet Union was the first Allied power to attempt to replicate this bureaucratic model for the organised resettlement of minorities. Even before the Second World War had ended, Soviet constituent republics signed agreements with Poland (September 1944), as they later did with Czechoslovakia (July 1945), for the exchange of populations out of territories annexed by the Soviet Union. Some 50,000 people were affected by the Soviet–Czechoslovak population exchange, mostly Czechs and Slovaks from Subcarpathian Rus. A second Czechoslovak–Soviet agreement (July 1946) provided for the transfer of the 35,000-strong Czech minority in Soviet Volhynia – formerly part of Poland – of which 28,600 opted for resettlement.10 The far more extensive Polish–Soviet agreements provided for the ‘inter-evacuation’ (vzaimnaya evakuatsiia) of all Poles and Jews who had been resident in areas annexed by the Soviet Union with Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Lithuanians from Poland proper.11 This ‘exchange’ of populations was not, however, carried out on a reciprocal basis as the numbers involved were unevenly balanced. Nor was it – despite its official designation – ‘voluntary’, as

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there was coercion directed from both sides.12 Almost all of those eligible to ‘opt’ for the Soviet Union – almost 500,000 – did so. However, only around 800,000 Poles were resettled, with a sizeable Polish minority remaining in the western Soviet Union. The Ukrainian minority in Poland, however, completely disappeared as a compact entity; those who were not transferred to the Soviet Union were forcibly uprooted and dispersed throughout the Polish western territories.13 Just as significant as the outcome of the ‘inter-evacuation’, however, was the principle at stake. Population transfer stood in contrast to the prevailing pre-war and wartime policy of deportation within the Soviet Union of those national minorities perceived as collectively hostile to the party and the state.14 Whereas the aim of deportation had been the ‘denationalisation’ of minority groups – the liquidation of the nation as a political-territorial unit – the principle of population transfer, in contrast, implicitly recognised that a nation had collective political rights, and aimed at consolidating and strengthening the political-territorial basis of the nation by making the nation and state congruent. The Soviet leadership in its post-war dealings with its western neighbours highlighted this contrast, in method and outcome, between a denationalising policy of deportation and national consolidation through population transfer.15 As Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, told a delegation of Czechoslovak communists in April 1946: when handling national minorities, there were methods applicable in times of war, and there were those better suited to times of peace; the ‘solution of population transfer’ – Molotov went on to suggest – was clearly one for the latter.16 In its support for these methods, the Soviet leadership showed that, at least as far as the international (as opposed to the purely internal) dimensions of the minorities problem were concerned, it was reverting back to the ‘positive’ population policies of the 1920s, with an emphasis on ‘nation-making’ rather than ‘nation-breaking’.17 Central to Soviet thinking on ethnic homogeneity and the nationstate, as on other issues relating to the political reconstruction of Central and Eastern Europe, were concerns about national security. As part of its quest for ‘security by empire’, the Soviet Union aimed through population exchange to consolidate its extensive territorial acquisitions and secure a clearer line of ethnic demarcation on its western frontiers.18 But this rationale also extended into Central and Eastern Europe where the Soviet Union seemed even more committed to facilitating ethnic homogeneity than within its own frontiers. ‘I believe in exchange of populations’, Molotov told Hungary’s Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy in April 1946. ‘A nation has no greater treasure than its people; its increase

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is beneficial to that country.’19 Having shown what the ‘correct national policy’ was, the Soviets expected their western neighbours to make equally ‘bold decisions’, with the Hungarian and Czechoslovak leaderships, in particular, being prevailed upon to resolve their considerable differences by agreeing to an exchange of minorities based on the Soviet model.20 When it came to dealing with German minorities, the Soviets had also shown what could be done. The deportation of 1.2 million Soviet Germans to Central Asia in 1941–2, as one of seven national groups forcibly relocated during the war for reasons of ‘national security’, was brutal and uncompromising.21 On the fate of the German populations of Central and Eastern Europe after the war, Stalin was characteristically brazen. ‘In the event of victory, we will return East Prussia to Slavdom’, Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian General Secretary of the Comintern, recorded Stalin as ‘joking’ in September 1941. ‘[And] we will colonise it with Slavs.’22 Yet there was no directive per se from Moscow for the expulsion of the Germans. At most, Moscow gave the green light for national élites to solve their German problem however they wished. ‘We won’t get in your way’, Stalin told Zdeneˇk Fierlinger, Czechoslovakia’s Prime Minister, in June 1945, when asked his opinion about plans for the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans: ‘Drive them out’.23 There was no Soviet equivalent, as such, of the US or British post-war planning for a transfer of German populations,24 and this Soviet laissez-faire approach led them to view the relative preoccupation of the Western allies with the modalities of an organised resettlement of German populations with a degree of incredulity and puzzlement.25 The notion of a mass transfer of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe came in any case from a different and distinctly liberal tradition of thinking on the European minorities problem, which recognised not only that minorities had collective rights but that the international community had a responsibility to intervene and protect these where relations between a state and its minorities had broken down. These rights and obligations between minorities, the state and the international community were codified in a series of minorities protection clauses that were inserted into the post-First World War peace treaties, which the League of Nations subsequently developed into a system of international minorities protection. The perception soon took hold, however, that this international minorities regime was neither protecting minorities from the state, nor protecting the state from its own minorities. By the early 1930s, it had ceased to function effectively.26 Although the notion of collective and selective ‘minority rights’ gave

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way over the course of the 1940s to the idea of individual and universal ‘human rights’, it also led to more serious consideration of other politically acceptable methods that aimed at removing rather than protecting minorities.27 Population transfer in this respect had a particularly strong appeal for self-styled liberal internationalists, as it offered a way of eliminating the minorities problem which stopped short of precipitate expulsion or outright physical extermination, and did so within the framework of international law and arbitration.28 The British position on post-war population transfers was shaped by pre-existing prejudices against this inter-war system of minority protection, the attitude of governments-in-exile towards German minorities, and a realistic assessment of the post-war situation on the ground in Central and Eastern Europe. The British had always been in two minds about the inter-war system of minority treaties and, on balance, were glad to see the back of it. National minorities themselves were equally suspect.29 The exploitation of the minorities issue by both pre- and post1933 German governments and the precedents that were established in resettling ethnic Germans ‘colonists’ during the war made a break with the previous policy of minority protection irrevocable.30 The British also understood that no post-war Polish or Czechoslovak government would accept a return to the status quo ante. The concept of population transfer consequently offered safeguards that in the headlong rush for national reconstruction some semblance of order would be imposed when it came to dealing with German minorities. Proposals for the postwar displacement of Germans made by the Polish and Czechoslovak governments-in-exile – the latter of which were the most zealous and persuasive exponents of population transfer – were invariably made with British sensibilities in mind, and with appeals to the precedents set by earlier population transfers, whether Greco-Turkish or Hitlerian. But although population transfer was primarily a method of ensuring that there were as few German minorities as possible in post-war Europe, it was not exclusively an anti-German measure. The British were ‘in favour of reducing minorities to the minimum by any means compatible with the dictates of humanity and the requirements of order and stability’.31 Population transfer provided this compatibility, and although never regarded as a universal solution to the minorities problem, it was nevertheless one that deserved a wider application. The American stand on population transfer was, on the face of it, almost identical to that of the British. US post-war planners, like their British counterparts, never regarded population transfer as a universal solution: ‘general transfers’ – as they were termed – were out of the

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question; ‘selective transfers’, in those instances where ‘they w[ould] improve relations between the countries concerned and contribute to greater stability in Europe’, however, were not.32 At the decision-making level, the coterie of advisors around Roosevelt – as well as the President himself – seemed increasingly well-disposed towards compulsory transfer, particularly of Germans from East Prussia, as well as towards a more general redistribution of European minorities.33 In one key respect, however, the American position was different from that of the British. There was, as the State Department recognised, ‘no exact precedent for United States approval of such a policy’.34 Support for the compulsory resettlement of national minorities was – at least in a European context – a departure for the United States.35 Unlike the British, the Americans had played no formal part in the negotiations at Lausanne in late 1922 that led to the signing of the protocol on a Greco-Turkish population exchange; the chief American observer at the conference, Richard Child, condemning it as a ‘new and unwholesome principle’.36 Nor had the Americans openly countenanced population transfer as a way out of the deadlock of the 1930s, as the British had done in Palestine and in the Polish-German borderlands in the last months before the outbreak of hostilities.37 Publicly, the Roosevelt Administration equivocated over the whole question of population transfers. By 1945, post-war planning on this issue had become a tangled web of contradictory recommendations, and it was unclear to America’s allies, as it was perhaps also to US policymakers, what Washington’s position actually was.38 In this respect, the Americans were undergoing the same dilemma as the British, only in a more acute form: how to reconcile an acceptance of the principle of population transfer with increasing uncertainties about how this would play out in Central Europe as well as among public opinion at home. By the end of the Second World War, despite these differences of emphasis and doubts about practical implications, there was nevertheless a broad consensus within the United Nations that population transfer would have to play some role in the post-war settlement in Central and Eastern Europe, if only to help create viable and stable nation-states as a barrier against a revival of German militarism and expansionism. This consensus found expression in the decision taken at the Potsdam Conference (July/August 1945) to apply the principle of transfer to the German populations of post-war Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.39 Although a response to accomplished facts on the ground – the flight and then the precipitate expulsion of German populations from Central and Eastern Europe – the Potsdam decision nevertheless represented

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a firm and binding commitment on the part of the great powers to support and underwrite the radical restructuring of the nation-state in Central and Eastern Europe. In fact, it could even be considered as one of the last acts of unity on the part of the wartime Grand Alliance. Despite the considerable practical problems entailed and the incessant bickering over what zone was getting how many and which category of Germans, it was among one of the few decisions taken at Potsdam that was largely carried out in its entirety and as an all-German solution. Once the Allied Control Council had agreed in November 1945 a plan for the distribution of population, the organised resettlement of Germans proceeded apace, at least into the American and British zones of occupation. Within less than a year, the western zones had received all but a small proportion of their total allocation of Germans.40 When the Western Allies suspended mass transfers in early 1947, it was less as a result of concerns about conditions in which Germans were being transferred – the ‘humanitarian considerations’ which were increasingly cited as a pretext for slowing down transfers – than because of fears about overcrowding in occupied Germany, combined with displeasure at political developments in those countries from which Germans were being transferred. Post-war designs for the reconstruction of the nation-state which relied so heavily on population transfer contained, however, a fundamental defect. One of the main arguments used in favour of population transfer was that in removing a principal source of conflict between and within states in the region – troublesome and troubled national minorities – it would safeguard the future peace and stability of the continent. Population transfer was, in other words, a geopolitical prophylactic which would prevent the propagation of another generation of nationality conflict. Yet the transfer of several million Germans made the revival of German revanchism and militarism more rather than less likely, as it was inconceivable that any German government would accept as permanent a post-war settlement involving the mass transfer of German populations and territory unless it was held under a perpetual state of occupation and subjugation. Population transfer in itself, then, would not bring security to the region; on the contrary, it would lead to instability and further nationalist tension. Just as in the inter-war period, external safeguards for the security and survival of the nationstate would need to be sought. ‘The two and a half million transferred Germans are two and a half million enemies of Czechoslovakia. Against their hate we must seek security’, the Czechoslovak Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the National Socialist Party, Petr Zenkl, warned

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his countrymen in August 1947, leaving them in no doubt from where this security would come: ‘The alliance with the USSR is the greatest guarantee of our independence’.41 Ethnic homogeneity – the prize of a ‘national state’ – came at a price, and for the states of the ‘middle zone’ that price was Soviet domination. Moscow could be cast – even by non-communists such as Zenkl – as the true guarantor of the reconstructed nation-state and stalwart defender against German revanchism. Who else but the Soviet Union could be trusted to police the new ethnographic and territorial settlement, once the Americans had lost interest in the Continent, and the British and French had lost their nerve? On the ground, local communists became the main beneficiaries of the new hypernationalism. By championing anti-German and anti-minority policies, communists could earn themselves the patriotic credentials they had previously lacked. Domination of the state bureaucracy controlling displacement and replacement also brought power, prestige and patronage; while the alliance of nationalism with communism meant that any criticism by bourgeois parties of the growing Soviet role in the region could be cast as unpatriotic. Population transfer, it could therefore be argued, not only helped facilitate the ethnic homogenisation of Eastern Europe but also its sovietisation.42 The dual goals of ethnic homogenisation and sovietisation, however, were not always compatible, as the controversy surrounding the fate of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia would show. Almost as unwelcome as Germans in the post-war Czechoslovak ‘national state’, the 500,000 strong Hungarian minority was stripped of civic rights, dispossessed and slated for forced assimilation, expulsion and transfer.43 But whereas the Czechoslovak government had for the most part squared its plans for the wholesale removal of Sudeten Germans with the great powers, it did not have international approval for its anti-Hungarian policies. By the end of 1945, both the Czechoslovak and the Hungarian governments were assiduously courting the great powers over the minorities issue. Hungary, realising the weakness of its position as a defeated state, intimated that it might cooperate in a mass resettlement of minorities were this presented as part of a dictated multilateral settlement. ‘If Hungary ha[s] to swallow an unpleasant pill’, the Czechoslovak President, Edvard Beneš, explained to the British Ambassador in Prague, ‘it was better that the doctors who prescribed it should be the Great Powers rather than the Czechs’.44 And the Czechoslovak government, for its part, desired the legal and moral authority that international support for a mass transfer of Hungarians would bring, thereby avoiding, as one British official put it, ‘the very

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embarrassing [situation] […] [of] hav[ing] to take sole responsibility for such a barbarous measure’.45 Acutely aware that the momentum in support of population transfers, which had been on their side in 1945 when dealing with the Sudeten Germans, was diminishing rapidly, the Czechoslovak government indicated their willingness to respect any conditions which the British and Americans chose to lay down, including financial compensation, if this would guarantee them international support.46 Yet the great powers – the Soviets included – were more than happy to leave the Czechoslovaks and Hungarians to resolve the matter between themselves and encouraged them to enter into direct negotiations, the result of which was an agreement for an exchange of populations on a head-for-head basis reached in February 1946 which compelled Budapest to accept an equal number of Hungarians in exchange for as many Slovaks in Hungary that Prague could induce to opt for Czechoslovak citizenship.47 Neither party to the agreement, however, regarded it as anything more than an interim solution and the issue remained on the international agenda throughout 1946. The handling of this issue in Paris in 1946 – at the two sessions of the Conference of Foreign Ministers (April–July) and then at the Peace Conference (July–October) – demonstrated the limits to which the United Nations were willing to go in applying the principle of population transfer in post-war Europe. The Czechoslovaks came to Paris seeking international approval for a total solution to its minority problem through the ‘re-slovakisation’ of some 200,000 Hungarians and the compulsory transfer of the remaining 200,000–300,000. The Soviets were now more inclined to support the Czechoslovaks openly, possibly as a reward for the communist successes in the May 1946 elections, and as a sign of their displeasure at political developments in Hungary. Just before the opening of the peace conference, the Soviet Ambassador to Prague, Valerian Zorin, told his British counterpart that it was ‘clearly essential for Czechoslovakia […] [to] solve this minority problem once and for all’.48 The Soviet delegation was instructed to support ‘the deportation of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia’,49 and the Ukrainian representative who sat on the subcommittee that dealt with this issue voted together with his Czechoslovak counterpart in favour of including in the peace treaty with Hungary provisions for compulsory transfer. The other three representatives of the subcommittee – from Canada, Australia and New Zealand – voted against, as a result of which the Czechoslovaks had their deportation demands quashed. The reversal of Czechoslovak fortunes at the Paris Peace Conference can be read – as it invariably was in Cold War and Hungarian émigré

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historiography – as a US-led triumph in defence of ‘human rights’; or it can be seen – perhaps more realistically – as a piece of diplomatic grandstanding that dressed up naked political expediency in the language of high principle. As the rhetoric of ‘human rights’ was still at this point underdeveloped – and also, so soon after the Potsdam decision, rather inappropriate – Walter Bedell Smith, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union and principal delegate to the conference, instead invoked ‘humanitarian considerations’ to explain why the United States, while ‘sympathizing with a desire of the Czechoslovak Government to establish a homogeneous state’, nevertheless ‘felt very strongly [that] there should not be inserted in a peace treaty the principle of a forced transfer of populations’.50 ‘Humanitarian considerations’, however, often proved to be the last refuge of the disingenuous in matters relating to population transfer. The British delegation, for example, was not alone in going to the conference prepared to agree to the wholesale removal of the Hungarian minority on condition that it was ‘carried out on humanitarian lines […] under United Nations supervision and regulation’, and was combined with territorial concessions to Hungary.51 They found that the Americans had ‘precisely the same’ views and were prepared to cut a deal on these terms.52 Only when it became clear that under no circumstances would the Czechoslovaks agree to any cession of territory did the British and Americans seek to bring the Dominion delegations into line and, acting as a Western bloc, scupper the Czechoslovak proposal.53 The conference then went on to approve a Czechoslovak compromise amendment which left open the option of a compulsory population transfer of any Hungarians not exchanged under the February 1946 agreement, and which gave them the right to request their assistance in ‘affecting a final solution’ of the problem, if after six months bilateral negotiations came to nothing.54 The United Nations prevaricated in Paris and postponed making a final judgement on population transfer. Instead the initiative was thrown back on the two parties to the dispute, effectively ensuring that the impasse on this issue continued. Yet the more Central and Eastern Europe came under communist control, the less likely it was that the Western powers would ever sanction a further round of population transfers in the region. The experience of receiving several million ‘expellees’ into the western zones of Germany in 1946 had only confirmed earlier misgivings about the practical implications of mass population transfers. Over the course of 1947, proposals to extend the Potsdam protocol to cover German minorities in South-Eastern Europe were blocked. Even transfers from those countries covered by the

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Potsdam agreement were stopped or heavily curtailed. By their actions at the Paris Peace Conference, the Western powers signalled that they regarded population transfer as at most a very limited solution to the European minorities problem and were not prepared to allow a Potsdam Mark Two – this time affecting ethnic Hungarians – with the Soviets walking away again with the credit. ‘There were questions of principle involved’, a member of the US delegation to Paris later recalled, ‘which we had already violated at the Potsdam conference with respect to Germans from eastern Europe, but that was no reason why we should violate it again’; especially, he might have added, when there was so little political capital to be made out of it.55 The Soviets, however, remained attached to the idea of population transfer well into 1947, or at least were still able to see the political advantages that could be gained from supporting the Czechoslovak government in its almost obsessive desire to come to a comprehensive settlement of its Hungarian minority problem on the basis of a population exchange. By late 1946, little progress had been made in implementing the February agreement. Of the 92,000 individuals that the Czechoslovak Recruiting Commission in Hungary claimed had opted for transfer, only 7000 had been resettled by November 1946, while no Hungarians at all had been transferred from Slovakia.56 After intervention from Moscow, the population exchange finally recommenced in April 1947 but still on a very limited scale; its only tangible result a further deterioration in relations between the two governments. From a Soviet perspective, the parlous state of Czechoslovak– Hungarian relations was not in itself unwelcome, particularly as bourgeois parties still had a significant presence in both coalition governments. Throughout the region, Moscow proved that it was adept at exploiting competing nationalisms as part of a policy of divide and rule. The minorities problem gave Moscow a useful means of bringing pressure to bear on one or other side of a dispute as expediency dictated, and it was for this reason that Soviet policy often appeared contradictory and inconsistent. Individual governments were meanwhile left vying in isolation for the favour and approval of Moscow, the beneficent fixer. Such was the poor state of relations between Czechoslovakia and its neighbours that Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, could joke in 1946 that ‘the song Nobody likes me any more is slowly becoming valid for us’: with the exception – of course – of the Soviet Union.57 Competing nationalisms, however, became more problematic for the Soviets when they had a negative impact on relations within the communist camp and on the fortunes of individual communist parties. As early

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as July 1945, Georgi Dimitrov had to intervene when the Hungarian and Czechoslovak parties came to blows over the minorities question. The Czechoslovaks, Dimitrov believed, had gone ‘overboard’ and a ‘different approach to the Hungarian question in Czechoslovakia’ was needed.58 Two years on, and relations between Czechoslovak and Hungarian communists were still far from fraternal. Contact between the two parties was, in fact, almost nonexistent, and the atmosphere at face-to-face meetings between party leaders was hostile to say the least.59 Tensions spilled over at the first conference of Cominform in September 1947, with the Hungarian and Czechoslovak representatives hurling thinly veiled accusations of ‘bourgeois nationalism’ and ‘revisionism’ at each other.60 Czechoslovak hypernationalism, according to Jószef Révai, a prominent Hungarian communist, was ‘bringing the old hatred between capitalist countries into the relations between communist parties’.61 Indirect criticism of the Czechoslovaks was made by other delegates including Andrei Zhdanov, the Soviet representative. On this issue, as on others, the Soviet leadership was beginning to shows signs of weariness at Czechoslovak intransigence. The Czechoslovak communist leader, Klement Gottwald, had already been told to ‘overcome the resistance of nationalist elements’ and sort out the ‘scandalous situation’ that had resulted from the quarrel with Poland over the disputed territory of Teschen.62 Now the Soviets were losing their patience over the question of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and the population exchange. ‘I have to admit that I myself would like to complain about the Czechs’, Molotov admitted to the Hungarian communist leader, Mátyás Rákosi, in April 1947. ‘It is difficult to talk with them [...] They are very stubborn’.63 If, by mid-1947, Czechoslovak nationalism was becoming an embarrassment for the Soviet Union, after the events of February 1948 it was positively heretical. With the heightened European security situation during the Berlin crisis, and a deep fissure opening up in the communist bloc as a result of the Yugoslav-Cominform split, the Soviets now demanded unity and discipline from client parties. The Czechoslovak party looked set to undergo the same treatment as the Gomułkan ‘rightist-nationalist deviationists’ and the Tito ‘clique’. An April 1948 memorandum prepared by the Foreign Policy Department of the Soviet Central Committee, entitled ‘On Some Mistakes by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’, included charges similar to those made against the Yugoslav and Polish parties, and criticised the Czechoslovaks for the ‘anti-German and antiHungarian campaign’ carried out between 1945 and 1948 as well as for their ‘chauvinistic zeal’.64 That same month, Hungarian communists complained that the position of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia had

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actually worsened since communists seized power in Prague, even comparing the attitude of the Czechoslovaks unfavourably with the conciliatory approach of the Yugoslavs,65 who had long considered Czechoslovak transfer plans to be ‘deplorable’.66 The late Jan Masaryk’s quip about Czechoslovak isolation was no longer such a laughing matter. The Czechoslovaks subsequently executed a policy change so sudden and dramatic that it seemed it could only have come at the behest of Moscow.67 On 10 June 1948, the Soviets were informed that the Czechoslovak government would henceforth ‘reassess the question of the Hungarians […] in Czechoslovakia […] proceed[ing] from the fact that it [wa]s not only impossible to evict the Hungarians to Hungary, but it [wa]s impossible even to carry out a complete population exchange’.68 In October 1948, Czechoslovak citizenship for the Hungarian minority was restored. By December, the exchange of populations was officially abandoned and the policy of ‘reslovakisation’ terminated.69 And most symbolically of all, a Czechoslovak–Hungarian Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Aid was signed in April 1949. ‘The settling of the position and role of Slovaks in Hungary and Hungarians in Slovakia is above all a good sign of the changed relations betweens the two peoples’, declared the Hungarian Prime Minister, István Dobi, on the occasion of the treaty’s ratification. ‘We have uprooted from both nations the cursed poison of chauvinism and we are solving the national question according to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin.’70 At the third conference of Cominform in Bucharest in November 1949, a chastened Czechoslovak delegation also made all the right noises about ‘the fight against bourgeois nationalism and for deepening proletarian internationalism’.71 No mention at all was made of the Hungarian minority and population exchange. As a prominent Czech émigré pointed in June 1949: ‘The funny thing is the same men who wanted to get rid of Hungarians […] and made it a special study to find out everything which could be used against them […] are now pleading that everything is okay because the Hungarians have got a people’s democracy’.72 By 1948, the approaches of the great powers towards the concept of population transfer had again converged, and at the very point – paradoxically – when the Cold War was gaining momentum. This should not, however, come as any great surprise. Nobody – with the possible exception of Czech and Slovak nationalists – had ever imagined that population transfer could offer a generalised or universal solution to the European minorities problem. Population transfer – for the Western powers at least – had in any case always been principally, though not

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exclusively, an anti-German measure. Once the German threat receded and – perhaps more to the point – once this was superseded by the threat of communism, so did any Western attachment to the principle. Henceforth, the Western powers hunkered down behind the rhetoric of individual human rights, as they had wanted to but had felt unable to do at the Paris Conference in 1946, and conveniently passed over their part in making minorities history in much of Central and Eastern Europe. For the Soviets, population transfer had initially had a wider appeal as part of a broader strategy to draw client states into a relationship of dependency on Moscow. Yet even Moscow’s support was limited to the northern tier of states of Central and Eastern Europe, and contingent on population transfer providing tangible political benefits for the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the hypernationalism which both fed and was generated by schemes for mass resettlement of populations proved just as effective in cutting across communist allegiances as it did bourgeois democratic ones, exposing the awkward fact that local cadres were invariably nationalists first and communists a distant second. Population transfer was therefore just as politically counter-productive for the Soviet Union as it had been for the Western allies, creating division and disunity within what was becoming the Eastern bloc. By 1948, the disunity was meant to be found elsewhere, in the wider East–West division of Europe.

Notes I would like to acknowledge the support of the American Philosophical Society which funded part of the research on which this paper is based through the award of a Franklin Research Grant. 1.

2.

3.

For the earliest proposals for mass population transfers, see Mehemed Emin Efendi [pseud. S. Lichtenstäder], Die Zukunft der Türkei: Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der orientalischen Frage, 2nd edn (Berlin: Luckhardt, 1898); G. Montandon, Frontières nationales: Détermination objective de la condition primordiale nécessaire à l’obtention d’une paix durable (Lausanne: Imprimeries réunies, 1915). The discussion here refers to the concept of ‘population transfer’ rather than the term (i.e. the distinction in German between der Begriff and die Bezeichnung), though in English and French usage, the two have increasingly become one and the same (a variety of terms were, however, in use pre-1930s: ‘inter-migration’, ‘interchange’, ‘transplantation’, ‘transference’ etc.). In other languages, the concept found expression in terms such as Umsiedlung in German or pereselenie in Russian, which would translate back into English as ‘resettlement’. The concept of ‘population exchange’, however, presents fewer problems, as there are direct cognates in other European languages (e.g. Bevölkerungsaustausch, obmen naseleniia). S. P. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 17–23.

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4. Ibid., 27–74, 101–23, 739–70. 5. See O. Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations, 1922–1934 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 31–84, 88–92. 6. J. Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 1939–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 488–96. 7. See Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 460 (Berlin, 1939), 56 (6 October 1939). http://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt2_n4_bsb00000613_00000. html [accessed 11 November 2010]. 8. For a detailed case study, see K. Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol, 1939–40, 2 vols (Vienna: Löcker, 1985). The technical aspects of the transfers are laboriously covered in Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 48–353. 9. See Rainer Schulze’s chapter in this volume. 10. See J. Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe 1945–1955 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962), 43–7. 11. See Doc. 14, Record of conversation between Yakolev and Bierut, 8 Sept. 1944, in T. V. Volokitina, G. P. Murashko, O. V. Naumov, A. F. Noskova and T. V. Tsarevskaia (eds), Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope 1944–1953: dokumenty, i: 1944–1948 (Moscow: Rosspen, 1999), 94–5. 12. See Catherine Gouseff’s chapter in this volume. The idea that ‘whoever doesn’t go to Poland goes to Siberia’ (see T. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 188) echoed the horror sovieticus which frightened many Germans from the Baltic States into opting for resettlement in 1939– 40, and underscores how practical distinctions between compulsory and voluntary population transfer are almost always blurred. 13. For further discussion of the Polish–Soviet exchanges and ‘Operation Wisła’ (the deportation and dispersal of Ukrainians in Poland), see Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 187–201. See also S. Ciesielski (ed.), Umsiedlung der Polen aus den ehemaligen polnischen Ostgebieten nach Polen in den Jahren 1944–1947 (Marburg: Herder Institut, 2006), 29–75. 14. For Stalinist deportations, see P. Polian, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR, trans. A. Yastrzhembska (Budapest: Central University Press, 2004). A useful typology is provided in T. Martin, ‘Stalinist Forced Relocation Policies: Patterns, Causes, Consequences’, in M. Weiner and S. Russell (eds), Demography and National Security (New York: Berghahn, 2001), 305–39. 15. See Doc. 142, Record of discussion between Stalin and Nagy, 10 April 1946, in T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskova and L. A. Rogovaia (eds), Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov: 1944–1953 gg., i: 1944–1948 gg. [henceforth, VEDRA i] (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), 412–16. 16. Doc. 147, Extract from Molotov diary, 30 April 1946, in VEDRA i, 429. 17. See R. Suny and T. Martin, ‘Introduction’, in idem. (eds), A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 13–16. 18. V. Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 22; V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 27–33, 98–103.

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19. Quoted in F. Nagy, The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain, trans. S. Swift (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 208. See also Andrei Vyshinskii’s speech at the Paris Peace Conference on 20 September 1946, in Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hungary and the Conference of Paris, iv (Budapest: Hungarian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 1947), 72–8. 20. See comments by Stalin to Hungarian delegation (April 1946), quoted in B. Zhelitski, ‘Postwar Hungary, 1944–1946’, in N. Naimark and L. Gibianskii (eds), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 81. Cf. ‘Notes Kept by the Hungarian Foreign Minister During Visit to Moscow, April 11 1946’, in S. Kertesz, The Last European Peace Conference: Paris 1946 – Conflict of Values, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 119. 21. See Polian, Against Their Will, 126–39. For other groups, see also N. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 85–107. 22. G. Dimitrov, Dnevnik: 9 mart 1933–6 fevruari 1949, eds D. Sirkov, P. Boev, N. Avreı˘ski and E. Kabakchieva (Sofia: Universitetsko izdateistvo Sv. Kliment Ohridski, 1997), 250. 23. Doc. 77, Record of conversation between Stalin, Fierlinger and Clementis, 28 June 1945, in VEDRA i, 232. 24. For Soviet wartime planning, see J. Laufer and G. Kynin (eds), Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage 1941–1948: Dokumente aus dem Archiv für Aussenpolitik der Russischen Föderation, i: 22. Juni 1941 bis 8. Mai 1945 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004); A. Filitov, ‘Problems of Post-War Construction in Soviet Foreign Policy Conceptions during World War II’, in F. Gori and S. Pons (eds), The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 3–22; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s, 27–35. 25. See Stalin’s comments in Doc. 495, Record of Eleventh Plenary Meeting, 31 July 1945, in R. Butler and M. Pelly (eds), Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series I, i: The Conference at Potsdam, July–August 1945 (London: HMSO, 1984), 1085–7. 26. See J. Robinson, O. Karbach, M. M. Laserson, N. Robinson and M. Vishniak, Were the Minorities Treaties A Failure? (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1943), 3–60; P. de Azcárate, League of Nations and National Minorities: An Experiment, trans. E. Brooke (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945), 13–20, 92–136. 27. On the emergence of human rights doctrine, see M. Mazower, ‘The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933–1950’, Historical Journal, 47:2 (2004), 379–98. 28. See M. Frank, Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 13–93. 29. For British attitudes to the minorities treaties, see A. Sharp, ‘Britain and the Protection of Minorities at the Paris Peace Conference’, in A. C. Hepburn (ed.), Minorities in History (London: Arnold, 1978), 170–88; P. Finney, ‘“An Evil for All Concerned”: Great Britain and Minority Protection after 1919’, Journal of Contemporary History, 30:3 (1995), 533–51. 30. For what follows, see Frank, Expelling the Germans, 39–93. 31. The National Archives (TNA), Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Surrey: FO371/57308, U6240/2370/70, Allen minute, 28 June 1946.

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32. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland: RG59, Lot 53D307, DP Subject File 1944–52: CAC-250, The Problem of Minorities in Europe, 27 October 1944. 33. R. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 710; H. Morgenthau, Jr., Germany Is Our Problem (New York: Harper, 1945), 159–61; S. Welles, The Time for Decision (New York: Harper, 1944), 20, 354–6. Roosevelt had even grander ideas for the organised resettlement of populations which were developed as part of the secret ‘M-Project’ run by Henry Field out of the President’s Office between 1942 and 1945. See H. Field, ‘M’ Project for F. D. R.: Studies on Migration and Settlement (Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1962), 1–5. 34. NARA, RG59, 840.4016/1-1248, Beam to Armstrong, 12 January 1948. 35. See W. Ng, Japanese American Internment During World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 13–29. The notion of population transfer is also prefigured in the arguments in favour of Indian Removal. See B. W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 243–76; R. N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 39–63. 36. Special Mission at Lausanne to Sec. of State, 13 December 1922, in United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter, FRUS] 1923, ii (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1938), 920–2. 37. See Frank, Expelling the Germans, 25–38. 38. See the principal policy papers on this question – Memorandum by the Committee on Post-War Programs: The Treatment of Germany: Policy Recommendations, 31 May 1944, in FRUS 1944, i (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966), 302–3, 310. NARA, RG59, Lot 53D307, DP Subject File 1944–52: Transfer of Minorities into Germany, 7 December 1944. NARA, RG59, Lot 52D408, Special Committee on Migration: Czechoslovakia-National Minority Problems-The Transfer of German and Magyar Minorities, 11 December 1944. Press release issued by the Department of State, 18 December 1944, in FRUS 1944, iii (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1965), 1346–7. Misc. extracts from briefing books and correspondence, June–July 1945, in FRUS: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, i (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1960), 643–50. 39. For the Potsdam decision, see D. Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum “Transfer” der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001), 401–17; Frank, Expelling the Germans, 115–21. 40. By July 1947, the Western powers claimed to have received – and even exceeded – their quota of German expellees, set at 2.25 million from Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the American zone, and 1.5 million from Poland to the British zone. See Keating to Dastich, 1 May 1947, in FRUS 1947, iv (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1972), 211; Frank, Expelling the Germans, 256–61. 41. Quoted in NARA, RG59, 860F.00/8-2647, Prague to Sec. of State, 26 August 1947.

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42. On the relationship between nationalism, communism and postwar ‘ethnic cleansing’, see M. Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); T. D. Curp, A Clean Sweep? The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Western Poland 1945–1960 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006). 43. See Á. Tóth, Migrationen in Ungarn, 1945–1948: Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen, Binnenwanderungen und slowakisch-ungarischer Bevölkerungsaustausch, trans. R. Fejér (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001), 177–96; Š. Šutaj, ‘Zwangsaustausch bzw. Aussiedlung der Ungarn aus der Slowakei – Pläne und Wirklichkeit’, in D. Brandes, E. Ivanicˇková and J. Pešek (eds), Erzwungene Trennung: Vertreibungen und Aussiedlungen in und aus der Tschechoslowakei 1938–1947 (Essen: Klartext, 1999), 255–72. 44. TNA, PRO, FO371/58997, R249/249/21, Nichols to Warner, 24 December 1945. 45. TNA, PRO, FO371/58998, R8029/249/21, Warner minute, 30 May 1946. 46. TNA, PRO, FO371/58998, R8842/249/21, Nichols to Warner, 7 June 1946. 47. The agreement included provision for the removal of movable property, compensation for the loss of all other property, the establishment of a four-member Czechoslovak-Hungarian Mixed Commission, the inclusion of Hungarians already expelled in the quota, and suspension of any further expulsions. The Czechoslovak government was given six weeks to carry out propaganda work in Hungary. For the technicalities of the agreement, see Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers, 134–8. 48. TNA, PRO, FO371/58998, R9864/249/21, Nichols to Hankey, 27 June 1946. 49. Zhelitski, ‘Postwar Hungary’, 80. 50. See Ninth Meeting of the Political and Territorial Commission for Hungary, 9 September 1946, in FRUS 1946, iii (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 410. 51. TNA, PRO, FO371/58999, R12387/249/21, Brief for UK Delegation Paris: Hungarian Minority in Czechoslovakia, 21 August 1946 52. TNA, PRO, FO371/58999, R13918/249/21, Warner to Williams, 14 September 1946. For the British compromise resolution, see FO371/58999, R14573/249/21, Paris to FO, 2 October 1946. For US willingness to compromise and disavowal of anti-Czech bias, see NARA, RG59, 860F.00/12-2346, Dept of State to Steinhardt, 23 December 1946. 53. For Dominions policy, see Doc. 63, Sec. of State for External Affairs to Ambassador in France, 13 September 1946, and Doc. 70, Ambassador in France to Sec. of State for External Affairs, 29 September 1946, in D. Page (ed.), Documents on Canadian External Relations, xii: 1946 (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1977), 121, 136–8; also TNA, PRO, FO371/58999, 14470/249/21, Dominions Office to NZ High Commission, 29 September 1946. 54. See Article 5 of the ‘Treaty of Peace with Hungary, 1947’, American Journal of International Law, 42:4 (1948), 227–8. 55. J. Campbell, ‘Diplomacy and Great Power Politics’, in K. Thompson (ed.), Diplomacy and Values: The Life and Works of Stephen Kertesz in Europe and America (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 52. 56. TNA, PRO, FO371/58999, R16489/249/21, Summary of conversations in Budapest with General Dastich [November 1946].

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57. Quoted in K. Kaplan, The Short March: The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia 1945–1948 (London: Hurst, 1987), 30. 58. I. Banac (ed.), The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov 1933–1949, trans. J. T. Hedges, T. D. Sergay and I. Faion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 377. 59. Asked by Hungarian comrades if he would agree to a revision of the February 1946 agreement, the Slovak communist Vladimír Clementis said he was not prepared even to ‘change a comma’. See NARA, RG59, 860F.4016/7-247, Prague to Sec. of State, 2 July 1947. 60. G. Procacci, G. Adibekov, A. Di Biagio, L. Gibianskii, F. Gori and S. Pons (eds), The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences 1947/1948/1949 (Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1994), 284–7, 342–5. 61. Ibid., 344–5. 62. Doc. 197, Stalin and Molotov to Gottwald, 25 February 1947, in VEDRA i, 585. 63. Doc. 209, Record of conversation between Molotov and Rákosi, 29 April 1947, in VEDRA i, 609. 64. Quoted in G. Murashko, ‘The Fate of Hungarian Minorities in Slovakia after the Second World War’, in A. J. Rieber (ed.), Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 93–4. See also L. Gibianskii, ‘The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform’, in Naimark and Gibianskii (eds), Establishment of Communist Regimes, 303. 65. Mevius, Agents of Moscow, 230. 66. Views of Tito and Vladimir Velebit, Yugoslav Deputy Foreign Minister, summarised in Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, New York: Gen Ms Coll Korbel, ‘Memorandum on Czechoslovak-Yugoslav Political Relations’, 5 April 1949. 67. See NARA, RG59, 860F.00/6-749, Transcript of Second Interrogation of Josef Korbel, 7 June 1949. 68. Quoted in G. Murashko and A. Noskova, ‘Stalin and the National-Territorial Controversies in Eastern Europe, 1945–47 (Part 2)’, Cold War History, 2:1 (2001), 155–6. 69. Only 55,487 Hungarians and 59,774 Slovaks were in the end exchanged under the terms of the February 1946 agreement, with a further 34,000 Hungarians and 12,000 Slovaks resettled outside of the agreement. See Šutaj, ‘Zwangsaustausch’, 269–70. 70. NARA, RG59, 760F.6411/7-649, Prague to Sec. of State, 6 July 1949. 71. G. Procacci, G. Adibekov, A. Di Biagio, L. Gibianskii, F. Gori and S. Pons (eds), Cominform, 734–5. 72. NARA, RG59, 860F.00/6-749, Transcript of Second Interrogation of Josef Korbel, 7 June 1949.

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Part II Expulsions and Forced Population Transfers

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3 Forced Migration of German Populations During and After the Second World War: History and Memory Rainer Schulze

The compulsory transfer of German populations from their traditional homelands in Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe during and after the Second World War was an act of forced migration on an unprecedented scale. Some 12–14 million ethnic Germans were affected; up to 2 million lost their lives. For a long time this was at best treated marginally in most mainstream surveys of twentieth-century German history, and did not find a proper place in German public memory. If it featured, it was usually only as an event at the end of the war, and the image most commonly associated with it was that of horse-drawn carts trekking through ice and snow in eastern Prussia in a desperate attempt to escape the Red Army. However, the forced migration movement was a much more complex process and covered a wide range of experiences. Even more importantly, it was a process which began much earlier than the final phase of the Second World War.

The history of flight and expulsion The forced movement of German populations occurred over more than a decade, and in five distinct phases: 1. 1939–41: compulsory transfer of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from outside the German sphere of influence as defined in the Hitler–Stalin Pact, to the German Reich (heim ins Reich); 2. 1944: large-scale evacuations of Germans from the eastern territories ordered by the German authorities in the face of the advance of the Red Army; 51

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3. 1944–45: mass flight of German populations from those areas which came within reach of Soviet troops; 4. 1945: so-called ‘wild’ expulsions of German populations, especially from Polish and Czech territories; 5. 1945–50: compulsory transfers of the remaining German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other eastern and south-eastern European countries under Article XIII of the Potsdam agreement. These five phases varied as to why the movement was implemented, how it was implemented, and who implemented it. However, the results for those affected were very similar: they were permanently uprooted and had to leave their homelands, unable to return; they had to settle in a new environment, and their arrival in large numbers caused significant problems for the receiving areas. The common background to all five stages of the resettlement of German populations was a broad international agreement that ethnic minorities in nation-states were a potential for conflict, and that this should if possible be resolved either by changing borders or by a compulsory transfer of these minority populations. The latter had been internationally agreed for the first time between Greece and Turkey in the Lausanne Convention of January 1923;1 the former had been one of the rationales leading to the Munich Agreement of September 1938. However, while the Western powers regarded a forced exchange of populations primarily as a way to achieve international stability and peace, for the Nazis it was an integral element of their policy of ‘ethnic redistribution’ (völkische Flurbereinigung) and of their vision of an ethnically homogenous and purified Europe. With the occupation of Poland, the Nazi leadership developed a comprehensive policy of forced resettlements of German populations living outside the German sphere of interest, as set out in the Secret Additional Protocol of 23 August 1939, part of the Hitler–Stalin Pact. In a second secret protocol signed on 28 September 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed that ethnic German populations should be resettled from the territories taken over by the Soviet Union to German-controlled territory. On 6 October 1939, Hitler officially announced the policy in the Reichstag. This marked the beginning of the Heim ins Reich (home to the Reich) programme.2 Between October 1939 and January 1941, Nazi Germany concluded seven resettlement treaties which led to the ‘repatriation’ of more than 500,000 ethnic Germans.3 The German authorities also instigated the second stage of the forced movement of their own populations. In 1944 they ordered large-scale

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evacuations of German populations in the eastern territories because of the advance of the Red Army. They proclaimed that these evacuations would only be provisional: once the Soviet troops had been beaten back, the evacuees would be able to return home. Between October 1944 and March 1945, approximately 100,000 of the 140,000 ethnic Germans from Slovakia (the so-called Carpathian Germans), and almost all of the 95,000 ethnic Germans from Croatia were evacuated westwards to the ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’, the Sudetenland and Austria. Ethnic Germans from the eastern Sudetenland were also affected by evacuation measures. Initially, these evacuations were more or less organised, but with the rapid advance of the Red Army, evacuations were quickly followed, or even overtaken, by the mass flight of German populations from areas under attack.4 In East Prussia, this began in the autumn of 1944. The sense of general panic was exacerbated by news of acts of revenge committed by Soviet soldiers after the capture of German villages.5 These atrocities were dramatically emphasised by the full might of Nazi propaganda in the hope of strengthening the resolve to fight for Führer and Fatherland, but the result was quite the opposite. Gauleiters ordered the population to stay and threatened those caught fleeing with summary executions. A large number obeyed these orders and did not flee. When the official order of evacuation came, it was in many cases too late. Timely evacuations were additionally hampered by the fact that for populations living within the German borders of 1937 there were no official evacuation plans. Those who did not have relatives or friends in central and western regions of Germany simply did not know where to go. The situation was different for Germans who lived in territories incorporated into Greater Germany after 1938. The districts of the Reichsgau Wartheland, the interwar ‘Polish corridor’, for example, were assigned districts in central and western Germany in the case of evacuation. Here, too, though, evacuations commenced too late: the information was only released a few days before the Red Army was closing in.6 Nonetheless, quite a number of these more organised treks reached their destinations in the west, often against all the odds. It is the images of these treks, in the middle of the winter, which became imprinted upon the German collective memory as the image of the mass flight at the end of the war, although it was actually a minority who fled in this manner. Most either fled on their own, or took the last trains out. Many tried to get to the ports on the Baltic Sea because news had spread that the German Navy was transporting people en masse to ports in Schleswig-Holstein or Denmark, which was still under German

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occupation. One of the ships used for this purpose was the former Nazi pleasure cruiser Wilhelm Gustloff which left from Gdingen (Gotenhafen) near Gdansk on 30 January 1945 with over 10,000 refugees on board and was sunk off the coast of Pomerania after being hit by three torpedoes fired by a Soviet U-boat. More than 9000 people, among them almost 4000 children, died – the greatest ever maritime disaster.7 There are no precise estimates of the number of people who attempted to flee before the arrival of the Red Army. Large numbers of refugees were overtaken by the Soviet troops and instructed to return to their homes so as not to hold up the military campaign. After the unconditional surrender of Germany, many who had got away went back and tried to resume their normal lives. This was not as far-fetched as it might seem now, as even after the Treaty of Versailles, Germans who had lived in territories which had become part of the newly established state of Poland were allowed to stay on if they wished. The anti-Hitler coalition had, however, already agreed on the principle of forced resettlement of all German populations from Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the war.8 Apart from a few critical intellectuals, hardly anyone questioned the policy, and there were even fewer objections when Stalin gave his assurances at Potsdam that the majority of the Germans who would be affected had already fled.9 Polish and Czech leaders had advocated the forced resettlement of German populations from their respective countries since the beginning of the war; US President Roosevelt signalled his support of certain compulsory transfers ‘the same way the Greeks were moved out of Turkey after the last war’ on 14 March 1943 in a meeting with Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary; and Winston Churchill spoke in favour of a ‘disentanglement of populations’ in a Commons statement on 15 December 1944: ‘For expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble. [...] A clean sweep will be made’.10 As soon as the German occupiers – the Wehrmacht and the civilian administration – retreated, the local population enacted a terrible revenge on the German populations who had remained behind in the form of lootings, rapes and killings. At first spontaneous, it became more and more organised and orchestrated from above with the intention of creating facts on the ground which Potsdam would be unable to ignore: ethnically homogenised territories. As early as May/June 1945, Polish military authorities began to turn Germans away at the Oder-Neiße line in order to prevent the return of large numbers of Germans to their former homes. At the same time, authorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia began driving

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the remaining German populations out in so-called ‘wild’ expulsions – ‘wild’ because they were not yet sanctioned by international agreements. By the time of the Potsdam conference, these ‘wild’ expulsions had reached their climax, and there is no doubt that this impacted on negotiations over a compulsory transfer of Germans. During the discussions, reference was made both to the Lausanne Convention of 1923 and Hitler’s Heim ins Reich policy. In Article XIII of the Potsdam agreement, the ‘Big Three’ set out that the transfer to Germany of all German populations who were still in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary ‘will have to be undertaken’. This article also clearly stated that ‘any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner’.11 After Potsdam, the fifth and final phase of the resettlement of the German populations from Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe began: organised compulsory transfers. These were carried out in the manner of most of these kinds of transfers: people were called to assembly points, allowed to take only a limited amount of personal belongings with them, and either interned in camps to await transport, or loaded onto trains immediately, in most cases cattle trucks. It was neither orderly nor humane. The selection of those expelled first was often made on the basis of who was seen as being of least benefit to the new rulers. Those who were potentially useful for the rebuilding of the country had to stay the longest; many of them were sent to labour camps, some of which existed until 1950.12 Germans were also deported to the Soviet Union to do forced labour, where many perished.

The impact of flight and expulsion on the receiving areas By the end of 1950, when the compulsory transfers had all but finished, approximately one in six of the population of the Federal Republic of Germany (the three western zones) and almost one in four of the population of the German Democratic Republic (the Soviet zone) were either refugees or expellees from outside the borders of Potsdam Germany. This enormous number of refugees and expellees came into a rump Germany that was politically, economically and socially exhausted and demoralised after war and defeat. The authorities were generally overwhelmed by this humanitarian crisis. Most refugees were in a state of complete destitution, having saved little more than their lives. Problems were aggravated by the fact that refugees and expellees were not evenly distributed but concentrated in the Soviet zone and the eastern parts of the British and American zones. Allied attempts to negotiate specific contingents for each zone of occupation met with only limited success.13

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The most urgent problem which the refugees and expellees posed for the receiving areas was that of accommodation. Both the National Socialist authorities and later the four occupying powers insisted that Germans from the East be billeted into private accommodation, rather than put in camps. The majority were, therefore, directed to rural areas which had been least devastated by the war. All spare rooms were quickly filled up, and official registration and control of available space by local Housing Offices became necessary. When even the most drastic measures did not produce sufficient private accommodation, camps did have to be set up, many of which were not much more than converted barracks and often unfit for winter use. It was an equally daunting task to supply the refugees and expellees with food, fuel, furniture, clothing, shoes and general household commodities. While the local population could supplement official rations by growing vegetables in their gardens and selling or bartering possessions on the black market, refugees and expellees were rarely in a position to do this. Finally, there was the problem of employment.14 In most rural regions, agriculture was the only area which offered any work prospects. As foreign slave labourers had been liberated and repatriated, there was initially a chance for the refugees to work as farm labourers. There were also some jobs available in rural trades and handicraft. However, this meant that many refugees and expellees were forced to work in areas far removed from their original professions and for which they were not qualified or, possibly even worse, overqualified. Most were initially employed in casual or lowly positions. When local men began returning home from the prisoner-of-war camps, refugees and expellees often had to leave these jobs and became seen as unwanted competition in a severely restricted labour market. Refugees and expellees, therefore, suffered disproportionately from unemployment. These problems led to rising tensions between locals and newcomers, particularly in rural regions.15 There were many examples of co-operation and willingness to help on the part of locals, but rejection and exclusion soon dominated. Contemporary reports show that locals and refugees tended to form different ‘camps’, and the gaps between them became increasingly difficult to breach. Locals came to see their personal standard of living as being undermined by these newcomers and almost all of them agreed that refugees and expellees should not stay on permanently but had to be allowed to return to their former homes. The local population regarded the refugees and expellees not only as an unwelcome drain on material resources and an annoying

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encroachment on their daily lives, but also increasingly as a dangerous threat to the world as they knew it, due to cultural and social differences. Deeply held prejudices against people from ‘the East’, which had been reinforced by Nazi propaganda against the ‘Slavic subhuman’, played an important part in this fear of ‘foreign infiltration’ and loss of identity. The owner of an old manor estate in the village of Eversen in north-west Germany set out in October 1947: Every farm is completely undermined by the ferment of refugees, this foreign element actually undermines every enterprise. They are hostile to family and to work, and these spiritual and mental imponderables permanently shatter the uniform character of our villages and farms.16 The Allies only organised the transfers of refugees and expellees; their reception and integration were regarded as internal German matters. In keeping with this, the statutes of the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) explicitly barred German refugees and expellees from its remit. The German authorities were instructed to pursue a policy aimed at integrating the refugees and expellees into the receiving areas as quickly as possible; any provisional measures and special treatment were to be avoided. The occupation powers also banned the establishment of specific refugee organisations, in order to avoid the formation of an irredenta and possible radicalisation; this also served to underline the fact that a return to their former homes was not an option. In the western zones, this ban remained officially in force until 1948–9. The human, economic and social costs of the mass flight and, later on, the compulsory transfer of populations were immense. However, contrary to grave predictions made by many contemporaries in the light of the enormous problems, the newcomers were absorbed into the polity, economy and society of the two German states relatively quickly, without causing much – if any – radical upheaval in the medium and longer term. This is generally regarded as one of the great success stories of Germany’s post-war history. Three factors can be said to have played a vital role: 1. Integration was supported by all political parties and factions, including in West Germany those who in their manifestos and other utterances publicly demanded a return of the refugees and expellees to their former homes. At the beginning this was strictly imposed and enforced by the occupying powers. 2. Integration was backed by a multitude of laws and other state measures, and received financial aid throughout.

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3. It took place during a period of economic growth (rapid in West Germany, less rapid in the GDR but growth nonetheless) which made possible the necessary (limited) economic redistribution without much open conflict. However, political measures for the integration of refugees and expellees and favourable economic development could only lay the legal and economic foundations necessary for absorbing the refugees and expellees. Social integration of the refugees and expellees on the one hand and the process of acculturation of the local population on the other could not be ordered and enforced by political measures from above alone. It needed gradual mutual acceptance and real adaptation, informal social contacts and interaction, and, above all, the will of both sections of the population to come together.

Flight and expulsion in German collective memory The successful absorption of refugees and expellees needed time and in addition came at a cost largely overlooked until recently: the uprooted had to integrate into the post-war polity, economy and society without their memories and experiences receiving due recognition in a common narrative of the receiving areas. This was much more obvious in the former German Democratic Republic than in West Germany. There, refugees and expellees were officially referred to first as Umsiedler (resettlers) and then as Neubürger (new citizens), and from 1950 the category disappeared altogether from all official statistics.17 The East German government pursued a policy which made it clear that their loss of home was permanent. The state doctrine of anti-fascism – which was imposed from above to define the ‘new’ society of the ‘socialist nation’ – and the notion of a specific GDR citizenship, left no room for the memories and experiences of the refugees and expellees from the East. The experience of flight and expulsion and everything related to it was excluded from official discourse and remained so until the last days of the East German state.18 The case is not so clear-cut in West Germany. Ultimately the refugees and expellees did not fare much better, even though themes of flight and expulsion were taken up in political discourse and popular culture in the 1950s and well into the 1960s. Refugees and expellees were officially referred to as Heimatvertriebene (expellees from their homes). Maps, including those used in schools, continued to show Germany with the borders of 31 December 1937, and labelled the territories east

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of the Oder-Neiße line as ‘temporarily under Polish administration’ (or Soviet administration, in the case of the northern part of East Prussia). From 1947–8 onwards, the displaced were allowed to form their own cultural and political organisations, which became powerful interest groups in the first decade of the Federal Republic, with meetings and rallies attended by leading politicians.19 However, all these manifestations of flight and expulsion in the public and the popular discourse of West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s (and beyond), did not mean a true acknowledgement of the pasts of the refugees and expellees by West German polity and society. It was a highly selective acknowledgement and thus a highly selective remembering: only those aspects of the individual past of the newcomers were incorporated into the political and popular discourse which served a broader function: to stabilise a society which had become unravelled in the course of war and defeat, and to give the new West German state some form of legitimacy and an acceptable way of dealing with the past. In the political context of the Cold War, the refugees and expellees were useful pawns. Their sufferings could be – and were – exploited in the propaganda battle against the Soviet Union and communism in general.20 From the German point of view, flight and expulsion were equally useful to establish that Germans, too, were victims of the Second World War and had suffered injustice and hardship, and to suggest that the crimes committed against Germans were perhaps comparable to the crimes committed by Nazi Germany against the Jews.21 This highly selective public acknowledgement of flight and expulsion was mirrored by an equally selective representation in popular culture. Here, flight and expulsion were trivialised into a soap opera with a happy ending.22 Thus the life histories of the refugees and expellees were basically reduced to two aspects in post-war West German collective memory: victims of tragedy and crime in the course of German defeat, on the one hand, and resilient individuals who bounced back against all the odds with their successful integration into the post-war economy and society on the other. All regional characteristics that were more than picturesque folklore, as well as their personal and group histories before their displacement, were widely disregarded. The overall result, therefore, was ultimately similar in both West and East Germany. The refugees and expellees had to integrate into the post-war polity, economy and society without their memories and experiences receiving a proper place in a common narrative of the areas which received them. The collective memory in both German states was the collective memory as defined only by locals.

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The 1960s saw a change in public discourse in West Germany towards a more (self-) critical assessment of the Nazi period.23 The so-called ‘generation of 1968’ questioned their parents’ generation about their involvement in Nazism and the Holocaust. The most powerful expression of the shift in West Germany’s public memory was West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s spontaneous gesture when he visited Warsaw in December 1970: falling to his knees in front of the monument to the 1943 Jewish Ghetto Uprising.24 The refugees and expellees became increasingly regarded as a relic of the past, whose continued insistence that their loss and pain be acknowledged seemed to threaten the newly established dialogue with the Eastern European countries. Politicians, the media and historians alike emphasised the successful integration of refugees and expellees into post-war Germany and moved on to more ‘exciting’ topics.25 The fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War confirmed that West German society as a whole had come to regard 8 May primarily as a day of liberation and no longer first and foremost as a day of unconditional surrender and military defeat.26 This meant, however, that the instrumentalisation of the experiences of German suffering was followed by collective marginalisation. Most refugees and expellees, especially those who had settled in rural areas, saw with feelings of sadness and helplessness that their specific past and the stories which they had to tell were increasingly regarded as irrelevant. For them their past remained a burning issue and had often become more so as they got older. Even today, some sixty years after flight and expulsion, many still have a lingering feeling that they have retained some of the qualities of a stranger, of an outsider, and do not totally ‘belong’ anywhere.27 They have continued to feel, to a greater or lesser degree, emotionally somewhere in between their ‘old’ home, which now exists only in memory, in some family traditions, and in a distant country, and their ‘new’ home, which even after more than 50 years still shows a trace of strangeness and unfamiliarity. This marks the complex duality of past and present which is typical for many refugees and expellees, and which they sum up by referring to the place where they were born and grew up as their Heimat, and their home in the West where they have lived for more than 50 years as their Zuhause.28 With the end of the Cold War and the unification of the two German states in 1989–90, a chance opened up for a depoliticisation of the memory of German suffering and the development of a new cohesive and inclusive narrative.29 After 40 years of separation, West Germans and East Germans had few common experiences and

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memories left, apart from National Socialism, the Second World War and the uprootedness, displacement and personal pain that so many suffered as a consequence. Not surprisingly, flight and expulsion of large numbers of Germans from the East became a focus of public attention and discussion once again. This was actively promoted by the German government, who regarded this common experience at the end of the Second World War as a basis for a post-unification understanding of the recent past and for a German identity which could overcome the division and separate development of over 40 years. Writers, novelists, the media, politicians and professional historians rediscovered the theme of flight and expulsion, instigating a public debate and raising public consciousness of these events to a level not seen since the 1950s. This intensified in the second half of the 1990s, no doubt prompted to a considerable extent by the disturbing pictures and reports from former Yugoslavia, which brought many private memories of the suffering experienced in 1945 and shortly thereafter to the fore again. A powerful expression of this new approach to the past was Günter Grass’s novella Im Krebsgang, published in February 2002 and regarded as the first attempt by a major German author to deal in a work of literature with the mass flight and expulsion of German populations from Central and Eastern Europe.30 At the centre of the novella is the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by a Soviet submarine on the night of 30 January 1945, but it moves beyond the selective remembrance of flight and expulsion which had prevailed up to that point, and instead attempts to link the events at the end of the Second World War with both their origins and their legacy. Im Krebsgang was received with great acclaim by the German as well as the international media and became an instant bestseller. Grass clearly hit a nerve with the critics and the general public alike, regardless of their political persuasion, not least as he was a Nobel Prize winner and leftist intellectual who could not be accused of being a German nationalist. The novella tapped into an already simmering debate of what constitutes German historical consciousness and collective memory, reiterating what some politicians and historians had already noted earlier: that out of a well-meant but ultimately wrong understanding of political correctness, those in particular who thought of themselves as on the left or centre-left avoided acknowledging the specific memories and experiences of the refugees and expellees. The result of this neglect was – and this is the main theme of Grass’s novella – that flight and expulsion became an issue of nationalist-conservative propaganda.

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A number of other literary works have taken up this theme and incorporated flight and expulsion into family stories centring around attempts of the contemporary generation to find answers as to where they have come from and what comprises their identity.31 In these novels, the main topic is one of never quite arriving and of a home which has never fully become a home. These novels are about the experience of loss and the consequences of this loss, not only for those who suffered it, but also for the second and third generation. They aim to overcome the silence about the pain which their grandparents’ generation suffered and the guilt which some family members brought upon themselves during the Nazi period. In recent years, flight and expulsion have begun to be included in an overall German collective memory. This has led to some international friction and controversy, however, because it affects not only Germany and ethnic Germans, but also Poland, the Czech Republic and the other countries from which German populations were forcibly removed after the Second World War – all of them countries which suffered immensely under Nazi occupation at the hands of Germans. Instead of facilitating the emergence of a common European experience of displacement and forced migration, this has given rise to new national divisions and even confrontation, based on deep-seated fears and traumas, in particular between Germany and Poland and Germany and the Czech Republic.32 Political clashes and nationalist rhetoric have focused on the plans of the Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV), the Federation of German Refugees and Expellees, to set up a documentation and information centre dealing with flight and expulsion in the twentieth century (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen).33 Critics of this proposal have expressed fears this could lead to ‘the emergence of an officially sanctioned re-interpretation of the past – indeed a historical revisionism – which would endanger the social and political discussions which aim at a common European dialogue’.34 All Polish governments, no matter what their political profile, and most of the Polish intellectual élite have vehemently opposed the Zentrum for the same reason.35 In December 2005, the Museum of the History of the Federal Republic in Bonn opened an exhibition entitled Flucht – Vertreibung – Integration (Flight – Expulsion – Integration) in the presence of the Federal President, Horst Köhler.36 It showed flight and expulsion of Germans in the wider context of twentieth-century forced population resettlements and Nazi Germany’s rule over much of Europe, and can almost be seen as an attempt at a final, or authoritative, statement. Most critics agreed that the exhibition set a new standard because of ‘the sober way’ it

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told ‘of grief, loss, farewell, and arrival’.37 The general public seemed to agree; it was seen by a record number of visitors. Eight months later, in August 2006, an exhibition entitled Erzwungene Wege (Forced Paths), sponsored by the BdV, was opened at Berlin’s Kronprinzenpalais in the presence of the President of the German Bundestag. It too presented German flight and expulsion in the wider context of the twentieth century.38 Some commentators were surprised at how similar this exhibition was to the one shown in Bonn, wondering how far it really foreshadowed the BdV’s intentions for the Zentrum.39 Others, however, felt that the exhibition amounted to an attempt to rewrite history by overemphasising German suffering and victimhood, and thus put German–Polish relations under great strain – a view shared by most Polish politicians and much of the Polish media.40 Angela Merkel, German Chancellor since November 2005, declared in her first statement to the Bundestag that her government was committed to the historical re-appraisal of forced migrations, flight and expulsion, and intended to set an important signal in Berlin in the spirit of reconciliation. However, it was only in March 2008 that this declaration was followed by a cabinet decision to provide government funding for a centre for remembrance and documentation, with a permanent exhibition under the umbrella of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The centre was given the task to set the flight and expulsion of German populations in the wider context of twentieth-century European history, and to reflect the views and experiences of Germany’s eastern neighbours as well. Many important details however, remain unclear.41

Conclusions: Past – Present – and Future? The ongoing intensive public debate about the flight and expulsion of German populations during and after the Second World War is not so much about the events themselves, which are undisputed, and it is not even so much about whether or not these events should be part of an overall German collective memory: most now agree that they should. More importantly, it is about what form this remembering will take in the future. One way of remembering German flight and expulsion is by setting it within the broader context of German (and European) twentieth-century history, as advocated by Grass in his novella Im Krebsgang.42 There is, however, the danger that instead an uncritical empathy or, worse, a view which emphasises German victimhood could prevail. For the time being, Germany is left with two competing strands of narratives.43

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The moral obligation to remember the victims of National Socialism does not mean that it is not possible to remember the victims of the consequences of National Socialism. Recognising the pain experienced by individuals does not have to mean negating collective responsibility or guilt; indeed, one might argue that one necessitates the other, as the German historian Hartmut Boockmann had already emphasised some ten years before Grass: ‘If we Germans do not know what happened to us in 1945, we will also not remember what we had done since 1933’.44 The remembrance of the flight and expulsion of German populations must not be allowed to blur German responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi period, and the jury is still out as to whether the difficult task of combining the two will be mastered successfully, or whether old nationalistic prejudices and fears will win out instead. In Olaf Müller’s novel Schlesisches Wetter, the narrator meets an old Polish woman who has lived in Wrocław, the former German Breslau, since the end of the war. Now witnessing an increasing number of Germans visiting the town, she voices the opinion that ‘the Germans could at least wait until we are dead, if they need to come back at all’.45 Or to cite the last two sentences of Grass’s novella Im Krebsgang: ‘It doesn’t end. Never will it end’.46

Notes 1. Renée Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003). 2. Rainer Schulze, ‘“Der Führer ruft!” Zur Rückholung der Volksdeutschen aus dem Osten’, in Jerzy Kochanowski and Maike Sach (eds), Die “Volksdeutschen” in Polen, Frankreich, Ungarn und der Tschechoslowakei: Mythos und Realität (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2006), pp. 183–204; Rainer Schulze, ‘Forgotten Victims or Beneficiaries of Plunder and Genocide? The Mass Resettlement of Ethnic Germans “heim ins Reich”’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento / Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historischen Instituts in Trient, vol. 27 (2001), pp. 533–64; Wolfgang Benz, Ausgrenzung – Vertreibung – Völkermord: Genozid im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2006), pp. 108–31. Also Joseph Schechtman, European Population Transfers 1939–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 272–80; Robert Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945: A History of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957); Götz Aly, ‘Endlösung’: Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1995). 3. Hellmuth Hecker, Die Umsiedlungsverträge des Deutschen Reiches während des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Hamburg: Forschungsstelle für Völkerrecht und Ausländisches Öffentliches Recht der Universität Hamburg, 1971). The seven

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5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

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treaties were: Estonia, 15 October 1939; Italy, 21 October 1939; Latvia, 30 October 1939; Soviet Union, 3 November 1939 (resettlements from Wolhynia, Galicia and the Narev district); Soviet Union, 5 September 1940 (resettlements from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina); Romania, 20 October 1940 (resettlements from southern Bukovina and Dobruja); Soviet Union, 10 January 1941 (remaining resettlements from Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia). In addition, up to 250,000 ethnic Germans were forcibly resettled from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe until 1943 in the context of German military occupation of the territories from which they were removed. See K. Erik Franzen, Die Vertriebenen: Hitlers letzte Opfer (Berlin/Munich: Propyläen, 2001); Stefan Aust and Stephan Burgdorff (eds), Die Flucht: Über die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002); Flucht und Vertreibung: Europa zwischen 1939 und 1948 (Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2004). An indispensable collection of documents is Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge und Kriegsgeschädigte (ed.), Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, 9 vols (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 1953–1962, reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984); an abbreviated version has been published in English: Theodor Schieder (ed.), Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Central Europe: A Selection and Translation, 4 vols (Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, 1956–1960). For a critical discussion of these documents, see Mathias Beer, ‘Im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Das Großforschungsprojekt “Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa”’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 46 (1998), pp. 345–89. Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (London: Viking, 2002) see esp. pp. 3–4 and 24–38). The most notorious case was the massacre of the inhabitants of the small East Prussian village of Nemmersdorf on 21 October 1944; see Bernhard Fisch, ‘Nemmersdorf 1944 – nach wie vor ungeklärt’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Orte des Grauens: Verbrechen im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), pp. 155–67. Joachim Rogall (ed.), Die Räumung des ‘Reichsgaus Wartheland’ vom 16. bis 26. Januar 1945 im Spiegel amtlicher Berichte (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993). Heinz Schön, Die Gustloff-Katastrophe: Bericht eines Überlebenden (Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 2002); Guido Knopp, Der Untergang der ‘Gustloff’: Wie es wirklich war (Munich: Heyne, 2008). This event was brought back to public attention by Günter Grass’s novella Im Krebsgang; see later in text. On the emergence of this policy, see Detlef Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum ‘Transfer’ der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen, 2nd rev. edn (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005). See also Matthew Frank’s chapter in this volume, which points to considerable differences in emphasis and doubts about the practical applications of population transfers, whereas here the focus is on the general agreement, with few exceptions, on a policy of population transfers after the end of the war. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1943, vol. III, p. 15; Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Fifth Series, Official Report, House of Commons, vol. 406, col. 1484. Wilhelm Cornides and Hermann Volle, Um den Frieden mit Deutschland: Dokumente zum Problem der deutschen Friedensordnung 1941–1948 mit einem

66

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

Forced Migration of German Populations Bericht über die Londoner Außenministerkonferenz vom 25. November bis 15. Dezember 1947 (Oberursel: Europa-Archiv, 1948), pp. 88–9. Helga Hirsch, Die Rache der Opfer: Deutsche in polnischen Lagern 1944–1950 (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1998). Many of those post-war labour camps for ethnic Germans were camps which had been set up by the Nazis during the German occupation to incarcerate Poles and other non-Germans. Good summaries for the following are Sylvia Schraut and Thomas Grosser (eds), Die Flüchtlingsfrage in der deutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Mannheim: Palatium, 1996); Rainer Schulze (ed.), Zwischen Heimat und Zuhause: Deutsche Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in (West-)Deutschland 1945–2000 (Osnabrück: Secolo, 2001); Manfred Wille (ed.), 50 Jahre Flucht und Vertreibung: Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede bei der Aufnahme und Integration der Vertriebenen in die Gesellschaften der Westzonen/Bundesrepublik und der SBZ/DDR (Magdeburg: Block, 1997). These also provide references for the large number of local and regional studies that have appeared in the past two decades. See also Jessica Reinisch’s chapter in this volume on the employment of German refugees and expellees in the Soviet zone of Germany. See Rainer Schulze, ‘Growing Discontent: Relations between Native and Refugee Populations in a Rural District in Western Germany after the Second World War’, German History, vol. 7 (1989), pp. 332–49. Kreisarchiv Celle, N 298 Nr 1 (my translation from the German original). See Reinisch’s chapter. Michael Schwartz, ‘Tabu und Erinnerung: Zur Vertriebenen-Problematik in Politik und literarischer Öffentlichkeit der DDR’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 51 (2003), pp. 85–101; Elke Mehnert, ‘Vertriebene versus Umsiedler – der ostdeutsche Blick auf ein Kapitel Nachkriegsgeschichte’, in Elke Mehnert (ed.), Landschaften der Erinnerung: Flucht und Vertreibung aus deutscher, polnischer und tschechischer Sicht (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 133–57; also Manfred Wille, ‘SED und “Umsiedler” – Vertriebenenpolitik der Einheitspartei im ersten Nachkriegsjahrzehnt’, in Dierk Hoffmann and Michael Schwartz (eds), Geglückte Integration? Spezifika und Vergleichbarkeiten der VertriebenenEingliederung in der SBZ/DDR (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 91–104. Still useful are Max Hildebert Boehm, ‘Gruppenbildung und Organisationswesen’, in Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding (eds), Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland (Kiel: Hirt, 1959), vol. 1, pp. 521–605; Hermann Weiß, ‘Die Organisationen der Vertriebenen und ihre Presse’, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen, rev. edn (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1995), pp. 244–64. See Pertti Ahonen, After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Samuel Salzborn, Heimatrecht und Volkstumskampf: Außenpolitische Konzepte der Vertriebenenverbände und ihre praktische Umsetzung (Hannover: Offizin, 2001). Robert G. Moeller, ‘War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany’, American Historical Review, vol. 101 (1996), esp. p. 1019; Robert G. Moeller ‘Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany’, Contemporary European History, vol. 12 (2003), pp. 152–9. One of the best examples of the stereotypical way in which refugees and expellees were represented in popular culture is the 1951 film Grün ist die

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24. 25. 26.

27.

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Heide (The Heath is Green), which was extremely successful at the box office, attracting almost 20 million viewers by 1960, perhaps because it had little to do with historical reality. The only film which tried to present a more realistic picture of the difficulties which refugees faced was Mamitschka (1955); it was commercially unsuccessful. See Hanno Sowade, ‘Das Thema im westdeutschen Nachkriegsfilm’, in Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.), Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2005), pp. 124–31; Peter Stettner, ‘“Sind Sie denn überhaupt Deutsche?” Stereotype, Sehnsüchte und Ängste im Flüchtlingsbild des deutschen Nachkriegsfilm’, in Schulze (ed.), Zwischen Heimat und Zuhause, pp. 156–70; Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 123–70. See Manfred Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen? Der historische deutsche Osten in der Erinnerungskultur der Bundesrepubublik (1961–1982) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006); Mathias Beer, ‘Verschlusssache, Raubdruck, autorisierte Fassung: Aspekte der politischen Auseinandersetzung mit Flucht und Vertreibung in der Bundesrepublik (1949–1989)’, in Christoph Cornelißen, Roman Holec and Jiˇrí Pešek (eds), Diktatur – Krieg – Vertreibung: Erinnerungskulturen in Tschechien, der Slowakei und Deutschland seit 1945 (Essen: Klartext, 2005), pp. 369–401; Hans-Werner Rautenberg, ‘Die Wahrnehmung von Flucht und Vertreibung in der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte bis heute’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 53 (1997), pp. 34–46; Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Flucht und Vertreibung in der individuellen und kollektiven Erinnerung und als Gegenstand von Erinnerungspolitik’, in Flucht und Vertreibung – Europa zwischen 1939 und 1948 (Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2004), pp. 224–31. Adam Krzeminski, ‘Der Kniefall’, in Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (eds), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001), vol. 1, pp. 638–53. The first major survey with such a focus was Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding (eds), Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland, 3 vols (Kiel: Hirt, 1959). This found its most powerful expression in the speech by the West German President, Richard von Weizsäcker, at a commemorative ceremony on 8 May 1985 in the German Bundestag. For an English translation of this speech, see Remembrance, Sorrow and Reconciliation: Speeches and Declarations in Connection with the 40th Anniversary of the End of the Second World War in Europe (Bonn: Press and Information Office of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1985), pp. 57–72. This is strongly expressed in narrative interviews conducted with more than 60 refugees and expellees since 1997; see Rainer Schulze, ‘Alte Heimat – neue Heimat – oder heimatlos dazwischen? Zur Frage der regionalen Identität deutscher Flüchtlinge und Vertriebener – Eine Skizze’, Nordost-Archiv, N.F. 6 (1997), pp. 759–87; Rainer Schulze, ‘“Wir leben ja nun hier”: Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in Niedersachsen – Erinnerung und Identität’, in Klaus J. Bade and Jochen Oltmer (eds), ‘Hier geblieben!’ Zuwanderung und Integration in Niedersachsen von 1945 bis heute (Osnabrück: Universitätsverlag Rasch, 2002), pp. 69–100. The interviews form part of the Collection Rainer Schulze, University of Essex. See also Albrecht Lehmann, Im Fremden ungewollt zuhaus: Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in Westdeutschland 1945–1990 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1991); Hans Lemberg, ‘Geschichten und Geschichte. Das Gedächtnis der

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29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

Forced Migration of German Populations Vertriebenen in Deutschland nach 1945’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, vol. 44 (2004), pp. 509–23. Both German terms, Heimat and Zuhause, translate as ‘home’ in English. In this context, Heimat means the original home, the place of birth and childhood, whereas Zuhause refers to the place in the West where the refugees and expellees settled after flight and expulsion. On the German notion of Heimat, see Christian Graf von Krockow, Heimat: Erfahrungen mit einem deutschen Thema (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1989), or Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002). Helga Hirsch, ‘Flucht und Vertreibung. Kollektive Erinnerung im Wandel’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 40–1 (2003), pp. 14–26; Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus den Gebieten jenseits von Oder und Neiße. Zur wissenschaftlichen und öffentlichen Diskussion in Deutschland’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 51–2 (2002), pp. 44–54; Eric Langenbacher, ‘Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany?’, German Politics and Society, vol. 21, no. 2 (2003), pp. 46–68; Karoline von Oppen and Stefan Wolff, ‘From the Margins to the Centre? The Discourse on Expellees and Victimhood in Germany’, in Bill Niven (ed.), Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 194–209. Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang (Göttingen: Steidl, 2002); Crabwalk (London: Faber and Faber, 2003). Among them: Jörg Bernig, Niemandszeit (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 2002); Reinhard Jirgl, Die Unvollendeten (Munich/Vienna: Carl Hanser, 2003); Tanja Dückers, Himmelskörper (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2003); Olaf Müller, Schlesisches Wetter (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2003); and Michael Zellner, Die Reise nach Samosch (Cadolzburg: Ars Vivendi, 2003). See Thomas Urban, ‘Vertreibung als Thema in Polen’, Jiˇrí Pešek, ‘Vertreibung als Thema in Tschechien’ and Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Vertreibungen – Ein europäisches Thema’, in Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.), Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2005), pp. 156–65, 166–73 and 189–95. Bund der Vertriebenen – Vereinigte Landsmannschaften und Landesverbände e.V., ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen – Stiftung der Deutschen Heimatvertriebenen, Berlin’, typescript, Bonn, 2000; see the Zentrum’s official webpage: www.z-gv.de (last accessed 8 November 2010) for up-to-date information. The BdV was founded in 1957 as the central body in the Federal Republic of Germany to represent the interests of German refugees and expellees. It comprises regional refugee and expellee associations (Landsmannschaften), formed on the basis of the areas of origin, and the state organisations (Landesverbände), formed on the basis of post-war residence in the Federal Republic, and it receives funding from the German government for its work. Following German unification, the BdV branched out into the former GDR. For a long time the BdV fought for the right of refugees and expellees to return to their original homes and rejected any attempts by the (West) German government to recognise Germany’s post-war eastern borders. At the same time, it supported the policies of the West German government aimed at integrating refugees and expellees economically, socially and culturally into post-war Germany. In 2000, the BdV set up a foundation with the aim

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35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

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of canvassing support for a proposed ‘centre against expulsions’. The current President of the BdV (from 1998) is Erika Steinbach, born in 1943 in Rahmel (today Rumia) in West Prussia, who is also a member of the German Bundestag for the CDU. See Matthias Stickler, Ostdeutsch heißt Gesamtdeutsch: Organisation, Selbstverständnis und heimatpolitische Zielsetzungen der deutschen Vertriebenenverbände 1949–1972 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2004); Ahonen, After the Expulsion; Salzborn, Heimatrecht und Volkstumskampf. ‘Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Aufruf gegen ein “Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen”: “Für einen kritischen und aufgeklärten Vergangenheitsdiskurs / For a critical and enlightened debate about the past”’, 10 August 2003, at www.vertreibungszentrum.de (last accessed 8 November 2010). Within four months, more than 300 signatures were collected. See also Deutsches Kulturforum östliches Europa (ed.), Ein Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen: Nationales Gedenken oder europäische Erinnerung? Podiumsgespräch in der Französischen Friedrichstadtkirche Berlin mit Nawojka Cieslinska-Lobkowicz, Helga Hirsch, Hans Lemberg, Markus Meckel und Erika Steinbach, Moderation Thomas Urban (Potsdam: Deutsches Kulturforum östliches Europa, 2004), or Bernd Faulenbach and Andreas Helle (eds), Zwangsmigration in Europa: Zur wissenschaftlichen und politischen Auseinandersetzung um die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Essen: Klartext, 2005). See the interview with Władyslaw Bartoszewski, historian and Polish Foreign Minister, in Die Welt, 16 July 2003. The Polish weekly Wprost had a photo montage on its front cover of 21 September 2003 depicting the President of the BdV, Erika Steinbach, in SS uniform and riding on the back of the SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, with the caption ‘The German Trojan Horse’. A lavishly illustrated book accompanied the exhibition: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.), Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2005). Jörg Lau, ‘Ein deutscher Abschied’, Die Zeit, 8 December 2005 (my translation from the German original). For a more critical review, see Martin Fochler, ‘Verschobene Perspektiven: Zur Ausstellung “Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration, Heimat”’, Deutsch-Tschechische Nachrichten, no. 70, 25 January 2006. See exhibition catalogue: Erzwungene Wege: Flucht und Vertreibung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts – Ausstellung im Kronprinzenpalais, Berlin (Berlin: Stiftung Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen, 2006). See Jens Jessen, ‘Die Mitschuld der Opfer: Die Berliner Ausstellung “Erzwungene Wege” ist zu Unrecht umstritten’, Die Zeit, 17 August 2006. See Gunter Hoffmann, ‘Trübe Wege: Eine Ausstellung über Flucht und Vertreibung in Berlin entlastet die deutsche Geschichte und erschwert die Beziehungen zu Polen’, Die Zeit, 10 August 2006; Thomas Urban, ‘Warschau sieht die Nation in der Berliner Ausstellung über Vertreibung bedroht’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 August 2006. Alice Nota and Heinrich Wefing, ‘Entspannt Euch! Nach jahrelangem Streit ist die schwierige Erinnerung an die Vertreibung plötzlich kein Problem mehr zwischen Deutschen und Polen: Ein Lehrstück aus dem Handbuch der Deeskalation’, Die Zeit, 19 March 2008. Examples of such an approach are Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek, 1998); Thomas Urban, Der Verlust: Die

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44.

45. 46.

Forced Migration of German Populations Vertreibung der Deutschen und Polen im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H.Beck, 2004). See also Eckhard Matthes (ed.), Als Russe in Ostpreußen: Sowjetische Umsiedler über ihren Neubeginn in Königsberg/Kaliningrad nach 1945 (Ostfildern: edition tertium, 1999); Dieter Bingen, Włodzimierz Borodziej and Stefan Troebst (eds), Vertreibung europäisch gedenken? Historische Erfahrungen – Vergangenheitspolitik – Zukunftskonzeptionen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowith, 2003); Anja Kruke (ed.), Zwangsmigration und Vertreibung: Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Bonn: Dietz, 2006). It was perhaps a coincidence, but one of a highly symbolic nature, that at the time of the opening of the exhibition Erzwungene Wege at the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin, the Bonn exhibition Flucht – Vertreibung – Integration had moved to Berlin and was shown at the German Historical Museum directly opposite the Kronprinzenpalais. Hartmut Boockmann, ‘Die Geschichte Ostdeutschlands und der deutschen Siedlungsgebiete im östlichen Europa’, in Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin (ed.), Deutsche im Osten: Geschichte, Kultur, Erinnerungen (Ausstellung Lokschuppen Rosenheim 15. Juli bis 1. November 1994) (Berlin: Koehler & Amelang, 1994), p. 128 (my translation from the German original). Müller, Schlesisches Wetter, p. 197 (my translation from the German original). Grass, Crabwalk, p. 234.

4 The Exodus of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia, 1945–56 Gustavo Corni

Introduction Between 1945 and the mid-1950s about 250,000 Italians were forced to leave the cities and villages along the eastern border of Italy in which they and their families had lived for generations. These cities and villages were situated along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, from the Gulf of Trieste and down along Istria and Dalmatia. This historical event – known in Italy as ‘the Exodus’ – has been repressed in the Italian collective memory and has not received much attention from historians. In his seminal work on exiles and refugees in Europe in the twentieth century, Michael Marrus does not even mention it, while Schechtman devoted to it barely half a page.1 The numbers involved were relatively small in comparison with similar mass expulsions or transfers that took place in Europe during the same period. It was, however, a unique phenomenon in modern Italian history, which left in its wake family tragedies and a considerable number of victims. Furthermore the Exodus was a caesura in the ancient and rich history of the Italian presence along the eastern Adriatic, exemplified in the artistic and cultural splendour of the main coastal towns such as Parenzo/Porecˇ, Fiume/Rijeka, Zara/Zadar, Spalato/Split and Ragusa/ Dubrovnik. For a long time the memory of this painful episode remained important only for the survivors and their families, who were and remain largely uninterested in exchanging opinions with historians. The reasons for the collective repression can be traced to Italian post-war politics. There is nowadays a tendency to stress the fact that the Italian Left, in particular the Italian Communist Party (PCI), wanted to draw a veil of silence over the PCI’s ambiguous behaviour in Trieste and Venezia Giulia in the final phase of the war and early post-war years. 71

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In 1944–5 the regional Party there was pro-Tito. Their links with the Yugoslav communists had been reinforced during the Resistance, when Italian communist partisans had been deployed by the more organised Slovene and Croatian communist partisan movement. After the war, many Italian communist partisans would have preferred to stay within communist Yugoslavia, rather than be part of an Italy placed within the Western bloc in the Cold War. The Party leaders in Rome also adopted an ambiguous position regarding the question of the eastern border. The Italian post-war governing party, the Christian Democrats, also bears some responsibility for repressing the memory of the Exodus.2 After Tito broke with Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia moved from being Italy’s most dangerous enemy to a potential political ally and trading partner. A non-aligned Yugoslavia was regarded as a crucial factor for détente in Europe. There was also the open question of Trieste, the regional capital of Venezia Giulia, which was only returned to Italy in 1954.3 Preserving good relations with Yugoslavia meant turning a deaf ear to grounds for conflict such as the ‘foibe massacres’ of Italians during the war (see below) and the Exodus. For a long time the memory of these events was confined to a local dimension, although during crucial moments the history of the Exodus was exploited for political reasons. This became very clear after the formation of a centre-right government in 2001 in which the former post-fascist party, Alleanza Nazionale, held a prominent position. One of this party’s major platforms was a (largely instrumental) recovery of the debate over nationalist claims in Venezia Giulia. They instigated bitter discussions about the ‘foibe massacres’, accusing the hegemonic post-war left-wing culture, including academics, of having deliberately covered up communist crimes. In March 2004 they established a Day of National Remembrance (10 February) to commemorate the painful events along the eastern border, hoping to use it as a unifying factor in a new patriotism.4 More recently a more balanced historiographical appraisal of the fate of the Italian community along the eastern Adriatic has been constructed, which situates it in its specific historical and political context and lifts the burden of nationalism. Detailed and balanced research has emerged out of a new dialogue with Slovenian and Croatian historians.5 Yugoslav historiography had cultivated an equally nationalistic myth, uncritically exalting the importance of the partisan struggle in realising the construction of a socialist regime from below. The conclusion in 2000 of the work of a commission of Italian–Slovenian historians has been published as a joint final report (although so far only in Slovene); the parallel Italian–Croatian commission is still at work.6

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To contextualise and better understand the unfolding of the Exodus, two medium-term elements can be identified: (1) the denationalisation policy implemented by fascist Italy in the area during the interwar period; and (2) the occupation policies carried out by Germany and Italy in Yugoslavia during the war. Two short-term elements can also be identified: (1) the violence perpetrated by communist partisans and, to a lesser extent, by ordinary Yugoslavians against Italians during autumn 1943 and April–June 1945, known as the ‘foibe massacres’; and (2) the post-war diplomatic conflicts among the victors and between Yugoslavia and Italy over the borders between the latter two. Another element which needs to be taken into account is the desire of the Yugoslav regime to rapidly build a new political and social system, brushing aside all obstacles.

Contextualisation To place the Exodus in its historical context it is necessary to consider Italian fascist policy towards its ‘alien’ population in the interwar period, as well as political and military events in the Balkans during the Second World War, since it was a direct product of these developments. After the First World War the unwillingness of the United States, France and Great Britain to recognise Italian hegemony along the eastern Adriatic coast provoked heated nationalist controversy in Italy. This manifested itself when the poet and nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio conquered Fiume/Rijeka between September 1919 and December 1920, when the intervention of Italian troops put an end to the so-called Republic of Kvarner. In the end Italy gained Istria and Fiume, but not the Dalmatian coast. An active ‘border’ fascism gained ground in the region influenced by an ardent antiSlavism. This led to acts of violence such as the destruction of Slovenian cultural centres in Trieste and Pula in July 1920. After a period of relative moderation under a liberal government, the territories annexed after 1918 underwent a ‘denationalisation’ policy at the hands of the fascist regime. Acting on behalf of the urban bourgeois élite, the regime carried out or planned a series of measures, particularly in Trieste, including the closure of Slovene and Croatian schools (completed in 1928–9), the forced Italianisation of names, and a rigid policy towards the Slovenian clergy and ‘aliens’ (that is, those not belonging to the Italian race).7 Even more drastic measures were planned, such as an extensive colonisation of the countryside where there was a particularly significant presence of Slavs. The fascist regime’s denationalisation policy was not particularly successful; as the historian Raoul Pupo has noted, ‘the efforts to wipe

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out Slovenian and Croatian national identity were not even close to successful’.8 It did however speed up the emigration of around 50,000 to 100,000 Slovenes and Croats. It also caused the formation of small underground groups of antifascists, some of which were in contact with Italian antifascists. Most importantly, the policy brought out tensions and splits within the social fabric of Dalmatia and Venezia Giulia, and led to what Elio Apih called a ‘pollution of civil living’.9 Fascist Italy was hostile towards the new Yugoslav state, not least since Mussolini had ambitious aims to strengthen Italy’s presence in the Balkans.10 In order to destabilise the Yugoslav monarchy Italy provided support to Croatian secessionist rebels, the ustaša, led by Ante Pavelic´. This was reduced in the second half of the 1930s, partly because Yugoslavia’s new authoritarian leader, Milan Stojadinovicˇ, wanted closer relations with Rome, but also because of Hitler’s aggressive commercial policy in the region, coercing Mussolini to a friendlier policy towards Belgrade. With the Second World War, Italy’s hegemonic designs on the Balkans turned initially to Greece. The disastrous course of the military campaign against Greece (initiated in October 1940) put an end to Mussolini’s plan of a ‘parallel war’ in the region and caused a dramatic caesura in the unstable Balkan equilibrium.11 Hitler decided to help Mussolini and invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941. Germany and Italy subjected the area to a process of radical ‘Balkanisation’, with the aim of stirring up national tensions to reduce the risk that the area would become unstable and dangerous for them. Yugoslavia was divided among the Axis powers, satisfying respective expansionist or nationalist ambitions. Mussolini got control of the so-called Province of Ljubljana (central and southern Slovenia), the Dalmatian coast and Montenegro. Hungary received Bacˇka in central Serbia, inhabited by a Magyar minority, while Bulgaria was granted extensive areas of Macedonia and Thrace. Germany annexed regions of central Slovenia (Carniola and Lower Styria), inhabited by a mixed Austrian and Slovenian population, and Banat, a region inhabited by an ethnic German minority (Volksdeutsche). The German government also took on the direct administration of Serbia. A satellite state was set up in Croatia and was assigned to the leadership of Pavelic´’s ustaša. It was never clearly established whether Germany or Italy would have supremacy in Croatia, although the original joint dominion (the Germans in the north, the Italians in the south) quickly turned into a clear hegemony of the Germans. In the end about 40 per cent of the population and the territory of Yugoslavia were handed over to Pavelic´’s Croatia. Pavelic´ established a very repressive regime, sparking off the most atavistic

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instincts of Croatian nationalism. He became a useful tool in the hands of the occupiers, who were worried about the growing communist partisan movement. Italy also exploited ethnic resentments between Albanians, Croats and Montenegrins to strengthen its own dominion. Italian policy in Yugoslavia, executed by a mixture of civil and military administrations, was in general very severe.12 There was a policy of internment and forced population transfers to weaken connections with the partisan movement. In the concentration camp on the Dalmatian island of Rab (Arbe), built in the summer of 1941, 10,000 people were detained in very harsh conditions; at least onetenth of them died. A network of camps was created in which at least 30,000 people were detained, and Ljubljana was closed off with barbed wire.13 This harsh policy was soon exacerbated by the emergence of a fierce resistance movement. There were two main Yugoslav resistance movements. First, one led by Tito, the leader of the Croatian Communist Party, who created a well organised and impressive army of about 150,000 partisans of mixed ethnicity (although predominantly Croats and Serbs who had escaped from Croatia). The Allies (particularly Great Britain, who regarded the Balkans as within its sphere of influence) only decided to support Tito towards the end of the war. This change in strategy was due to the recognition that only Tito’s partisan army was capable of seriously damaging the Germans, as the other main resistance movement, the cˇetnici, led by the Serbian general and monarchist Draža Mihailovic´, was unwilling to fight against the ItalianGerman occupiers. To undermine the growing communist partisan movement, Mihailovic´ began double-crossing: he kept up good contacts with the Allies and the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London while simultaneously negotiating a modus vivendi with the occupiers, particularly the Italians: the latter were not to attack the cˇetnici who would in exchange support their fight against communist partisans. The Italian civil and military authorities realised the difficulty of keeping such a delicate situation under control with a weak military machine, scattered over a vast territory favourable to partisan warfare when the partisans had such wide support. There were attempts to exploit ethnic tensions by enlisting collaborationist forces like the domobrani in Slovenia. The annexation, denationalisation and colonisation plans drawn up by the Italian civil and military authorities remained on paper, however, due to the difficulties of keeping public order. In the most in-depth study on the subject, Davide Rodogno notes that ‘The reality of the occupations was very different from the regime’s projects and ambitions, and almost nothing of the post-war new order was accomplished’.14

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After the collapse of Mussolini’s regime in July 1943, Tito’s partisan movement in Istria and Dalmatia grew stronger and drew up longterm political programmes. The communists found common ground with nationalist groups on projected political programmes. One of the reasons for the success of Tito’s partisan movement in attaining wide popular support was its stress on the national question, as a result of which marked anti-Italian claims naturally ensued. Its political programmes envisaged the annexation of all Dalmatia and Istria. By the end of the war the annexation of Trieste, Gorizia and Maribor in the north were also among its explicit objectives.15 Italian antifascists could (or rather, should) take part in the process of democratic liberation and the political transformation of post-war Yugoslavia, but in a subordinate position. It is against this background of ethnic tensions and fascist policy that the subsequent massacres and the post-war Exodus have to be understood.

The ‘foibe massacres’ The Italian armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943 created a power vacuum in the Yugoslav territories that Italy occupied. This period saw an early and very extreme phase of violence against Italians, associated with the term ‘foibe’.16 Foibe are the subterranean cavities of the karst regions of Istria, which had traditionally been used as dumps, in particular for animal carcasses. Over a number of weeks, groups of partisans and in some cases ordinary citizens initiated a series of brutal attacks which resulted in around 500–700 fatalities, mostly of Italians. The victims were taken from their homes to the foibe in groups or individually, where they were shot and then thrown in, sometimes still alive. Recent research, drawing on Slovenian and Croatian archives, has not uncovered any kind of genocidal plan in this first phase of murders. Italians undeniably were the predominant victims of attacks because they represented the arrogant denationalising power: carabinieri, public officials, local fascist party leaders, but also teachers, pharmacists and other middle-class professionals. A recent study concludes that ‘several threads of logic seem to be intertwined: summary, turbulent and extreme application of the law, nationalist outbursts, social rivalry and rural vendettas, as well as a plan to uproot Italian power’.17 After the Italian collapse, the Germans established the Adriatic Littoral Operation Zone (Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland) in the eastern border area, using Slav and Italian collaborationist forces.18 Confronted with German military occupation, the military and political power of

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the Yugoslav communist resistance became rapidly stronger and in the summer and autumn of 1944 outlined its political programme.19 This programme was marked by two aims: to make national and ethnic borders coincide and to obtain the greatest possible military success to ensure the establishment of a communist regime at the end of the war. Yugoslav resistance organisations set up a dense network of contacts both with the Italian partisan formations operating in the eastern border area, and with the high command of the Italian National Freedom Committee (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, CLN) in Milan. Their relationship with the Italian Communist Party was obviously particularly important. This relationship, the subject in recent years of detailed study and bitter debate, is extremely complex. The leaders of the PCI, headed by Palmiro Togliatti, moved with caution (or ambiguously, according to their critics) when faced with the request of the Yugoslav comrades to recognise their clear territorial claims, for example that the Isonzo River should represent the future eastern border of Italy. This implied that Trieste and Gorizia (including the important industrial centre of Monfalcone) should become part of the Yugoslav state. Only in May 1945 did Togliatti take an explicit stand when during a session of the Italian government he condemned the Yugoslav occupation of Trieste, ‘an indisputably Italian city’.20 The Communists of Venezia Giulia and Istria had a different attitude. They were under great political and psychological pressure (after all, Tito’s partisan army could be considered a positive model of a national liberation war), and ended up completely agreeing with the Yugoslav position. Additionally, a considerable part of the Italian working class in Trieste and Monfalcone looked favourably upon Tito. The Yugoslavs ensured that local Italian communists were in a minority and played a subordinate role. The splits within the Italian Resistance regarding the eastern border area led to the Porzûs massacre on 7 February 1945, when Italian communist partisans murdered the leaders of a ‘white’ (Catholic) partisan group, because they would not submit to the Yugoslav partisans.21 The adoption by Italian communists of pro-Yugoslav positions weakened Trieste’s CLN at the time of the ‘liberation’ of the city by Yugoslav troops on 30 April 1945. The interest that the Yugoslav leadership had in reaching for the Isonzo River and Trieste is shown by the fact that in their haste they neglected to assume control over areas lying behind. The real ‘race for Trieste’ saw only one protagonist, as the Anglo-American command had little interest in the matter.22 When the Yugoslav partisan command reached Trieste after an unsuccessful (and late) attempt

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at insurrection by the Italian CLN (without the communists), it implemented a policy aimed at establishing complete sovereignty. Even Italian antifascist parties were attacked. The political behaviour of the Italian communists over the question of Trieste opened a historical fracture that would have serious local and national consequences.

The end of the war Trieste and the eastern border area assumed a leading role in the unfolding Cold War, despite the fact that all concerned moved with great prudence in case ‘another Greece’ was triggered as Harold Macmillan, the British Envoy in the area, feared.23 Only the Yugoslavs could act freely; Tito had liberated Yugoslavia without Soviet help and this gave him great authority. Eventually though, in mid May 1945, increased pressure from the United States to drive the Yugoslavs from Trieste met with Soviet consensus. An agreement signed in Belgrade on 9 June 1945 divided Venezia Giulia into two zones: Zone A, including Trieste and its immediate hinterland, under Allied administration; and Zone B, which included northern Istria, under Yugoslav administration.24 Strengthened by its authority and by an ‘entirely totalitarian’ plan, from the beginning the Yugoslavs implemented a policy aimed at sweeping away all obstacles, particularly their political enemies.25 It is within this context that the second and most radical wave of violence against the Italians, again given the name foibe, must be interpreted, although the majority of the victims were not actually dumped in foibe. This went on for several months and took many different forms: summary court cases, spontaneous executions, and planned deportations to camps from which the majority never returned. There was a mixture of ‘actions from below’ and policies planned by the local communist political and military authorities. The victims of this second phase of the foibe were mostly Italians, but again recent historiography tends to reject the interpretation of genocide. Across Yugoslavia the regime launched a preventative purge of entire social, professional and cultural categories that were considered dangerous; in Venezia Giulia, the enemies ended up coinciding to a great extent with Italians. One of the slogans of the Yugoslav regime was ‘Italian–Slav brotherhood’; evoking the widest possible collaboration for the construction of socialism, obviously excluding (eliminating) all those who were regarded as a priori hostile. It is very difficult to quantify the victims of this second wave, who surely number several thousand, although the suggestion by nationalists of 15,000–20,000 victims is clearly an exaggeration.26 A cause-and-effect link between the foibe and the Exodus established by

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subsequent interpretations is too artificial and disguises the complexity of the situation. It is likely (and deducible from subsequent records) that these waves of violence left a lasting scar of anguish and uncertainty about the future in the Italian communities. But it is also a fact that ‘the critical turbulent transition of the powers, from the Nazi-Fascist power to the Yugoslav Communist one, took place without determining per se large scale population transfers’.27

Expulsion and emigration It appears that there was no single, official, overarching decision taken to expel all Italians from Yugoslavia.28 This marks a clear difference from the policy implemented towards the German-speaking minorities in Vojvodina and Banat who were collectively legally dispossessed of their property and deprived of civil rights. Their expulsion took place quickly and involved more than 250,000 people.29 Instead, a series of ‘national rights’ were to have been granted to the Italian population. There was, however, a crucial precondition; the Italians would have to accept the ideology of the new regime. According to the regime’s dogmatic Stalinism, this acceptance could not be established on a voluntary basis but was to be based on objective class criteria. Hence a clear distinction was drawn up between ‘honest antifascist’ Italians and Italians who were ‘reactionary’ or ‘enemies of the people’. For long- and short-term historical reasons, the great majority of Italians were included in the second category. They were mostly urban dwellers of lower-middleclass and middle-class descent, raised for decades in the spirit of Italian nationalism. They were property owners, who only stood to lose by the policies of nationalisation and social redistribution advocated by Tito. Additionally, there was no question that the so-called regnicoli – Italians who had moved to the region after 1918 – would be expelled. According to an ethnic census carried out by the Yugoslavs in October 1945, which had clear political aims partly in view of the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference, Italians in Istria and Venezia Giulia now only accounted for 24.3 per cent of the population, down from 45.3 per cent in the last Habsburg census of 1910. These statistics were the result of manipulation and instrumental ethnic distinctions that did not take into account language spoken, counting among the majority the number of so-called denationalised Slavs who spoke mainly Italian. The Paris Peace Conference in 1946 ratified the existing borders: all the territories in which the Italian minority lived were given to Yugoslavia, a victorious state and at that time backed by Stalin. The Italian proposal

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to set up a plebiscite in the region came to nothing.30 However, the subdivision of the region into two zones disrupted Yugoslav plans. The Italian working class in Trieste and Monfalcone, which the Yugoslav regime had been relying on, ended up outside Yugoslavia. It was mostly Italians – whom the regime viewed with suspicion and who had to be expelled – who ended up within Yugoslav borders. It is at this juncture that the conditions for sparking off the expulsion process of the Italians existed.

The Exodus from Zara/Zadar The Exodus, often presented as describable within a single model, should be split into territorial cases with their own specific characteristics. It is necessary to dismiss the conviction, asserted by refugee associations and nationalist circles, that the desertion of Zadar by its mostly Italian population should be regarded as the first step towards the pre-arranged expulsion of all the Italians from the area. The port city endured terrible air raids during 1944 which drove over half its inhabitants to seek refuge in Italy. There is, however, no evidence that the bombings, carried out by the British and Americans, were part of a Titoist plan to get rid of the Italian population, although not all aspects of the vicissitudes of the city have been clarified. When communist partisans entered the city in May 1945, there were just a few thousand people left, very few of them Italians.31

The Exodus from Fiume/Rijeka In Rijeka, populated by a clear Italian majority, the arrival of the Yugoslav liberators saw a series of repressive actions aimed at disrupting the strong local Italian autonomist movement whose antifascist credentials were no longer of importance. Instead they were viewed as dangerous in case they made a favourable plea for Italian interests during negotiations for the Paris Peace Conference. As well as carrying out a series of high-profile murders, the liberators set into motion a policy of intense Croatisation in order to oust the Italian élites for good. The inadequate preparation of their new improvised ruling class ended up compounding the difficult material conditions. The Italian population was thrown into a state of crisis and in 1946–7 subjected to a policy of confiscations and dispossessions under various pretexts.32 Accused generically of being ‘enemies of the people’, they soon found themselves in an unbearable situation. At the beginning of 1946 a stream of emigration began, eventually

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involving around 20,000 people. The Yugoslav authorities reacted by criticising those leaving and attacking the ecclesiastic hierarchy, which was accused of instigating the Exodus.33 However, they did nothing to reduce the flow, which damaged the urban economy and that of the rural hinterland. The Exodus continued over the next two years, under the form of the individual free option, which was made possible by clauses of the Paris Peace Treaty of February 1947. Initially there was also movement from the opposite direction; some hundreds of workers, particularly from Monfalcone, convinced that the building of socialism was now only possible in Yugoslavia, moved to Rijeka. They were soon bitterly disappointed. Tito’s split from Moscow in 1948 completely threw them. They were mostly faithful to the Soviet Union and so suffered accusations of ‘deviationism’. Some of them were deported to camps, while others were expelled. A small minority adapted with great difficulty to the new trend.34

The exodus from Pola/Pul The Exodus from Rijeka took place relatively quietly, whereas that from Pula took place under the gaze of Italian and international public opinion. The agreement of June 1945 among the victors had placed Pula as an enclave in Zone A under an Allied military government. Italian political groups there formed a coalition to actively defend the Italian character of the city.35 In spring 1946 the possibility arose that the city would definitely pass to Yugoslavia. This threw the Italian-speaking inhabitants into a panic. There were attempts to organise a collective response, such as the large public demonstration on 22 March 1946 during the visit of an Allied delegation. However, the city remained isolated and the economic situation of the Italians continued deteriorating. After a long period of uncertainty while waiting for the border to be definitively established (there was still hope that Pula would be given to Italy), the news from the Paris Peace Conference in the summer of 1946 caused a traumatic change in the Italian community’s attitude, as all hopes crumbled. A special committee connected to the local CLN began to collect the options for emigration. Out of approximately 32,000 Italian residents of Pula, more than 28,000 chose to leave. The Exodus began at the end of 1946. Some tens of thousands boarded ships for Trieste, at first in an improvised manner and later with the support of the Italian government. Once in Trieste, quite a few set off immediately for further destinations outside Europe. Many people took with them the coffins of their relatives that they had exhumed from the cemeteries they left behind.

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The Exodus from Istria In the inland areas of Istria immediately after the war the Italians suffered terrible violence (the foibe), as well as property confiscations and hard forced labour. This impacted on their general living conditions and alienated them from the new regime. The more the Italian population showed their discontent (even cautiously), the more the Yugoslav authorities hardened their position. An ‘overall denationalisation plan’ was enforced, which entailed measures such as the removal of the San Marco lion, the symbol of the ancient Venetian State, from public buildings.36 It was the news from Paris, establishing the definitive borders between Italy and Yugoslavia, that sparked off a rush for options at the beginning of 1948. The Exodus was foreseen by a clause in the Paris Peace Treaty, signed in February 1947, which stated that citizens could opt for the citizenship of the bordering country. Those choosing this option were obliged to leave. This was true both for Italians residing in places that would become Yugoslavian, and for Slovenes living in Italy. About 5000 of the latter exercised their rights to the option. Not only did a large percentage of the inhabitants of Istria’s coastal towns take the option, as was to be expected, but many inland inhabitants did so as well; 90 per cent of the inhabitants of Pisino/Pazin did for example. The Yugoslav authorities tried to curb the flow by putting bureaucratic obstacles in the way. This shows that the communist regime did not have a feasible strategy for winning the support of at least part of the Italians, many of whom belonged to the working class. Government obstructionism served only to exasperate the Italians and reinforce their determination to leave. The Exodus reached its initial peak in 1947–9. Thanks to Italian intervention, the terms for the options were reopened in 1950, but even during this second phase the local authorities placed various obstacles. Knowledge about the decision-making processes of the Yugoslav government and local administration is so far insufficient to fully explain the reasons for such contradictory behaviour: on the one hand, the Exodus was hindered by threatening the ‘instigators’, and on the other, the Italians were pressurised into quickly leaving en masse. In total over 50,000 Italians were involved in this phase of the Exodus.

The exodus from Zone B The Exodus from the northern part of Istria assigned by the Paris Peace Treaty to Zone B took place at the beginning of the 1950s. This does not mean that the policy of the Yugoslav authorities was less oppressive

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there. The pattern was the same; summary executions, confiscations, pressure by the administration and the media. In this case as well, the Italian working class or those close to the Communist Party tried to react with protests, which demonstrated the gap existing between Yugoslav policies and the prevailing attitude of the Italian public. The large protest in Capodistria/Koper in October 1945 by workers is symptomatic; the protest was against Yugoslav economic policy, which obviously damaged the Italians and cut off their contacts with Trieste. The regime’s reaction was to encourage rural Slovenes to move into the town, thereby applying the characteristic pattern of Yugoslav nationalism: the Slav countryside against the Italian city. The main reason why the Exodus began so late in the Koper area is connected to its proximity to Trieste and to the hope that the territory would be definitely returned to Italy. In the increasingly bitter atmosphere of the Cold War, the British and Americans had cherished the idea of setting up a buffer state to include both the Zones and Trieste, the so-called Free Territory of Trieste (Territorio Libero di Trieste). They soon abandoned this idea because they realised that Yugoslav pressure would make the existence of this small state impossible. These decisions were not made known to the Italian government, let alone to the population of Koper, which continued to hope for a rapid internationalisation of its own status and the withdrawal of the Yugoslavs. The Yugoslav authorities stayed, and with the situation between the two Zones becoming more flexible, were able to implement their policy more effectively. This showed that their clear objective was to expel the Italians from this area. The authorities put the Italian population under increasing pressure, branding them as fascists, while the Italian communists were disparagingly labelled as ‘extremists’. Italian schools were closed and teachers forced to leave. There was also heavy pressure put on the Italian-speaking clergy, culminating in an assault on the Archbishop of Trieste and Koper during a visit to the diocese in June 1947. In April 1950 the Yugoslav authorities organised administrative elections in Zone B as a reaction to local elections held in Trieste which had seen the triumph of moderate Italian parties.37 The Communist Party gained a clear victory in an atmosphere of intimidation which had convinced many Italians not to vote. In addition to the policy of Slovenian urban immigration, this provided another incentive for them to abandon a transformed territory that many no longer saw as their own. The assignation of Zone A to Italy by the Western powers in October 1953 was the ultimate drive for the Italian Exodus from Istria. Confronted with a harsh Yugoslav reaction, the Italians realised that

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their homeland was now lost. In a situation of apparently spontaneous violence, some thousands of people were forced to abandon their houses. Some months later they were followed by the great majority of Italians living in northern Istria when it became clear that Zone B would officially become Yugoslav territory. Between October 1953 and August 1956 about 25,000 people fled from the Zone. They were joined by about 3000 autochthonous Croats and Slovenes from Istria, probably convinced to emigrate because of the disintegration of the social and economic fabric in which they had been brought up.38 The Exodus ended in the summer of 1956. It is difficult to give accurate numbers of those involved, partly because ‘militant’ historiography has often proposed preposterous figures. The figure proposed by refugee associations is 350,000, but this includes many non-Italians. A real census was never carried out. In 1956 the Italian government estimated that 270,000 Italians left in total; other estimates give slightly lower figures, for example 250,000.39 Taking pre-war Italian censuses into account, the latter figure seems to be a ‘realistic estimate of the migratory flow’.40 Slovenian and Croatian researchers have recently suggested a much lower number of 190,000 refugees, reflecting a long-established tendency to scale down the phenomenon, deny that it was exceptional, and place it within a normal voluntary migration, connected mostly to economic reasons.41 Leaving aside quantitative differences, the important fact is that a whole community, in its entire social structure, was forced to abandon its homeland.

A new ‘homeland’? The Exodus opened a wide and complex chapter concerning the destination of the refugees and the treatment they received from the Italian government and public. During the immediate post-war years, economic, social and daily living conditions in Italy were extremely difficult. The extent of the migration from the eastern border areas was only realised at government level at the beginning of 1946. The measures adopted right from the beginning were inadequate and somewhat contradictory. The international context should also be borne in mind; the Prime Minister, Alcide De Gasperi, saw the refugees as an important element within the political-diplomatic web around the eastern border. The refugees were often regarded by the Italian public as ‘fascists’ who had been expelled for good reasons by Tito’s government. This contributed to mutual attitudes of indifference, which took root in particular in the memory of the refugee associations.

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The Italian government only implemented a policy of assistance after some time, particularly when faced with the difficulty of coping with the concentrated and massive Italian Exodus from Pula in 1947. The refugees often received inadequate care and were sometimes even treated inhumanely, at least according to contemporary evidence, which is still the main source of documentation. There were also important examples of solidarity by both individuals and local communities and administrations.42 Local and national committees were set up to help the refugees; De Gasperi was the honorific president of a national committee to demonstrate that the whole national community intended to take responsibility. As Ballinger’s chapter in this volume shows and explains in much more depth, Trieste was the preferred destination for a large number of refugees, given their emotional and material connections with the city. The city was mainly a place of transit, with more than 50,000 refugees living there for varying periods.43 Refugees from Pula and Istria put down roots in Trieste gradually and with considerable difficulty. There were serious difficulties however, due mostly to the economic situation. In the mid-1950s the Town Council estimated that 50 per cent of dwellings had no heating and that 10 per cent of the population lived in conditions defined as ‘abnormal’.44 In spite of this the reintegration and settlement plans carried out had good results in the long run, and prevented the formation of dreaded pockets of social discontent. The main political beneficiary of the organised settlement was the Christian Democratic Party which built a fundamental part of its electoral base on the mass of refugees, exploiting fertile anticommunist ground. As soon as the refugees arrived in Trieste, many decided to leave again and chose distant destinations of emigration, mainly Australia. This was due both to economic and psychological reasons (to get as far away as possible from the lost homeland, but also because there was a widespread feeling of helplessness and distrust). The peak of emigration was 1954–8. More than 20,000 people, mostly from Istria, who had already fled their homes emigrated from Trieste during those years. To these were added many people from Trieste who were trying to escape the city’s difficult economic and social situation.45 By the end of the 1950s the question of the Exodus and the population transfers had formally ended, but it left deep scars in people’s memory.46 To this day, the historiography (especially Croatian and Slovenian accounts) has almost completely neglected the complex but important topic of the social and economic changes that took place in the areas that had been abandoned by 80–90 per cent of their original population. In

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Italy and in Slovenia and Croatia there now live only the ‘residues’ of two national communities that in the past had been much stronger and more numerous; this is especially true for the successor states of Yugoslavia.47 There is no intention to draw parallels here since the Italian post-war government never persecuted the Slovenes, dispossessed them or forced them to emigrate.48 Both the democratic Italian government and the Yugoslav communist regime, however, were extremely reluctant to grant real autonomy to the ‘residues’. The Exodus from Istria and Dalmatia left deep marks in diplomatic relationships between the two countries, and later between Italy and the states that emerged from the dissolution of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s, in the memories and lives of tens of thousands of exiles and their offspring, but also in the social fabric that the exiles left behind and in that where they had to settle.49 An important interpretative matter concerns the overall coherence of this phenomenon, which was after all spread over a decade with peculiar characteristics in each individual area. It seems plausible to uphold the idea of the coherence of the phenomenon, even if the complexity of developments must be better appreciated. Despite the limited accessibility of Croatian and Slovenian sources, it seems unlikely that local Yugoslav authorities implemented a structured plan aimed at persuading the Italians to leave, as Italian nationalist historiography maintains and as the refugee associations obviously believe. There does seem to be a clear contradiction between the caution shown on numerous occasions by the Yugoslav leaders (sensitive both to the international repercussions of a massive exodus of the Italians and to the negative consequences that this would have on the economy in the region), and the procedures of the local authorities, which basically were driven by a single goal: to place the Italians under such conditions as to force them to go. The reasons for this apparent contradiction have not yet been thoroughly scrutinised because of the lack of sources and the lag in Croatian and Slovenian studies. What were the driving forces for those who left? In the first place, there was fear, fuelled by the initial waves of violence. Then there was the repressive and inquisitional atmosphere established by the communist regime. There were other reasons, such as the subversion of social and cultural hierarchies and the fading of a tight network of habits and customs, particularly religious ones. This factor has probably been underestimated, because the dominant nationalist historiography emphasised the interaction between Yugoslavia’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ project and the Italian reaction. Social and economic factors were put in second place, whereas the most recent historiography tends to put them at the forefront.50 During the period in question, the Italians in

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Yugoslavia experienced a dramatic change in lifestyle, and this increased their unease. Today we talk about an identity crisis connected to the modernisation processes that the new communist regime was energetically developing, or of a ‘feeling out of place’. Feeling a stranger in their own country became the main reason for the agonizing decision to leave. One can reject the interpretation of a purely voluntary departure even though in many cases it looked formally like a ‘free option’. A legal expert has written that ‘the flight of the Italians, according to the modern right of refugees, should be considered as mass expulsion’.51 The Exodus therefore has to be embedded into the broader phenomenon of forced population movements during the war and its aftermath.52

Notes 1. Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Joseph B. Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe 1945–1955, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962, p 5. The first documented study was published in Italy in 1980, edited by researchers from the Regional Institute for the Study of the Liberation Movement in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In its preface, Giovanni Miccoli argues strongly for the need to deal with the Exodus even though it is controversial for the Italian Left. Cristiana Colummi, Liliana Ferrari, Gianna Nassisi, Germano Trani (eds), Storia di un esodo. Istria 1945–1956, Trieste: Istituto Regionale per lo studio del movimento di liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 1980. 2. Elena Aga Rossi and Viktor Zaslavsky, Togliatti e Stalin. Il PCI e la politica estera staliniana negli archivi di Mosca, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997 (new enlarged edition 2008). 3. See the chapter by Pamela Ballinger on the reception of Italian refugees in Trieste. 4. Pierluigi Pallante, Foibe. Memoria e futuro, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2008. 5. See the balanced review by Marina Cattaruzza, ‘L’esodo istriano: Questioni interpretative’, in Ricerche di storia politica, 1, 1999, pp. 27–48. A recent example of the new dialogue between the different historiographies is to be found in the essays by Marta Verginella (a Slovene historian) and Mila Orlic´ (a Croat researcher) in Guido Crainz, Raoul Pupo, Silvia Salvatici (eds), Naufraghi della pace. Il 1945, i profughi e le memorie divise d´Europa, Rome: Donzelli, 2008, pp. 25–57. 6. The report is yet unpublished in Italy, but can be downloaded from: http:// www.storicamente.org/commissione_mista.pdf. Last accessed 16 June 2009. 7. Elio Apih, Italia, fascismo e antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia (1918–1943), Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1966. See also Anna Vinci, ‘Il fascismo al confine orientale’, in Storia d’Italia: Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Turin: Einaudi, 2002, pp. 321ff. 8. Raul Pupo, Il lungo esodo: Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l’esilio, Milan: Rizzoli, 2005, p. 33. See Milica Kacin-Wohinz, ‘I programmi di snazionalizzazione

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9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

The Exodus of Italians degli sloveni e croati nella Venezia Giulia’, in Storia contemporanea in Friuli, 18, (1988), pp. 111ff. Elio Apih, Trieste, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1988, p. 138. Enzo Collotti, Fascismo e politica di potenza. La politica estera 1922–1939, Milan: La Nuova Italia, 2000. MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941. Politics and Strategy in Italy’s Last War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Marco Cuzzi, L’occupazione italiana della Slovenia (1941–1943), Rome: USSME, 1998. Of fundamental importance is the document collection edited by Tone Ferenc, La provincia “italiana” di Lubiana. Documenti 1941–1943, Udine: Istituto Regionale, 1994. See Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, I campi del duce. L’internamento civile nell’Italia fascista (1940–1943), Turin: Einaudi, 2004. Davide Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 412. Nevenka Troha, ‘Il movimento di liberazione sloveno e i confini occidentali sloveni’, Qualestoria, 31, 2003, p. 36f. One of the most balanced studies is Raul Pupo and Roberto Spazzali, Foibe, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2003. Pupo, Il lungo esodo, p. 75. Karl Stuhlpfarrer, Le zone d’operazione Prealpi e Litorale Adriatico 1943–1945, Gorizia: Editrice Goriziana, 1979. One should not underestimate the hegemonic ambitions harboured in National-Socialist Austrian environments towards this region: See Enzo Collotti, Il Litorale Adriatico nel Nuovo Ordine Europeo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1974. Galliano Fogar, Sotto l’occupazione nazista nelle province orientali, Udine: Del Bianco, 1968. Roberto Gualtieri, Togliatti e la politica estera italiana. Dalla Resistenza al trattato di pace 1943–1947, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1995. On this complex course of events, see Daiana Franceschini, Porzûs. La Resistenza lacerata, Trieste: Istituto Regionale, 1996. Geoffrey Cox, The Race for Trieste, London: Kimber, 1977. In the words of Churchill’s famous Fulton speech of 5 March 1946, the iron curtain stretched ‘from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic’. See also Ballinger’s chapter on the post-war developments in Trieste. For a good analysis of the Trieste question, see Giampaolo Valdevit, La questione di Trieste 1941–1954. Politica internazionale e contesto locale, Milan: Angeli, 1986. These events ended in 1954 with the return of Trieste and Zone A to Italian rule. Pupo, Il lungo esodo, p. 99. Marina Cattaruzza, L’Italia e il confine orientale, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007, p. 294. Pupo, ‘L’esodo degli italiani da Zara, da Fiume e dall’Istria. Un quadro fattuale’ in Marina Cattaruzza, Marco Dogo and Raul Pupo (eds), Esodi. Trasferimenti forzati di popolazione nel Novecento europeo, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000, p. 186. This interpretation is maintained in Colummi, Storia di un esodo. See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Nationalitätenpolitik in Jugoslawien. Die deutsche Minderheit 1918–1978, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980.

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30. Some experts like the historian Ernesto Sestan were convinced that the majority of the population was Slav and would therefore vote to stay within Yugoslavia. Sestan’s report, commissioned by the Italian government, was recently republished by Giulio Cervani with the title Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di una storia etnica e culturale, Udine: Del Bianco, 1997. 31. Colummi, ‘Guerra, occupazione nazista e resistenza’ in Storia di un esodo, pp. 44f. 32. Based on Croatian archives: Orietta Moscarda, ‘La “giustizia del popolo”. Sequestri e confische a Fiume nel secondo dopoguerra’ in Qualestoria, 1997, pp. 209ff. 33. There was strong support for Bishop Comozzo, including from Rijeka’s working class; ibid., p. 83. 34. See Alfredo Bonelli, Fra Stalin e Tito. Cominformisti a Fiume 1948–1956, Trieste: Istituto Regionale, 1994 and Costantino Di Sante, Nei campi di Tito. Soldati, deportati e prigionieri di guerra italiani in Jugoslavia (1941–1952), Verona: Ombre corte, 2007. 35. Storia di un esodo, p. 158. The local Italian Communist Party was opposed to the coalition and refused to participate in it. 36. Ibid., p. 121. 37. Ibid., p. 355ff. 38. Ibid., p. 495. 39. Antonio Colella (ed.), L’esodo dalle terre adriatiche. Rilevazioni statistiche, Rome: Opera profughi giuliani e dalmati, 1958. 40. Pupo, Il lungo esodo, p. 190. 41. Regarding recent developments in Slovene and Croatian historiography, see the papers by Marta Verginella and Luciano Giuricin in Esodi, pp. 269–85. 42. For a ground-breaking study of the settlement of the refugees in the Trentino – Alto Adige region, see Elena Tonezzer, Volti di un esodo, Trento: Museo Storico in Trento, 2006. 43. Storia di un esodo, p. 510. 44. Ibid., p. 500. 45. The isolation of Trieste from Italy, fuelled by the resentments of the refugees, gave birth to an extreme nationalist and autonomist tradition in the city which would survive for a long time. See the interesting memoirs of one of the protagonists of that political period: Corrado Belci, Trieste. Memorie di trent’anni (1945–1975), Brescia: Morcelliana, 1989. 46. See the pioneering research based mostly on oral sources by Gloria Nemec, Un paese perfetto. Storia e memoria di una comunità in esilio. Grisignano d’Istria 1930–1960, Gorizia: Editrice Goriziana, 1998. More recently Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile. Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 47. It is estimated that between 5000 and 9000 Italians remained in Yugoslavia after 1956. Storia di un esodo, p. 495. 48. For a general picture, see Milica Kacin-Wohinz and Jože Pirjevecˇ (eds), Storia degli sloveni in Italia 1866–1998, Venice: Marsilio, 1998. 49. The final settlement of the question of the boundaries was formalised only with the Treaty of Osimo (November 1975). 50. Roberto Spazzali and Orietta Moscarda, ‘Istria epurata (1945–1949): Ragionamenti per una ricerca’, in Esodi, p. 239.

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51. Theodor Veiter, ‘Soziale Aspekte der italienischen Flüchtlinge aus den adriatischen Küstengebiete’, in Theo Mayer-Maly, Albert Nowak and Theodor Tomandl (eds), Festschrift für Hans Schmitz, Vienna, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1967, vol. II, p. 280. 52. Guido Crainz, Il dolore e l’esilio. L’Istria e le memorie divise d’Europa, Rome: Donzelli, 2005 and Perrti Ahonen, Gustavo Corni, Jerzy Kochanowski, Rainer Schulze, Tamás Stark and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, People on the Move: Forced Population Movements during the War and in Its Aftermath, Oxford: Berg, 2008.

5 Evacuation versus Repatriation: The Polish–Ukrainian Population Exchange, 1944–6 Catherine Gousseff

Introduction In the population transfers that occurred at the end of the Second World War in Central and Eastern Europe, the case of Poland is unique, as mass population movements there accompanied a westward shift of the entire national territory by over 200 kilometres. While it gave up its eastern border region (Kresy) to the western republics of the USSR (Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania), Poland drifted towards the west into the formerly German areas of Silesia and Pomerania. In the history of population displacements in this country, this example represents the most accomplished of the great post-war ethno-demographic surgeries, as Poles evacuated from the new Soviet eastern territories settled into the annexed western territories from where Germans had been expelled. But the history of this enormous movement has until now been unequally explored; research concerning the new western territories has long been conducted and flourished, while the history of population displacements in the eastern areas has yet to be written. Apart from the significant and long-established taboo on this chapter of Polish–Soviet relations, different explanations can be given as to why historians have taken less interest in the population transfers in this particular area. In the international context, the settlement of the new border and subsequent population transfers were considered a solution to an old problem, rather than a post-war question. In their local context, meanwhile, these population transfers were legitimised by intense inter-ethnic fighting between Poles and Ukrainians, which occurred at the same time. The new shape of the eastern borders of Poland in favour of the USSR confirmed the earlier Soviet conquest of these territories under 91

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the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, along with the Secret Protocols on the spheres of influence. It also confirmed the location of the dividing line which had been suggested by the British at the end of the First World War (the so-called Curzon line), although it was firmly condemned by the Western allies in the Second World War. The conviction that the Polish population, being in a minority, had no legitimacy to exert their power as a nation state in these border areas was rooted well before the Soviets made use of the ethnic case in 1939 to assert themselves as liberators of the conquered eastern border region (Kresy) from Polish domination. Stalin referred back to the Curzon line in talks with the Allies over the new Polish–Soviet border, and later too when negotiating with the Poles.1 He thus alleged that this new state of affairs was merely the implementation of an old plan which had not been his by design, and in fine affirmed that this was a fair penalty for Polish expansionism. This almost universal consent on an international scale is one of the reasons why historians have taken so little interest, as the matter was considered cleared up by ‘Great Politics’.2 After the Second World War, the victorious powers shared the view that population transfers and the removal of minorities were a prerequisite for the long-term pacification of Central and Eastern Europe, as these were a major source of instability. The case of the Polish-Ukrainian territories appeared the best evidence that these states had to undergo a new ethnic shaping, as since 1943 these border areas had suffered from devastating and murderous inter-ethnic fighting. This ‘necessary evil’ would ensure lasting peace. The communist regimes afterwards remained silent on this aspect of their local history, which then burst out abruptly when the Soviet bloc collapsed. Beyond the specific question of population transfers, the new national post-communist historiographies take great interest in the Polish–Ukrainian confrontations, not least due to the intensity of the fighting there, but also because they are able to anchor it in a history of national resistance.3 This history, censored over decades, is still being transformed into a positive national reaffirmation in post-communist societies, although it also brings back old antagonisms on a bilateral scale. It is possible to isolate two major and extreme events which mark out the period of conflict. First, in 1943–4 the Ukrainians perpetrated mass murders of at least 80,000 Polish villagers, mainly in Volhynia.4 Second, the Polish authorities began Operation Wisła in spring 1947, when they deported between 120,000 and 150,000 Ukrainians from the eastern areas and dispersed them into recently acquired western ones, as the Polish–Soviet border had been closed since the middle of 1946.

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Between these two main events, we find varying degrees of violence between clandestine armies such as the AK, UPA, OUN and pro-Soviet groups or Soviet power, during which civilians often became targets, resulting in 15,000–20,000 victims among Polish Ukrainians.5 Because of the diversity and the intensity of these conflicts, contemporary historians often qualify this period as an actual ‘civil war’ which lasted until the end of the 1940s in Soviet Ukraine. This focus by Ukrainian and Polish historians on this ‘war within the war’ – enforced by the controversy concerning the responsibility of one or the other for the murder of civilians – led to neglect of the history of minority transfers. These movements happened between autumn 1944 and summer 1946, precisely between the Volhynia massacres and Operation Wisła. During this period about 1,300,000 people (500,000 Ukrainians and 800,000 Poles) were displaced. How were these transfers conceived and carried out? What was the purpose of the re-localisation and integration process? It is upon these big questions that this chapter intends to shed light. The chapter reconstructs the perspectives of the main protagonists in this history: the Ukrainian and Polish administrators appointed to organise the minorities’ return to their respective homelands. As well as the daily acts of violence which formed the background to their bureaucratic encounters, their appraisals of the populations to be displaced, their strategies and the injunctions coming from their national authorities all testify to the complexity of their task and the tragic aspect of this ‘social engineering’ at the end of the war. This chapter particularly considers how this population exchange looked like from the local level, the way in which it happened and its eventual impact upon the minorities’ destiny. But in order to set this localised approach, we need first to understand the broader context of the transfers in the new Polish–Soviet border areas.

The political context The population movements organised in the context of the changing Soviet–Polish border are different from others in the area mainly because of their earlier timing. The Soviets decided to organise these transfers in September 1944, soon after the Red Army crossed the river Bug, which marked the new border. They clearly intended to initiate a vast operation of supervised migrations in the Army’s wake in order to fix de facto the new interstate ethnic border. Poland was at that time far from being liberated from German occupation, so these movements decided by Moscow were a problem for the Poles due mainly to their

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early date. The only Polish state representatives were the governmentin-exile in London (which had broken off diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1943) and the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wywolenia Narodowego, PKWN), formed in Moscow in mid-1944, whose only legitimacy was based on its support by the highest Soviet authorities. While it pretended to represent the interests of the Polish state, this body could not be compared with a real state interlocutor. This situation explains why the first bilateral agreements on population transfers in September 1944 were not signed between Moscow and the PKWN, but with and at the level of the Republics of Ukraine, Belorussia and Lithuania, all of which had significant Polish minorities in their new territories.6 With the exception of small details, these Polish–Ukrainian, Polish–Belorussian and Polish–Lithuanian agreements were identical.7 They stipulated that minority transfers should be carried out in accordance with the principle of individuals’ freedom, who were invited to register for their departure. They had the right to take their belongings (up to two tons per household) with them. Their remaining property would be evaluated and they would be compensated by a grant of corresponding housing in the new territory of settlement. The text of the agreements anticipated a quick conclusion of population movements and scheduled the end of the operations for 1 February 1945. That date soon appeared as unrealistic and was postponed until June 1946. All three agreements were based upon the principle of reciprocity. They dealt not only with the Polish minorities of the three Soviet Republics, but also with the Lithuanian, Belorussian and Ukrainian minorities of Poland, who were also encouraged to go back to their ‘Homeland’. However, the Belorussian and Lithuanian minority transfers to their Republics appear to have been quite subsidiary. In practice, Lithuanian and Belorussian Poles willing to leave met with many obstacles. By spring 1946 over 200,000 Lithuanian Poles volunteering to go to Poland still had not been evacuated from Lithuania and were eventually de facto prevented from leaving after the expiry of the time limit.8 Meanwhile, population exchanges between Poland and Ukraine were encouraged by both sides and resulted in massive minority departures. In other words, these events cannot be analysed and understood against the Polish–Soviet background alone. The diversity of plans for population displacements challenges the very existence of a ‘unique’ Soviet policy for nationalities which was to have been faithfully implemented in the western border areas of the USSR. On the contrary, this history of movements in this period outlines the importance of local

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stakes, and any explanation has to be given mainly in the light of previous relations (and disputes) between the neighbours, the Poles on the one side, the Lithuanians, Belorussians and Ukrainians on the other. In each of the territories these difficult relations had acquired a very specific shape and tone. According to the agreements concluded in September 1944, Ukrainian administrations in Poland and Polish administrations in Ukraine were to be set up to organise the return of their minority populations. Their task was to register candidates, evaluate the properties they would leave behind, and plan the convoys according to departure and arrival locations. Each administration had a central delegation (the Ukrainian administration in Lublin, and the Polish administration in Łuck in Volhynia), along with local agencies in districts comprising a strong concentration of minorities. The Ukrainian administration created 11, then 13 and eventually 15 local delegations, while the Polish administration set up 18. Each administration had to form strong relations with representatives from the other side because of the bilateral aspect of the decisions. This had to be done on the central scale (mixed commissions), as well as locally.

The language of the transfers: ‘Evacuation’ of the Ukrainians, ‘Repatriation’ of the Poles As a number of historians have pointed out, there is no doubt that the decision to proceed with the ethnic homogenisation of the border territories came from Moscow and that the Soviet government’s first aim was to make concrete a new demarcation, well before it was clarified and agreed upon by the international authorities and Polish society. Should we thus consider the Ukrainian leaders as simple instruments under orders given from the top? Khrushchev’s bias in the course of the decisions and the one-sided Ukrainian interests that appeared during the planning of the transfers testify, on the contrary, to the resolve of the Republic and stress the operations’ high stakes. Khrushchev, then Head of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic, expressed his commitment in favour of the displacement of the populations living in the border areas in reports handed to Stalin in summer 1944. These came from Soviet representatives on the Ukrainian and Belorussian front lines who depicted the situation of the Ukrainian minorities in the eastern border regions as alarming and tragic. Although the Poles of Volhynia were subject to repeated attacks by Ukrainian gangs, Khrushchev remained silent

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about these events, and instead emphasised the daily oppression of the Ukrainian minorities in Poland by nationalist Polish gangs. Arguably these clashes were an obvious consequence of the conflicts in Volhynia, but Khrushchev’s analysis obscured this point. The Ukrainian leader repeatedly emphasised the strong concentration of minorities in certain areas, specifically the Chełm area (Kholm in Russian, hence the use of the name Kholmshchina for this area), while talking about the need for a plan to remove these minorities to the Ukraine. He stressed that the annexation of this territory to the Republic of Ukraine was legitimate.9 This Ukrainian plan for expanding the territory beyond the Bug – that is, beyond the line of the rivers drawn in 1939 for the first annexation of the Polish eastern regions – had already been considered by Ukrainian leaders during the Sixth Session of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic in spring 1944. In order to put weight behind his proposal, Khrushchev handed Stalin many apparently ‘spontaneous’ requests from Ukrainian groups in the Kholmshchina pleading emphatically for the integration of their lands into the Republic of Ukraine.10 These village communities described in detail the oppression they bore from the Poles, and brought back the memory of the massive assaults perpetuated against Orthodox churches and Ukrainian schools on the eve of the war. The ‘Great Ukraine’ project upheld by Khrushchev was disapproved of by Stalin, but in the course of its elaboration the Ukrainian leadership established itself as the herald of Ukraine and its border minorities.11 The Ukrainian leaders began to implement their second plan in autumn 1944, that is the setting up of the Ukrainian minority transfers. This project consisted in sending most of the Ukrainians to be displaced to the kolkhozy (collective farms) of central and eastern Ukraine which needed labour, particularly male. The planning of these transfers as they appear in the statistics of late 1944 specified the settlement in kolkhozy of 70 per cent of the population still to be removed, while only 30 per cent of households would be sent to the new western areas of the country.12 In a sense, these plans answer the question legitimately raised by historians about the designation of these transfers: repatriation or deportation? Edward Misilo drew attention to this question in the title of his compilation of archival documents on the history of the displacement of the Ukrainians from Poland.13 Regardless of the apparently voluntary basis of the departures, the Ukrainian administration in Poland was responsible for the plans for the movement of all registered Ukrainians and described these operations as ‘evacuations’, as the agreement of September 1944 had stipulated. In spite of the supposed neutrality of this designation, can we suggest these displacements were forced?

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Before further analysing the very diverse reception by the population itself after its transfer to Ukraine, we need to understand the wider significance of the Ukrainian plan. This plan did indeed aim at the repopulation of the kolkhozy by the minorities of the border areas of Poland, and considered carefully the transfer of people and of their belongings, particularly their cattle, tools and equipment, personal possessions, and even part of their grain. According to the Ukrainian leadership, the intention was not only to supply a workforce to particularly devastated areas, but also to implement a real economic transfer that would replenish the livestock of the kolkhozy, which had been almost completely destroyed. One expert observed during a meeting of the Ukrainian apparatus: We have to evacuate as many animals as possible […] We find here very good Dutch cows, very productive. We have to work in order to get sure that the people take along their heifers and goats, and with this supply we shall set the kolkhozy upright again. This task is very important and we should not miss this opportunity. Many farmers will sell their horses if they get to know they will have to give them away […] but we have in our places a shortage of horses. Concerning the poultry, I do not have precise orders for you know that the Germans brought along a poultry disease […] That is why we recommend the farmers not to take too many hens but rather the geese and the ducks […] There are very few houses left there. I think that if the farmer is able to take some wood without exceeding the tons he should because we cannot afford to give some.14 In other words, anything that could help the kolkhozy was to be taken along. Nevertheless, this goal could not be achieved by forced deportations alone, which were familiar to the oppressive Soviet system. On the contrary, it implied the use of all possible means of propaganda to obtain the free consent and support of the people concerned. The way in which this economic transfer of Ukrainian rural households was conducted was similar in many ways to the great operation of mass emergency evacuations of civilians, industry and administration carried out during Nazi Germany’s surprise attack on the USSR in June 1941, during which 16 million Soviet citizens were displaced to the Urals and beyond.15 From this perspective, the term ‘evacuation’ used in official documents testifies to the aim of the Ukrainian leaders, and refers to a well-established exercise of the Soviet apparatus at the beginning of the war. But the Ukrainian scheme in autumn 1944 should also

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be considered in the context of the post-war climate and the need for an economic boost. Is it not a first sign of the Soviets seizing resources in the liberated territories in order to rebuild the USSR? The Poles of Ukraine were supposed to benefit from the same right to take along their possessions in order to balance those taken by the Ukrainians. However, this equal treatment turned out to be, as we shall see below, one in theory only. The nature of this vast economic transplantation implied a need for expert managers to be sent to Poland. The Cadres Department of the Political Bureau of the Ukrainian Communist Party nominated the staff of the Ukrainian administration in Poland. It contained experts in planning, economic management and human resources. For example, the Chief Plenipotentiary of the Ukraine in charge of the evacuations in Lublin, Podgornyj, used to be Vice-Minister of Food Production of the Republic. His deputy, and later also Plenipotentiary, Romashchenko, had been the Personnel Director of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Many experienced managers were placed among the administrators, usually local Party leaders (obkomy). Staff of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (the NKVD) also played a significant role and were placed systematically at their side. Every level of responsibility (central and local) was formed with a binomial direction comprising a qualified ‘planner’ and a named ‘operational’ manager of the NKVD in charge of logistics.16 The Ukrainian project of economic transfer corresponded with the profile of the Ukrainian minorities, who were mainly farmers. By contrast, the Polish minorities of Ukraine were characterised by a significant proportion of urban populations, particularly inhabitants from the larger cities of L’vov and Stanislawow. It would be preposterous to suggest any intended objective on the part of the Poles to these transfers in autumn 1944; they were in no position to sport such an objective. The Polish interlocutors had no choice other than to accept the enforced Soviet decision, which put them in a difficult situation. And the historians, too: if the existence of any particular objective at the point of signing the transfer agreements is dismissed, what then were the main concerns on the Polish side? As soon as the Polish administration in Ukraine was set up, the population movements were termed as ‘repatriation’, a term used for all transfers until 1946. The use of this terminology has been at the centre of much historiographical debate.17 The term appeared inadequate to those who had settled long ago in the territories now under Soviet control; how could they be ‘repatriated’ to a country they had never, as far as they were concerned, left in the first place? The chief aim of this new

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language was to assert the normality of the process and of the new environment, and to prove the full cooperation of the Polish authorities in the implementation of the post-war new order. But in reality the term was less neutral than it initially seemed, not least because of who was covered by it. It soon appeared that the agreements of September 1944 affected only people living in the annexed territories. They excluded those former Polish citizens deported during the first Soviet annexation of 1939. Although they had been granted an amnesty in 1941 (when the USSR joined the Allied camp), most of them were still living in remote places such as Siberia and the Central Asian Republics. These deportees (there were around 260,000 of them) had been forced to acquire Soviet citizenship in 1943. Their fates were determined by the fact that significant changes happened in precisely that year. After it had broken off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile, the Soviet government used those groups of exdeportees to influence the face of its new Polish ally. The Soviets created an army from them – the famous Army headed by General Berling – in order to assist the Red Army during the liberation of Poland.18 At the same time, they formed the Union of Polish Patriots (Zwia˛zek Patriotów Polskich, ZPP) in Moscow, whose mission was to register the diverse Polish groupings and families to offer them social and cultural help, and also to enrol them into the new Army.19 What would be the future of these groups, and would they be authorised to leave for Poland? Their fate remained unanswered until summer 1945, when the Polish–Soviet agreement explicitly raised the question of their return. The Polish administration included former deportees who had become members of the Union of Polish Patriots, now chosen by the PKWN to take care of the question of the evacuations. They included men such as Captain Pizlo, a Deputy Plenipotentiary of Poland, who until summer 1945 led the central administration of Łuck in charge of minority transfers. From the moment of its creation, local Poles inundated this administration with pleas for the return of relatives and neighbours who had been deported in 1940.20 Rather than remaining silent about these requests, the Polish administration in Łuck handed them to the Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow, as well as to the central administration in Lublin.21 It thus appears that the use of the term ‘repatriation’ was far from expressing the supposed normalisation of the transfers, as it later might have seemed. The term conveyed the attachments of many Polish leaders who had stayed in the USSR during the entire war, and represented their concerns over the future of their compatriots still w gła˛b ZSRR (in the depths of the Soviet Union).

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As they insisted on this ‘repatriation’ process, they were openly putting pressure on the Soviets to acknowledge the principle of the return of former deportees.

Visions of national consciousness: The Soviet Ukrainian administrators and the Ukrainian minorities in Poland The Soviets selected the Ukrainian team sent to Poland for the evacuation of the Ukrainian minorities mainly on the basis of technical and logistical skills. But this team lacked one fundamental requirement, namely knowledge of the land. Although most of them came from central Ukraine, chiefly Kiev, and were ethnic Ukrainians, their cultural and historical background was nonetheless very different from that of their ‘compatriots’ who had settled long ago in a Polish environment. But that was precisely the Ukrainian leadership’s political calculation: the administrators should not be familiar with these minorities, since their faithfulness towards the USSR was still to be tested.22 In their minds, ‘reliable administrators’ could only be proven managers from age-old Soviet Ukraine and not from the recently annexed territories of the west. In these conditions, how did the Soviet Ukrainian authorities as a whole consider the Ukrainian minorities in Poland? When the Red Army crossed the river Bug, passed through Chełm and invaded the region of Lublin, troops were concentrated in this border area, which was precisely the territory that Khrushchev wanted to unite with the Ukraine. As already noted, he substantiated his request to Stalin for this project with numerous reports acknowledging how enthusiastically the local Ukrainians had been welcoming the Red Army, and how they had to endure daily assaults from their Polish neighbours. Different reasons explain the very strong empathy shown by Soviet representatives towards the Ukrainian minority in the Kholmshchina. The military emphasised that local youth were willing to join the Red Army and that the majority of the Ukrainian inhabitants considered the USSR and Ukraine as their homeland.23 Most of them belonged to the Orthodox Church, which had been subjected to fierce repression shortly before the Second World War. ‘And the religious membership plays a significant role’, noted one Red Army officer. ‘The Kholmshchinians want to go to Orthodox areas if they are to be displaced.’24 The loyalty of the Ukrainians did not falter, in spite of the failure of the annexation plan, and in autumn farmers rushed into the registration offices to declare their willingness to depart to the kolkhozy of central Ukraine. ‘Here,

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our Army has done a good job, we have already told them everything’, the Vice-Commissioner of the NKVD of Ukraine declared, underlining this enthusiasm.25 The propaganda proved to be effective, and these first flows of voluntary migrations helped the administrators arriving from Kiev to focus on the organisation of the evacuation in the Kholmshchina. As the local administrations were set up in the border areas, the reports gradually began to emphasise the contrast between the welcoming mood of the Ukrainians in Kholmshchina and the difficulties arising in south-eastern areas. This feeling of a strong cleavage was proved by the existence of ‘Ukrainian nationalist gangs’ concentrated in the south-eastern territories and hiding mostly in the mountains near the Slovak border. Moreover, the Soviets underlined the fact that this division matched the religious zones of the borders:26 In its majority, the Orthodox clergy supports the evacuation of the Ukrainians […] but the Greek-Catholics do not. This explains most of the different reactions of the Ukrainians to the evacuations in the northern part, where they are Orthodox, and the southern part, where the influence of the Greek-Catholics is very strong. The Orthodox Archbishop of Chełm […] encourages the clergy to actively participate in the organisation of the transfers […] The GreekCatholic response to the evacuations is entirely different. They are more or less under the influence of the Vatican.27 At the same time, the conviction grew that the northern Ukrainians’ loyalty was linked to the fact that the area had belonged to the Russian Empire after Poland’s partition in 1795 until the end of the First World War.28 The Soviets took the next step when they eventually concluded that one could ‘explain the difference in the reactions by the fact that the northern territories were Russian until 1918 and that the majority of its population sees Russia and the USSR as its homeland while the southern territories do not feel affected for they belonged to the AustroHungarian Empire and to Poland’.29 From then on, the authorities made use of distant history and religious distinction to distinguish the ‘good’ Ukrainians from the ‘bad’, and based upon these their explanations for the resistance they encountered in the South-East. Ultimately this argument showed a striking indifference towards the recent history of the war.30 They only recalled history in an anecdotal way. They only mentioned in passing the population exchanges conducted by the Germans and the German policy aimed at

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the division between the Poles and the Ukrainians. Moreover, the reports neatly glossed over extermination of the local Jews. In the beginning of 1945 the administration in the South-East was not sufficiently organised to begin the evacuations, while some districts of the region had only just been liberated from German occupation. It is therefore noticeable, but surprising, that the scenario was written before the events happened, and leads one to wonder about the extent to which the construction of this figure of the ‘hostile Austro-Greek-Catholic Ukrainian’ stirred up the future conflict against the locals. In any case, prejudice was already strongly imprinted in minds and it demonstrated the existence of a latent age-old hatred against the Greek-Catholic religion.

The population exchange: A shared history, a reversed history Until spring 1945 the administrators did not consider whether the Polish or the Ukrainian minorities agreed or objected to their departure for the same reasons or not. We have already seen that the Ukrainian administration in eastern Poland focused mainly on the organisation of the transfers from the Kholmshchina to the kolkhozy of central Ukraine. The Red Army more or less secured the area while ‘gangs’ kept looting and attacking local farmers left alone by the lack of any Polish local authority. The first convoys left in November 1944 and by the end of that year about 17,000 people had been evacuated. These apparently modest results nevertheless confirmed the strict implementation of the transfer logistics and their efficiency. The Polish administration in western Ukraine was set up with difficulty and only step by step. Captain Pizlo arrived in Łuck by the end of October 1944 along with only eight staff members.31 Due to the lack of Polish staff in the local agencies, the Ukrainian authorities decided to register candidates themselves. This practice infuriated the Polish leadership, particularly Władysław Wolski, Chief Executive of the State Administration of Repatriations (Pan´stwowy Urza˛d Repatriacyjny, PUR), a body created in Poland in October 1944 to supervise the organisation of the repatriation, who demanded that the Ukrainians stop.32 This decision showed the pressure the Ukrainians put on the Poles to prepare the transfers exactly when PUR was firmly contesting massive departures, arguing there were no welcoming places in Poland at their disposal. Only those individuals from families who had relatives in the country able to house them were granted permission to leave.33 During the last two months of 1944, PUR clarified its views concerning

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the returns with two major decisions, both of which would later guide the entire organisation of the transfers. They were based upon the distinction made very early on between rural and urban populations: the repatriation of the former could be made at the same pace as the departures of Ukrainian households on the other side of the border, in order to place families into the vacant farms. This mechanistic vision of population exchange proved to be a short-term plan and was gradually altered during the course of Poland’s liberation. However, the Polish authorities continued prioritising the rural population. The other part of the repatriation policy aimed at the protection of the urban population and consisted of postponing their departures as long as possible, so as to be able to secure their organisation and offer the best possible conditions of settlement. In spite of its pro-Soviet orientation, the new Polish team did not share much of its ally’s ideology of class and thus focused on élites and cultural wealth, considering them a key treasure for the reconstruction of Poland. Wolski himself was a leading advocate of this policy, even though he was a long-time communist and had spent the war in the USSR. The first Poles to leave the Ukraine in late 1944 were the farmers of Volhynia. It is difficult to demarcate these first convoys with any precision from the continuous collective flights from an area devastated by mass murders committed against the Polish population by its neighbours. These first departures encountered opposition from the Ukrainian authorities over the transportation of farm animals, which would later reappear as a constant problem. It had been stipulated in the instructions concerning transfers that families had the right to take their animals if there was enough room for them in the wagons. However, the Ukrainian executive in Łuck forbade the transport of Polish farmers’ livestock.34 This question quickly became one of the most discussed subjects in the administrative correspondence, and already in late 1944 it formed the main subject of complaints. Later on the Ukrainians used the pretext of compulsory sanitation checks to seize Polish cattle.35 Thus, while they encouraged their minorities to take along all their livestock, the Ukrainians used all possible means to deny this right to Polish minorities. The Polish side kept pointing out this lack of reciprocity.36 From January 1945 onwards the transfers were made more difficult by the extreme shortage of railway trains, as the Red Army was progressively leaving the border areas to move westwards to carry on its campaign. The Polish–Ukrainian border zones were quickly struck by a double movement. On the one hand, the Army in the West needed

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constant weapons and equipment from the East. On the other hand, Ukrainian civilians began returning on a vast scale from the distant regions of the Soviet Union where they had been evacuated in 1941. However, the cross-border transfers had not stopped. Transporting the families and possessions to stations implied the requisition of many horse-carts. The distance – up to 30 km – implied several days’ travel to places where trains were stopping, often not even actual stations. On both sides of the border thousands of families were stationed for weeks in winter along tracks, without supplies or shelter, prey to looters and gangs.37 Reports on both Poles and Ukrainians described it as their most awful experience. People had to endure this hardship until the very end of the transfers, but the complete improvisation of the organisation during the first winter made it particularly difficult. Additionally, the Ukrainians, more so than the Poles, were not much welcomed in their new ‘homeland’. In fact, the farmers from Kholmshchina arrived in broken-down kolkhozy unprepared for their arrival. The locals showed them strong hostility.38 The newcomers did not want their livestock to become the common property of the kolkhozy, and this question brought about many conflicts. Many were called ‘Polaks’ or ‘Kulaks’, and were left alone in despair or housed in rough-and-ready camps. Many began trying to go back to Poland. The kolkhozy repopulation scheme showed from its very beginning the signs of its failure. In January and February 1945, as the Red Army began to launch its great battle of Berlin, the pressure on the Poles of Ukraine to depart gradually transformed into mass arrests. The urban élite, as well as many members of the Polish administration in charge of the evacuation, were accused of subversion and sabotage because of their passivity and apathy concerning the transfers.39 In fact, these administrators were following the PUR’s demand to wait for conditions in Poland (and in the new western territories promised by Stalin as a compensation for the loss of land in the East) to improve. This great campaign of ‘terror’ – as Wolski himself called it – almost coincided with the Yalta Conference.40 Until then, the vast majority of the Poles living in the border regions of Ukraine rejected the principle of their departure and were convinced that the Western allies would not let the USSR expand to the West. Rumours abounded about a new war about to be waged against Moscow.41 However, signs of international convergence became more and more evident. This unavoidable reality, along with actual repression, gradually changed people’s point of view. Acceptance progressively replaced resistance, and expectation of victory – confirmed day after day – helped to change individuals’ minds. In May, Captain

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Pizlo officially proclaimed a shift in PUR’s strategy.42 The Polish authorities, after having held back the transfer movements, began to encourage them. They now emphasised what people could gain if they headed for the new, fertile western lands, compared to what they would leave behind. This growing acquiescence by the Polish minorities of the Ukraine appeared to be very different from the condition of the Ukrainian minorities in Poland. In February and March, the movements on both sides of the border were almost brought to a standstill due to the lack of trains, and operations were only resumed with the return of limited transport in spring. However, signs of resistance were growing. Clandestine returns of the first ‘enthusiasts’ aroused rumours about the tragic fate that the newcomers had faced in the kolkhozy.43 The authorities themselves realised the difficulties of integration into collective agriculture. Once departure preparations by the Ukrainian Poles sped up, they also began to consider the possibility of sending people to the new Soviet western territories instead. While the Polish team was implementing its plan (which was to move the minorities from the East to the new western territories), the Ukrainian team made use of the mechanics of population exchange, having in mind the settlement of Ukrainians into the vacant farms.44 This shift did not prove to have much influence in reality. Ukrainian nationalist groups hindered the transfer operations successfully and were strengthened by the agreements they made with the Polish Resistance. The minorities appeared to be actually extremely reluctant to transfer, either because they were frightened of ‘gangs’ who attacked candidates for departure, according to some observers, or because they supported the nationalist gangs. Summer 1945 was the turning point in the history of these population transfers and confirmed the reversal of the behaviour witnessed among the Polish and Ukrainian minorities. The newly established National Union Government in Poland concluded new agreements with the Soviet Union under the frame of bilateral relations. The government agreed on the new border line and the principle of the evacuation that now also comprised the return of the former Polish deportees to their homeland.45 Additionally, it obtained from the Kiev government guarantees concerning the organisation of the transfers – a gradually timed succession of departures from the towns until 1946 and the right to transfer cultural possessions, in particular those belonging to the Polish Church. This marked the beginning of a new era of actual negotiation. The Potsdam Conference testified to the international consensus on the question of the westward Polonisation process. From then on, the

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authorities intensified their propaganda in the Ukraine among Poles, who would be pioneers in recently conquered lands. This propaganda echoed with the convoys of ex-deportees coming from Central Asia and Siberia and travelled across the Ukraine from autumn 1945 onwards. They were ‘natural’ propagandists of the overwhelming joy of rejoining their homeland. All these signs of gradual normalisation accompanied an intensification of departures from the Ukraine, despite the persistence of several logistical problems, particularly transport. The conveying of people westwards happened at the same time as the Germans of Silesia were savagely expelled from spring 1945 onwards. Meanwhile it became more obvious day by day that the minorities in eastern Poland opposed their transfer to Ukraine. Since the transfers had begun, the Ukrainian administration repeatedly complained about a lack of cooperation from the Polish authorities. During summer 1945, it called more frequently for help, and the head of the Ukrainian administration in Lublin repeated his requests to obtain the Polish Army’s intervention in the region and support for the transfers.46 This insistence reflected a shift in the Ukrainian authorities’ perspective. It was a response to the failure of the plan to repopulate the kolkhozy, and most of all to the intensifying conflicts in the border areas. These minorities were not simply direct or indirect supporters of the gangs, but also prevented a head-on confrontation with the guerrillas. The call for the Polish Army’s assistance acknowledged broad use of violence and constraint. The fight against nationalism was gradually becoming the main objective; no longer was the priority to conduct a planned transfer so as to boost the agricultural economy of Ukraine. The eradication of national resistance groups implied massive minority displacements, a process which also strengthened anti-Ukrainian sentiments among central and local Polish authorities. The conflict became yet further radicalised when the Ukrainian national resistance leaders decided to systematically destroy the farms left behind by departing families. From September 1945 the Polish Army repeatedly intervened in border areas and led violent repressions, such as the raid against the village of Morochowska in the Sanok area on 25 January 1946, which killed over 50 people. This event remained as an example in the memory of the tragic Ukrainian history of transfers. In April 1946, a few weeks before the planned end of the transfers, the head of the Ukrainian administration in Lublin observed that the assistance of the Polish Army had had a significant impact on departures, but he regretted the lack of organisation; the registration of possessions had been totally stopped in some districts.47 These last moments became a

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prelude to the Wisła Operation, which led to the deportation and forced dispersion of the remaining Ukrainian minorities to the new western Polish areas, after the closing of the Polish–Ukrainian border in mid1946.48 During spring 1946, Ukrainian administrators emphasised the escalation of gang violence and sabotage operations. Bombed bridges, damaged railway tracks, villages of those departing set on fire, attacks and looting of convoys and dreadful mass murders punctuate the reports. They do not hide the vast uprising of the border zones. Many households departed to escape this civil war. Despite their bureaucratic precision, the reports of this period mention the feeling of haste and the impossibility of controlling the departures as the deadline came ever closer.49 The recorded results of the transfer operations of Ukrainians show that two-thirds of the people involved eventually settled in western Ukraine. This was the exact opposite of the initial plan.50 The majority of them underwent collectivisation in these newly annexed areas, together with all its repression and resistance actions.

Conclusions: Towards the better and the worse This chapter has depicted the framework of this history of movement and violence on the basis of the documents left by the national administrators. Could it be reconstituted from the points of view of the people who were transferred? Memoirs and testimonies abound in Poland, as they are stimulated by the existence of many memorial places and initiatives. Although they describe at length the trauma caused by inter-ethnic conflicts which accompanied the end of the war, they also outline the shape of integration and readjustment, and point to the opportunities given by the Polonisation of the former German regions. People’s journeys – at first chaotic and characterised as odysseys through a devastated country – concluded with the settlement of these pioneers who, in spite of all the shortages and instability, gradually took root in the ‘recovered lands’, along with Poland’s reconstruction. But what can be told about the fate of the displaced Ukrainians, considering the memory vacuum of their history? The almost complete absence of biographical testimonies is probably more significant than any other explanation. This population transfer corresponded with the beginning of a new war. This conflict turned into a fight by the authorities against the nationalists, along with the forced collectivisation of land – resistance to which was equated with nationalist opposition and which brought about in turn a new episode of deportations. The separate destinies of

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these two minorities represents some of the differences between life and experiences in the USSR, and in those of its neighbours, in spite of their joining in the socialist adventure.

Notes 1. Chapter translated from the French by Jean Gousseff. The Polish–Soviet Agreement of 16 July 1945 refers explicitly to the establishment of the Curzon line. See Yurii Slivka (ed.), Deportatsii: Zakhidni zemli Ukraïny kinca 30-kh-pochatku 50-kh- rr. Dokumenty, materialy, spohady, vol I, 1939–1945, L’viv: Natsional’na akademiia nauk Ukraïny, 1996, pp. 559–61. 2. Recent historiography has focused on publishing documents and papers about specific Soviet Republics’ participation in the transfers. No book detailing the process from both sides and using archives available today has yet been published. The collection of the Ukrainian administration of the transfers only opened in 2006 and was used in the recent book by Jan Pisulinski, Przesiedlenie ludnos´ci ukrain´skiej z Polski do USRR w latach 1944–1947, Rzeszów, WUR, 2009. 3. In the works of the Ukrainian-Polish Commission on Difficult Questions, Polish and Ukrainian contributions on population transfers refer more to inter-ethnic fighting than to the analysis of state actions: see Polska-Ukraina: trudne pytania, no. 8, Warsaw: Karta, 2001. 4. Grzegorz Motyka, ‘Postawy wobec konfliktu polsko-ukrain´skiego w latach 1939–1953 w zalez˙nos´ci od przynalez˙nos´ci ethnicznej, pan´stwowej i religijnej’, in K. Jasiewicz (ed.), Tygiel narodów. Stosunki społeczne i etniczne na dawnych ziemiach wschodnich Rzeczypospolitej 1939–1953, Warszawa-London, PAN-RYTM, 2002, pp. 279–407. 5. The AK (Armia Krajowa; Home Army) was the armed Polish resistance to the Germans under the authority of the Polish government in exile. The UPA (Ukraïns’ka Povstans’ka Armiya; Ukrainian Insurgent Army) was founded in Volhynia in 1943 to ‘eradicate the Poles from Ukraine’. The OUN (Organizatsija Ukraïns’kih Natsionalistiv; Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists) had been founded in Vienna in 1929 to fight Polish oppression through violence. The OUN, unlike the UPA, chose to fight along with the SS against the Soviets after Stalingrad. At the end of the war, however, the two organisations acted very closely, if not together, in Ukraine and Poland. See Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations. Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569–1999, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003. 6. Some historians think Stalin’s strategy was to make the Allies believe that the agreements did not bind Soviet central power. See Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych-czterdziestych XX wieku, vol II, Warsaw-Kyiv: Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Wewne˛trznych i Administracji RP, Pan´stwowe Archiwum Sluz˙by Bezpieczen´stwa Ukrainy, 2000, p. 41. 7. The Polish-Lithuanian agreement of 22 September 1944 is in Stanisław Ciesielski, Przesiedlenie ludnos´ci polskiej z kresów wschodnich do Polski 1944–1947, Warsaw: Neriton PAN, 1999, p. 55. The Polish–Ukrainian agreement of September 1944 is in Slivka, p. 287. 8. Edward Kołodziej, ‘Sprawozdania Głównego Pełnomocnika Rza˛du RP do spraw Ewakuacji Ludnos´ci Polskiej z Litewskiej SSR w Wilnie z przebiegu zbiórowej

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repatriacji w latach 1945–1947’, Teki Archiwalne (seria nowa), 1997, p. 175; Catherine Gousseff, ‘Vilnius: Die “Anderen” im Gedächtnis der litauischen Hauptstadt’, Nordost-Archiv, Special Issue ‘Die Aneignung fremder Vergangenheiten in Nordosteuropa am Beispiel plurikultureller Städte (20. Jahrhundert), vol XV, Dec 2006, pp. 160–74. 9. Slivka, pp. 271–2, 281–3. 10. Slivka, pp. 272–8, see also TsDAGOU, Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Obshchestvennykh Organizatsii Ukrainy, Kiev, 1/23/790, pp. 5–22, 63–6, results of the requests received at the Special Department of the Ukrainian Communist Party Central Committee. 11. No reply from Stalin to Khrushchev’s project has been identified in the Ukrainian Party or state archives. 12. Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Vyshchykh Orhaniv Vlady i Upravlinnia Ukrainy, Kiev (TsDAVOU), 4959/1.1/3, evacuation plan and repartition into the oblasts of Ukraine of the population to be evacuated from Poland. See p. 5 and the evacuation plan established in December 1944. 13. Eugeniusz Misiło, Repatriacja czy deportacja. Przesiedlenie Ukrain´ców z Polski do USRR 1944–1946, Tome I Dokumenty 1944–1945, Warsaw: Archiwum Ukrainskie, 1996. 14. TsDAVOU, 4959/1.1/6/, Stenogram of meeting of the Plenipotentiary of Ukraine in Lublin, 25 November 1944, pp. 55–6. 15. Rebecca Manley, ‘L’URSS en guerre: la question de l’évacuation de la population civile’, Communisme, 70–1, 2002, pp. 159–79. 16. TsDAVOU, 4959/1/72, list of the employees of the Plenipotentiary of Ukraine in Poland, November 1944–June 1946. This administration comprised around 250 employees. 17. Kersten inaugurated the debate over terminology, which has always been thoroughly studied by specialists; see particularly Ciesielski op.cit. and Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene. Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/ DDR und in Polen, 1945–1956, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998. 18. See Keith Sword, Deportation and Exile. Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939–1945, London: Macmillan,1996 and Catherine Gousseff, ‘“Kto nas´, Kto nie nas´?”: conception et pratiques de la citoyenneté à l’égard des populations conquises : le cas des Polonais en URSS, 1940–1946’, Cahiers du monde russe, 2–3/2003, pp. 489–520. 19. Albin Głowacki, Przemieszczenie obywateli polskich w Zwia˛zku Radzieckim w 1944, Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1974; ‘Powstanie, organizacja i diałalnos´c´ Wydziału Opieki Społecznej Zarza˛du Głównego Patriotów polskich w ZSRR (1943–1946)’, Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, 1981, pp. 109–27. 20. The person in charge of the registration office in Łuck informed Pizlo only ten days after opening about the numerous requests coming from the local population (AAN Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw, 524/28/47, Zabierzewski letter dated 27 November 1944). The local officers reported regularly about the number of these requests until summer 1945. 21. Correspondence file to the Moscow ZPP (AAN: 524/76) and Pizlo reports to the PUR (for example AAN, 524/10/33-35, 29 May 1945 report about approaches made to Ukrainian authorities). 22. See the affair of an administrator in Chełm who hid his local origins, TsDAVOU, 4959/1.1/22/71.

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23. Slivka, p. 286, General Shatilov letter of 2 September 1944. 24. Slivka, p. 311, Report of the 1st Ukrainian Front, October 1944. 25. TsDAVOU, 4959/1.1/6/18, Stenogram of the meeting of the Plenipotentiary of Ukraine apparatus in Poland, 23–24 October 1944. 26. The Greek-Catholic Church was founded in the late sixteenth century in this border region. It maintains Orthodox rituals but is directly subject to the Pope. After the partition of Poland, the Greek-Catholic Church was tolerated in the Austrian Empire but banned in the Russian Empire. It was banned in the Soviet Union after 1945. 27. Slivka, pp. 387–8. The Polish Administration in Ukraine pointed out attacks against the Greek-Catholics. See one of the first complaints handed to the Ukrainian authorities protesting against the threat that the Greek-Catholic Church of Mlynow would be closed (AAN, 524/28/11, Krawinski letter of 4/11/1944). 28. Many of the reports argued that the Chełm area had once been part of Russia, as did Khrushchev to Stalin. By the end of the Russian Empire the tsarist power took advantage of the strong concentration of Ukrainians in this area to detach it from the former Polish Kingdom and make it a Russian province. See Theodore Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914, Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996. 29. Slivka, p. 405. 30. The lack of historical knowledge among the administrators was significant. The Vice-Plenipotentiary of Ukraine explained in a report that GreekCatholicism ‘is something between Orthodoxy and Catholicism with a strong superiority of Catholic influence’. TsDAGO, 1/23/1465/5, Romashchenko Report of 19 January 1945. 31. Grebtchenko report of 2 November 1944. TsDAVOU, 4959/1.2/112/4. 32. AAN, 524/28/38, letter from Wolski to Pizlo dated 15/11/1944. 33. Wolski gave this order as early as 13 November 1944 in a letter to Pizlo and repeated it constantly until February 1945, AAN, 524/28/23-27. However, he did agree to some departures, if the people concerned could move into vacant farms left by the Ukrainians, in order to get rid of the unceasing pressure from Kiev. See letter dated 15 November 1944 to Pizlo authorising the departure of 3000 people, AAN, 524/28/31. 34. AAN, 524/9/187–189, letter from Wolski to Pizlo dated 27/11/1944. The Ukrainian administrator in Łuck used this argument although all transfers from Volhynia were by foot and cart. See Final Report of December 1946 on the evacuation of the Poles of Ukraine, TsDAVOU, 4959/1.2/154/15. 35. This fact is mentioned for the first time in a letter dated 13/01/1945 from Pizlo to Cokol, the Ukrainian Executive in Łuck, and it would be regularly denounced, AAN, 524/22/30. 36. See the important number of letters from the Polish authorities to their Ukrainian counterparts, AAN, 524/28-10-9. 37. The Ukrainian and Polish reports concerning the disastrous consequences of this train shortage were a leitmotiv until May 1945 and then again right after the summer. In a meeting on 20 January 1945 the Plenipotentiary of Ukraine in Lublin, clearly depicted this human tragedy, TsDAGOU, 4959/1.1/7/20.

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38. A preliminary large-scale survey on the situation of the newcomers (pereselency) in the kolkhozy was made in mid-1945, based on different reports written by local executives, all emphasising the importance of these miscarriages, TsDAGOU, 1/23/1470. 39. See the reports of the NKVD Vice-Commissioner of Ukraine, Grebtchenko, 20 January and 3 February 1945, TsDAVOU, 4959/1.2/112/ 62-5; 87-9. 40. See the Grebtchenko report of 3 February 1945, TsDAGOU, 1/23/1466/39-40. 41. These rumours were regularly examined at length in the reports from the Ukrainian administration in Łuck which, in accordance with Soviet administrative practices, always included a paragraph about ‘people’s mood’ (this time the Poles’). See TsDAVOU, 4959/2/9 and 4959/1.2/112. 42. Letter from Pizlo to local agencies 19 May 1945, along with precise orders concerning the organisation of the departures, and letter of the same date to his Ukrainian counterpart in Łuck, Cokol, AAN, 524/10/pp. 47–58. 43. The clandestine returns and the bad influence of the news given by those transferred to Ukraine to relatives are regularly mentioned in the reports of the Ukrainian administration in Lublin from March 1945 onwards. See Kal’nenko report of 01/03/1945, TsDAGOU, 1/23/1470/132-3. 44. Romashchenko letter of 14 March 1945 to Comrade Ivanov (Head of the Commission for Evacuations in the Ukrainian Council of Ministers), TsDAVOU, 4959/1.1/3/180. 45. Polish–Soviet Agreement of 6 July 1945, GARF, 9415/3/1400/59-64. The text confirmed the agreements of September 1944 and mentioned that they now extended to former Polish citizens in other parts of the USSR. 46. TsDAVOU, 4959/9/3/231-233; 234-9, undated copy of the letter of N. Podgornyj to Osóbka-Morawski and letter dated 15 July 1945 to the Extraordinary Representative of the Soviet government in Poland, asking for his support in the request for the intervention of the Polish Army made by the Ukrainian administration in Lublin. 47. Romashchenko Report of 18 April 1945, TsDAVOU, 4959/9/3/310-1. 48. According to the final report on the operations (TsDAGOU, 1/23/4356/1-80), 97 per cent of censused Ukrainians in Poland had been evacuated. However, more than 120,000 people were deported in spring 1947. Polish historians explain this gap by the existence of mixed Polish-Ukrainian families among the remaining people. This explanation is doubtful, as many mixed households had been censused between 1944 and 1946. 49. On all these aspects see TsDAVOU, 4959/9/3, reports April–July 1946. 50. TsDAGOU, 1/23/4356/26.

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Part III National and Ethnic Projects

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6 ‘National Refugees’, Displaced Persons, and the Reconstruction of Italy: The Case of Trieste Pamela Ballinger

After the era of state socialism in Europe came to a close in 1991, scholars began to rethink both the Second World War and the Cold War that followed it. Access to previously closed archives played a key role in the transformation of knowledge, but just as important was the questioning of seeming truisms. Tony Judt notes that What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable would take on a more transient air […] In retrospect the years 1945–89 would now come to be seen not as the threshold of a new epoch but rather as an interim age: a post-war parenthesis, the unfinished business of a conflict that ended in 1945 but whose epilogue had lasted for another half century.1 Judt’s work and its focus on the post-war period signals not only the refashioning of our understanding of the post-1945 period in Europe, East and West, but also an attempt to go beyond the conceptual limits of the so-called new Cold War history, which some historians have found insufficiently attentive to the social and cultural dimensions of the Cold War and its enduring legacies.2 The extensive body of literature on European migratory flows and displaced persons during the Second World War and the early Cold War period, however, bridges the new Cold War history and the field of post-war studies by examining both the high politics that produced and conditioned these flows and the long-term, socio-cultural consequences of displacement, reintegration, and resettlement (among the ‘unfinished business’ that Judt highlights). As this chapter demonstrates for Italy, the reception of refugees and displaced persons in Europe reveals much about the reorganisation of state and society in the aftermath of violence and the advent of reconstruction and normalisation. 115

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The analysis here views efforts to normalise post-war Italian society through the lens of debates about and the experiences of a particular category of refugees: ‘national refugees’ who returned to the peninsula from a variety of territorial possessions lost with fascism’s defeat. These ranged from colonies (such as Libya, Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia), to departments (the Dodecanese Islands), to integral parts of the Italian state (areas of Venezia Giulia, including Istria). The Italian state assumed responsibility for its ‘national refugees’, who were set apart legally and socially from non-Italian displaced persons (DPs) crowding into Italy after the war. Normalising the status and condition of these Italian refugees proved important literally and symbolically. Displaced from their homes with no hope of return, the national refugees’ homelessness highlighted Italy’s critical housing shortage in the immediate post-war period and the pressing need to ‘house the nation’. As individuals who had lost their homes, the refugees embodied both a stigmatised fascist past and the urgent need to overcome that past and to reincorporate it (and its bearers) into a national narrative and a territorially reconfigured national space. Many scholars have commented on the selective memory about fascism that characterised the Cold War period in Italy, with some going so far as to argue that by ‘the time of the economic boom in the 1950s […] a sort of collective amnesia replaced this [earlier] pragmatic use of memory’.3 Poggiolini cites several films as symbols of the new amnesiac consumerist ‘hedonism’, yet many of these commentaries on the new Italy were haunted by images of the expanding urban peripheries that were also the sites of housing for, among others, Italian refugees. The history of Italy’s post-war economic recovery and rapid development of mass consumerist society thus intersected directly with the process of integrating national refugees into the urban and socio-cultural fabric, processes that became less visible to Italians over time but should have been evident to Italians reading the new urban landscapes that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s.4 Generally, scholars have emphasised Italy’s ‘remarkable modernization after World War II’ in which the country ‘experienced unprecedentedly fast economic growth’.5 When scholars have examined Italian migrations after the war, they have focused on the internal dislocations occasioned by migrations from an impoverished South to an industrial North and the large-scale movement of Italians to other countries in Europe and the Americas as late as the 1970s. The return migrations of Italian citizens to the peninsula, particularly the concentrated flows between 1945 and 1956, have not received the same kind of attention

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given to these other flows, nor have they been part of the renewed scholarly conversation about the refugee (i.e. ‘foreign’ refugee) situation in Italy in the decade following the Second World War. Though the story of these repatriated Italians and their experience in a post-war Italy suffering from chronic housing shortages and high unemployment has received little scholarly attention, the sorting-out of displaced persons into categories of national and non-national with distinct regimes of refugee management reveals much about a post-war ‘normalisation’ in Italy that also proved to be a ‘nationalisation’.6 In this chapter I focus on the city of Trieste as a site at which the problem of foreign and national refugees in the Italian peninsula proved particularly acute. I use the example of Trieste to point to larger issues of reconstruction, including the challenges of ‘housing the nation’, raised by the visible presence of populations of both Italian and non-Italian displaced persons in the Italian peninsula after the Second World War. Trieste is in many ways a special case, as exemplified by its turbulent post-war history. At the conclusion of war in May 1945, Yugoslav military forces sought to pre-empt Italian claims by establishing control over Trieste. Other Allied troops entered the city shortly after the Yugoslavs, and local Italian resistance forces also rose up against the occupying Nazi and fascist forces, thereby making for a multiplicity of claims to have liberated the city. After the Yugoslavs withdrew their military forces from the city on 12 June 1945, the British and Americans established an Allied Military Government (AMG) over Zone A (which included the Istrian city of Pola/Pula), and the Yugoslavs assumed control over Zone B, pending final resolution of the Italo-Yugoslav dispute. The 1947 Peace Treaty with Italy awarded the southern half of Istria to Yugoslavia. The remaining disputed area became part of the Free Territory of Trieste (FTT), an independent entity to be administered by a UN appointed governor. In reality, the FTT never operated as an independent body and Zones A and B were redrawn, with AMG overseeing the reduced Zone A and the Yugoslavs Zone B. The 1954 ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (ratified by Yugoslavia and Italy only in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo) awarded Trieste and its immediate environs to Italy and the northern Istrian territories to Yugoslavia. It may have been different from the rest of Italy in some features, but Trieste is nonetheless a useful case study on post-war migrations and the treatment of refugees in Italy. During the decade after the end of war, Trieste and its environs hosted significant numbers of refugees and refugee camps. ‘National refugees’ from Istria and other parts of the former province of Venezia Giulia that became incorporated into Yugoslavia between

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1947 and 1954 numbered among the large population of displaced persons in post-war Trieste. The city also received many non-Italian refugees coming from socialist Eastern Europe, who for the most part transited through the city after spending time in its refugee centres, in contrast to the Italian refugees who permanently resettled there in significant numbers. Whereas Trieste’s definitive ‘return’ to Italy in 1954 appeared to Italian nationalists as a belated post-war normalisation and the end of the city’s liminal status, this normalisation entailed a nationalisation that had been well under way before the city’s awarding to Italy. Historian Sandi Volk has discerned the logics of a ‘bonifica nazionale’, that is, a concerted plan to Italianise the territory through land reclamation and concentrated resettlement of Istrian and Giulian refugees. Just as significant as this demographic shift, Volk argues, was the building of refugee quarters in strategic points near railroads and highways that connected Trieste with Yugoslavia in one direction, and Italy in the other.7 In this chapter, I explore a different aspect of this nationalisation argument, demonstrating how the sorting-out of ‘national refugees’ from ‘foreign refugees’ and the different forms of relief provided for them furthered the process of nationalisation in the city. Although Trieste was anomalous in many respects, it clearly refracted processes going on elsewhere in the Italian peninsula. Trieste’s role as a post-war ‘hub for refugees’8 has received attention from scholars interested in the city’s large population of Istrian and Dalmatian refugees, on the one hand, and non-Italian refugees, on the other. In particular, the rediscovery in the 1990s of the history of the mass migration from Istria between 1943 and 1955 (the Istrian esodo or exodus) has resulted in extensive documentation of the migratory flows that resulted from the nine-year territorial dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia over the Julian region and the final redrawing of Italy’s eastern border in 1954.9 Another body of work which focuses on aspects of Italy’s post-war DP problem sometimes includes Trieste in its analyses.10 Little work, however, has considered in any depth the dual aspects of the refugee question in post-war Trieste, and the very different responses given to the ‘Italian’ and ‘foreign’ refugee populations.11 In the few instances where scholars have analysed different types of population movements in post-war Trieste together, they have examined a particular process of population ‘replacement’, as national refugees from Istria moved into Trieste and Triestines in search of work emigrated to countries like Australia. Verrochio estimates a rough population exchange, as approximately 60,000 refugees resettled in the city and 60,000 residents left.12

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Historian Tullia Catalan voices a common view when she labels the history of foreign DPs in the city as constituting ‘a separate discourse’ from that of the Italian exiles (esuli) or refugees from Istria.13 Catalan’s comments about the foreign refugees in Trieste represent one of few acknowledgements of the significance of this population in a recent four-volume study of reconstruction in post-war Trieste that accompanied exhibits commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the city’s return to Italy. I argue instead that examining these populations and the respective regimes of refugee relief in tandem proves analytically productive. In what follows I situate the responses to the various categories of the displaced in Trieste in the framework of reconstruction and normalisation.

The displaced in post-war Italy The experience of foreign refugees in Italy after the war, the attitudes of both local Italians and state officials, and the policies of international organisations charged with care and maintenance of the refugees cannot be understood in isolation from the fact that Italy also had a large share of its own displaced nationals to deal with. When using the term Italian refugee or ‘national refugee’ here, I refer not to Italians internally displaced within the peninsula by the events of the war (these individuals usually returned home on their own or with assistance shortly after the cessation of hostilities), but rather to those citizens who came to the peninsula from a variety of territories that had been part of fascist Italy.14 Those Italians internally displaced within the peninsula were deemed sinistrati. As a letter from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) put it, sinistrati referred to ‘those persons whose homes were partially or completely destroyed by enemy action who lost most or all of their belongings, who did not leave their town of residence either voluntarily or through evacuation. In general they are crowded in with friends and relatives or are billeted in homes or shelters in their own community by local authorities’.15 Another gloss on sinistrati describes them as ‘bomb-damaged persons’.16 International observers had assumed that returning these people to their homes would not be a prolonged or complicated process. As UNRRA staff member E. R. Fryer put it in August 1944, ‘Apparently, the Italians who are displaced in Italy are not displaced at any substantial distance from their homes […] I have made, therefore, no provision in this budget specifically to care for displaced Italians in Italy’. Fryer added, ‘The schedule for repatriation will be considered as a relatively short-term operation’.17

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Once the war was over, however, it became clear that returning some ‘internally’ displaced Italians to their homes would not prove an easy task, as in the case of those Italians who had come from territories no longer in Italian control. At times, the Italian government and the international bodies differentiated between Italian refugees of this latter sort as profughi or sfollati and other displaced (foreign) persons as rifugiati stranieri, though the terms profughi and rifugiati were often applied to both Italian and foreign refugees; sfollati, in turn, was sometimes used for Italians internally displaced within the peninsula, suggesting a lack of consistent usage of such labels.18 International agencies like the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) further divided the ‘foreign’ DPs into ‘local refugees’ and ‘transit refugees’; the former referred to refugees already in Italy or who made their way there on their own, the latter to DPs transferred to Italy by IRO for the sole purpose of processing and immigration abroad.19 Initially, the Allies, UNRRA, and the Italian government restricted eligibility for aid to those persons displaced by the war, thereby excluding post-hostility refugees. The impracticality of this approach soon became evident. Many of the national refugees came to Italy as a result of the terms of the Peace Treaty of 1947. This treaty decreed that persons who had been resident in the ceded territories (the Dodecanese Islands, southern Istria, and parts of Valle d’Aosta and Alto Adige) on or before 6 June 1940 could opt for Italian citizenship if they satisfied several criteria, the most significant being Italian as ‘language of customary use’. Opting for Italian citizenship required relocation to a territorially diminished Italy. By 1952, Italy had also lost all of its possessions in Africa (Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea), with the exception of Somalia, which Italy administered under a UN mandate for a decade. An estimated 400,000– 450,000 persons returned from the former colonies, with as many as an additional 250,000 coming from the territories in Venezia Giulia ceded between 1947 and 1954.20 These ‘national’ arrivals joined a large population of foreign refugees. Indeed, after 1945, among the European nations only Germany received greater numbers of refugees than did Italy. Studies from the time explicitly linked the impact of Italy’s own refugees with the country’s inability to effectively absorb the influx of foreign displaced persons.21 As late as 1959, Italian participation in events such as the UNsponsored World Refugee Year was heavily conditioned by the needs of its ‘national refugees’.22 Italy’s chronic unemployment problems, housing shortages, widespread poverty, and a tradition of defining citizenship on ethnic-linguistic terms meant that few foreign DPs could hope

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for naturalization.23 A UN report published in 1951 admitted that ‘The refugee problem in Italy thus became how to get rid of refugees [i.e. foreign refugees]; this is still the most pressing need to-day’.24 At the same time, Italian refugees typically received short shrift in such treatments, as a result of the administrative division of labour that placed most national refugees out of the purview of the international agencies.25 As the UN report put it, the situation of such Italian refugees ‘however interesting, is of no concern of this survey, even though they are considered as refugees by the Italian Government’.26 This comment reflects the practical and conceptual division of labour for refugee care that emerged at war’s end. Prior to the formation of UNRRA, all refugees in Italy had been the concern of the Allied Commission Camps (ACC), with the Italian Refugee Branch looking after Italian civilians and the Displaced Persons Sub-Commission charged with the care of refugees of any other nationality.27 After the war, agreements made by UNRRA (and its successors IRO and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR) meant that the Italian government assumed responsibility for ‘national refugees’, whereas the international bodies became responsible for those individuals displaced from (and therefore outside of) their home country.28 Voluntary agencies such as the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the War Relief Services, grouped together in the American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Italian Service, also began to care for foreign refugees, as well as (in some instances) national refugees. Given the international agencies’ mandate to assist refugees outside their own country, UNRRA and IRO staff considered refugees in the Italian peninsula coming from formerly Italian lands who could demonstrate their Italian-ness ineligible for aid. The practical task of determining identity, however, proved anything but simple, particularly in the case of the linguistically and culturally mixed border populations of Venezia Giulia. This resulted in extended debates within IRO and a questioning of a policy that permitted ethnic ‘Slavs’ (who had not reacquired Italian citizenship) from the territory to receive IRO aid. In the end, IRO permitted some exceptions for ethnic ‘Italians’ from Venezia Giulia and allowed a limited number to emigrate under IRO auspices.29 The change in IRO policies nonetheless remained an exception, as the emerging international regime of refugee management continued to enforce a strong distinction between those displaced outside of their home countries and the internally displaced. Guy Goodwin-Gill notes that after the Second World War, ‘[a]part from those countries

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actually having to deal with large populations of “national refugees”, a consensus emerged that such refugees were not “an international problem”, and did not require international protection’.30 Even in Italy with its large population of national refugees, the broad division of labour between national governments taking care of their own refugees and international agencies assisting foreign DPs held for the most part. From July 1945, the Ministero per l’Assistenza Postbellica (MAP) began to care for national refugees in Italy, taking over the work of the Alto commissariato per l’assistenza morale e materiale ai profughi di guerra. The Ufficio per la Venezia Giulia (UVG), subsumed within the Interior Ministry and soon transferred under the Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, came into existence in January 1946, with the aim of both aiding refugees coming from the disputed territory of Venezia Giulia and demonstrating the essential Italian-ness of that territory. By the end of that year, the Office for Venezia Giulia had been replaced by the Ufficio per le Zone di Confine (UFZ), which also had the task of aiding national refugees displaced by the redrawing of the borders with Austria and France.31 From the start, then, aid to Italy’s national refugees became caught up in the politics of territorial claims and the ‘propaganda for Italian-ness (italianità)’.32 These various offices coexisted alongside the Comitato Nazionale per i Rifugiati Italiani (CNRI), a parastatal entity that came into being in 1947 to assist refugees from Italy’s lost territories, and its successor the Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani Dalmati, whose focus narrowed to aiding Italians coming from the ceded Adriatic regions. A 1952 law (Law 137) recognised four official categories of Italian refugees: from the former colonies; from those territories ceded by the terms of the 1947 Peace Treaty; from foreign territories; and from national territories devastated by war.33 In 1967, the scope of the organisation widened again, when the OAPGD gave way to the Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani e Dalmati e ai Rimpatriati (OAPGDR).34 In addition, numerous private associations, as well as the Vatican’s relief arm (Pontificia Opera di Assistenza), helped the refugees in a variety of ways. Reconstructing the story of such assistance proves challenging for many reasons, not least of which is the wide dispersal of many of the documents throughout ecclesiastical, local, regional, and national archives in Italy, and loss of the archive of the OAPGD/OAPGDR.35 Even the exact number of refugee camps specifically for Italian refugees and their final closure remains imprecise; one scholar (Ernesto Susigan) estimates 76 such camps. Volk counts 106 camps, including camps for Italian refugees from other former possessions.36 A request for aid to the Commune of

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Trieste from a group of refugees in the camp at Prosecco reveals that as late as 1974, some Italian refugees had not yet been resettled outside the camps.37 The OAPGD and its successor OAPGDR dedicated considerable attention to finding employment for Italian refugees, to assisting elderly refugees, providing education, and to carrying out a census of the refugee population. The absolute priority, however, consisted in providing housing for the refugees, with the two organisations building 7733 housing units in 39 provinces for over 35,000 refugees from Italy’s lost territories.38 In some areas, concentrated settlements for refugees were built, as in the case of the Villaggio Giuliani Dalmati in the EUR district in Rome, the agricultural settlement of Fertilia in Sardinia, and the Villaggio dei Pescatori in Duino, near Trieste. The city of Trieste and its environs became a vast refugee camp, with a concentration of national refugees from Istria and Dalmatia initially living in camps and private accommodation. By the second half of the 1960s these refugees had mostly found housing in apartment blocs in newly built quarters ringing the city; the 1974 request from refugees in Prosecco, however, reminds us that not all Italian refugees were so lucky. Sandi Volk estimates that of 12,872 apartments created for all residents of the province of Trieste in the 21 years following the war, 4302 were allocated to Italian (i.e. ‘national’) refugees.39 During the same period, Trieste continued to host camps for foreign refugees coming from Central and Eastern Europe. Yugoslavs constituted the principal group of foreigners in Trieste, though the city also hosted White Russians (many of whose naturalised Yugoslav citizenship had been revoked by the socialist regime), Bulgarians, Hungarians, Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Volksdeutsche, and Albanians.40 Perhaps nowhere on the Italian peninsula did the different regimes of refugee relief response for nationals and non-nationals and their different respective goals (integration versus resettlement abroad) appear in such sharp contrast as in the city of Trieste, an irony given that Trieste only returned to Italian control in 1954 after nine years of Anglo-American Allied Military Government. Trieste’s liminal position, of course, made its nationalisation all the more crucial for the Italian state. Italian authorities and groups pushed for resettlement of Istrian and Dalmatian refugees in the city even before its territorial disposition had been decided. The British and American administrators of Zone A instead initially worked to discourage resettlement by either Italian or ‘foreign’ refugees in the area, only shifting their policy on Italian refugees after 1950.41

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The displaced in Trieste In Trieste, the establishment of Allied assistance was delayed as a result of the 40-day period of Yugoslav military presence in the city, which ended in June 1945 with the Yugoslav withdrawal. The Anglo-American AMG then assumed administrative control until the final disposition of the city and surrounding territory could be determined. Beginning in July 1945, the AMG directed both national and foreign refugees needing immediate aid to the Ente Comunale di Assistenza (ECA). Figures for November of that year reveal among the aid recipients 3660 national refugees from Istria and Dalmatia.42 An Italian Comitato per l’Assistenza Postbellica began operating in the zone in March of 1946.43 Soon after, though, the Allied Military Government began focusing its attention on aiding non-Italian DPs. By March 1949 the AMG had elaborated a relatively complex structure for aid and assistance, with the Department for Social Assistance serving as an umbrella for the smaller offices of Public Assistance, Social Insurance, Aid to Infants and Children, Refugees, Tracing for missing persons, statistics and accounting.44 The AMG’S Office of Social Assistance collaborated with the Italian representatives of the reconfigured Ufficio Provinciale di Trieste della Assistenza Post-Bellica in Trieste, which commenced operations in Trieste in 1949 and devoted its energies to aiding Italian refugees from Istria and Dalmatia. The Post-Bellica took over the work previously carried out by the Palutan Committee, a body named after the President of the Zone (Gino Palutan) and dedicated to aiding the Italian refugees in Trieste.45 In contrast to these pro-Italian groups like the Palutan Committee, however, the AMG did not actively support resettlement of Italian refugees in Trieste until 1952. In response to the mass exodus of the residents of the Istrian city of Pola/Pula, formerly in Zone A and then awarded to Yugoslavia by the Peace Treaty of 1947, refugees making their way to Trieste found themselves transferred to nearby towns in Italy, such as Grado, Monfalcone, and Padova.46 This reflected the AMG’s rejection of requests by the Italian state and pro-Italian groups to settle the Pola/Pula refugees en masse in Zone A.47 Likewise, other refugees from Fiume/Rijeka and southern Istria who had opted for Italian citizenship by terms of the treaty for the most part transited through Trieste to camps in Udine and other parts of Italy. In Udine, the AMG ran dual camps for non-Italian and Italian displaced persons.48 In Trieste, out of four AMG-run camps, only a single centre – the Silos, near the train station – was available for Italian

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refugees until 1947 as the result of the AMG’s desire to use the city as a mere transit point for Italian refugees in order to avoid antagonising the already delicate political relations in the cities between pro-Italian and pro-Yugoslav groups. Both AMG policy and the economic and housing difficulties in Trieste discouraged large-scale settlement there by Italian refugees at that time.49 By 1950, however, the Italian government had authorised funds to build permanent and emergency housing for the Istrian and Dalmatian refugees, including in the contested Zone A.50 This project was the product of an agreement between the AMG and the Italian government, signalling the beginning of a shift in AMG attitudes about the possibilities of resettlement by Italian refugees in Zone A.51 Volk traces this shift to the larger transformations in the British-American view of Trieste after Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform in 1948. Previously, Trieste’s Western administrators had viewed the city as a place to halt the advance of state socialism and as a useful propaganda tool in Italy’s 1948 elections (in which the electoral victory of the Italian communists remained a real possibility). As these perceived roles became less important after the electoral success of the Christian Democrats in 1948 and Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform that same year, Trieste’s Anglo-American governors redefined Zone A as a strategic buffer zone between East and West and stressed their role as neutral mediators.52 Given this redefinition of security interests and the reconceptualisation of Trieste’s place in the Cold War order, the newfound willingness of the AMG to permit some Italian refugees to remain permanently in Trieste seems paradoxical. Why would an administration stressing its neutrality in the Italo-Yugoslav dispute concede to the desire of Italian interests to settle Istrian and Dalmatian refugees in the city? Volk maintains that the change in policy represented the AMG’s tacit acceptance of a population exchange between Zone A and Zone B in order to facilitate the eventual resolution of the dispute and thereby stabilise relations with Yugoslavia,53 now seen as a useful buffer between the democratic and socialist blocs in Europe. Volk’s claims that a significant number of Slavs from Zone A migrated to Yugoslavia requires further evidence in order to validate the reality of a two-way population exchange or transfer. Regardless, however, the AMG’s shift in attitude towards Italian resettlement in Zone A marked the beginning of widespread resettlement in and around the city. Beginning in 1952, the OAPGD with the technical assistance of UNRRA-Casas began to build refugee housing in and around Trieste,

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having finally received AMG permission to operate in the Zone.54 Ferrari interprets the siting of these emergency barracks and permanent settlements in areas heavily inhabited by autochthonous Slovenes as a political choice to foster stability and consensus among the population of displaced Italians and shore up areas that historically had not been ethnically Italian.55 This theme is elaborated by Volk, who notes that Italian leaders and pro-Italian groups of the time explicitly described the establishment of semi-autonomous refugee quarters (borghi) in and around the city as a national reclamation (‘bonifica nazionale’).56 By contrast, neither the Italian authorities nor the AMG encouraged foreign DPs to settle in Trieste, seeing it purely as a transit point. From the Italian viewpoint, the already difficult work of nationalising a historically mixed population was not to be undermined by the settlement of diverse refugee populations in Zone A. Pro-Italian groups worried most of all about the large numbers of displaced Slavs from Yugoslavia, but also feared the settlement of other peoples from Eastern Europe, who became subsumed under the misnomer ‘Balkanic refugees’.57 Though inaccurate in identifying the origins of many of these foreign DPs, the ‘Balkanic’ label accurately expressed the pro-Italian opinion that such groups proved antithetical (and thereby threatening) to the traditions of civiltà (civilization/civility) and italianità (Italianness) invoked by the Italian nationalists as the city’s heritage. The AMG received repeated requests that these DPs be transferred from Zone A and their place in refugee camps taken by Italian profughi.58 As the AMG period drew to a close and the Italians prepared to assume control over Trieste, officials in Rome fretted over the numbers and potential loyalties of refugees from Yugoslavia. In 1954, for example, a letter from the Ministry of the Interior claimed to have evidence that some ‘emissaries of Tito’ (i.e. spies) figured among the Yugoslav refugees in Trieste, citing the fact that a picture of Tito had been found hanging in the room of a refugee in the San Sabba camp. The Ministry stressed the need to transfer such refugees to Austria or Germany before Trieste returned to Italy.59 Initially, however, these foreign refugee flows did not prove overwhelming, at least in numerical terms. In 1947 the AMG could still report that ‘The flow of Non Italian Refugees through the Displaced Persons Centre, Trieste is small but critical to the city of Trieste. In the past month 19 non Italians left the camp for the city because of their prolonged stay in this camp which has only transit facilities’.60 As numbers of ‘spontaneous’ refugees increased, however, the AMG struggled to restrict their flow into Zone A.

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AMG personnel frequently complained that the Yugoslav authorities permitted refugees to cross into Zone B (from where they made their way to Trieste) or even provided them with travel documents (a Yugoslav lasciapassare) in order to ‘dump’ refugees in the city. In a memo from February 1950 to the Chief at the US Department of the Interior, J. A. Kellett (Displaced Persons Officer for the AMG-FTT), asserted, ‘it is obvious that the Jugsolav authorities are permitting or even assisting documented persons to enter this Zone without the necessary permit’.61 The following year the Italian government noted the AMG’s efforts to restrict the entry of refugees from Yugoslavia (including those who had opted for Italian citizenship) into Trieste by requiring an English or American visa.62 At the same time, for the AMG and the international agencies, Trieste – like Italy itself – figured as a key point on the route for foreign refugees being resettled abroad (mostly outside of Europe). The artificiality of the Triestine economy, bolstered as it was by AMG and Marshall Plan dollars but remaining in limbo until the final disposition of the territory, and the fact that into the 1950s the refugee population in Trieste continued to grow, meant that authorities (Italian and international) never envisaged resettling non-Italians there. As a 1951 letter from representatives of the Voluntary Agencies in Trieste put it,63 ‘The refugee situation in Trieste is entirely new and unexpected and differs from all other fields of the IRO operation in Europe owing to the continued influx of new arrivals which has swelled the AMG Camp Population from less than 1000 to over 4900 within the last 18 months’. In addition, Trieste possessed a large number of so-called hard core refugees (those deemed difficult to resettle), since many aged and sick displaced persons managed to travel to Trieste by train; such individuals numbered among those the AMG accused Yugoslavia of ‘dumping’ into Zone A. Tuberculosis proved a particular concern among this population. The authors of this letter concluded, ‘the absence of any prospect of local settlement in the city of Trieste within the foreseeable future, brings into relief the emphatic urgency and uniqueness of the situation which seem to justify special measures’.64 As part of these ‘special measures’, the AMG worked closely with the international bodies, particularly IRO, to assist the non-Italian displaced either to repatriate or resettle abroad. In 1949, for example, IRO leased the Casa Emigrante, an emigrant ‘hotel’ dating back to the Austrian period, from the AMG to use as a processing and transit centre. The Casa could provide short-term dormitory accommodation for up to 1080 persons.65 Refugees entering one of the four AMG-run camps

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(at Opicina, S. Sabba, Gesuiti, and S. Sabba annex) would first be held at Opicina (a town on the karst above Trieste), where IRO interviewers would assess their potential eligibility for IRO aid.66 A 1951 report of a field trip to Trieste by Florence Boester of the Voluntary Societies division noted the AMG’s appreciation of the help it received from IRO, given the severe overcrowding in refugee camps and the AMG’s inadequate resources to cope with the problems. Boester wrote about AMG Colonel Bartlett that: ‘He has no welfare staff whatsoever, and welcomes assistance of all kinds […] He and his staff cooperate in every way possible with IRO and the agencies, through logistical support and provision of local staff for the agencies to the maximum within his budgetary limitations. He would welcome any publicity which might serve to bring much-needed help’.67 Although overwhelmed by refugees arriving from Yugoslavia, with a large percentage of ‘hard core’ cases among them, the AMG actually encouraged the international agencies to develop and expand Trieste as a transit point for refugees who had already been accepted for IRO assistance (in contrast to the ‘spontaneous’ flows arriving from Yugoslavia and Zone B). This diverged from a pro-Italian view that Trieste should ideally accommodate only Italian refugees, who would then be rapidly settled and integrated there. In the effort to revitalise the port’s economy, the AMG and local businessmen hoped that the refugee traffic from IRO might actually serve as a source of income.68 Indeed, the AMG actively solicited IRO (whose initial delegations to Trieste had expressed concern about the inadequate facilities there) to use the city as an embarkation point for DPs from Austria and southern Germany immigrating to the US.69 Previously, UNRRA had used Trieste as the transit port for the Austrian mission.70 UNRRA’s choice of Trieste reflected the port’s broader role as a key transit point for the Allies, who used the port to supply Austria and Czechoslovakia.71 UNRRA-Central, the UNRRA office in Trieste, had the task ‘to centralize and coordinate the receipt of shipments for all four receiving countries; namely, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, and to generally supervise and control the entire operation’.72 Despite UNRRA’s choice of Trieste as a central transit port, IRO staff initially proved reluctant to use Trieste as a base of operations. Urged by the AMG to utilise Trieste and wrap up operations in Italy, however, IRO

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eventually accorded the city greater importance as a transit point for foreign refugees. In 1949, the AMG and IRO announced an agreement ‘in consequence of which the port of Trieste has been chosen as port of embarkation for refugees who, coming from IRO collecting centres in Northern Italy, Germany and Austria , are to be shipped by IRO to countries overseas’.73 The IRO expected groups of up to 1500 refugees at a time to arrive in Trieste and be housed in the Casa dell’Emigrante, where the insurance company Lloyd Triestino would also provide assistance. IRO never planned to stay long in Trieste, though, and expressed its hope to close down the Casa dell’Emigrante by 1 June 1950, planning to maintain just a small staff in the city until all refugees were resettled.74 When IRO ceased operation in 1951, a sizable population of foreign refugees remained in Trieste, left to be administered by the AMG, the voluntary agencies, and IRO’s successor UNHCR and the International Committee on European Migration (ICEM). UNHCR worked to find host countries for emigrating refugees whereas ICEM financed and organised the transport of these displaced persons.75 The US Escapees Program, initiated in 1952, also operated to help those fleeing communist regimes. Various charities in other European states also offered specific forms of aid to the foreign refugees in Trieste. In 1954, for example, the Dutch Protestant radio station VPRO raised money to help ‘hard core’ cases in Trieste, including a scheme to offer asylum to four refugees sick with TB.76 In that same year, French authorities also acquired the Hotel Regina in Cannes in order to host 92 ‘hard core’ cases (elderly and tuberculosis sufferers) from Trieste.77 Well into the 1960s, Trieste continued to be a hub for foreign DPs, including many refugees whom the immigration countries did not find useful or desirable. A report on the state of refugees published in 1960 by Kaye Webb and Ronald Searle documented the continued problem of ‘hard core’ cases in Trieste. The authors noted of the city, ‘Trieste is now one of the cities of “first asylum” for many refugees, for Hungarians who go first to Yugoslavia and then over the border to Italy, and for Yugoslavs themselves’.78 That year, roughly 400 Yugoslavs fled to Italy each month. A screening commission made up of representatives of UNHCR and the Italian government determined which of these refugees were eligible for political asylum. These refugees received assistance at one of ten camps in Italy.79 A year later, in 1961, Yugoslavs (for the most part Slovenes and Croats) constituted the largest number of persons aided by the US Escapees Program; many Yugoslavs fleeing their country made their way to Trieste. San Sabba, a former concentration

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camp during the Nazi occupation and after the war a transit camp for both foreign and national refugees, numbered among the centres Webb and Searles visited for their 1960 study. Echoing earlier visitors to temporary refugee housing in Trieste, they reported on the decrepit condition of the structures and lack of privacy. The reality of continued refugee flows from Eastern Europe made it impossible for authorities in Trieste to keep DPs out of the city, though the goal remained one of allowing refugees to transit through the city en route to their final destinations elsewhere. At the same time, the challenges of creating housing and employment opportunities for Italian refugees remained acute into the 1960s as a result of the mass exodus from Zone B between 1953 and 1955, following the Memorandum of Understanding on the Italian–Yugoslav border question. The Italian refugees, like the foreign DPs, often suffered overcrowding, which prompted inquiries and complaints into episodes of ‘promiscuity’. In July 1958, for example, priest Mario Cividin wrote to the Bishop of Trieste Antonio Santin, describing moral degradation in the camp at Opicina.80 Although it proves difficult in many instances to separate the truth from malicious rumours that spread rapidly through and about the camps, the pervasiveness of such rumours and jealousies also reflects a pernicious reality about camp life.81 Given this situation, the Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani e Dalmati (along with other groups) continued efforts to find employment for these displaced Italians and to house them. The process of building permanent refugee housing in the province of Trieste that began during the AMG period accelerated after 1954, as a result both of the intensified population flows from former Zone B and the definitive return of Italian power.82 Italy’s ‘return’ meant, among other things, that Italian legislation regarding refugees now applied to Trieste, including the possibility for all Italian refugees in the city to become residents. Though an OAPGD census of Trieste counted a staggering 50,836 esuli in Trieste,83 not all esuli passed through or remained in the city; indeed the practical need to transfer some of the national refugees to other parts of Italy became clear.84 ‘Istrian villages’ (villaggi istriani) arose in various parts of the Italian peninsula thanks to the collaboration of UNRRA-Casas and OAPGD. The OAPGD also placed refugees in small farmsteads in Friuli, the Veneto, and Lazio or on abandoned or confiscated properties.85 Many of the apartment blocs and refugee quarters that eventually came into existence in and around Trieste did so on land expropriated, often from ethnically Slovene owners, for this purpose. Volk estimates

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that 1,027,507 square metres were dedicated to these refugee quarters.86 The coastline just west of the city near Duino Aurisina, historically a zone of Slovene fishermen and agriculturalists, became the site of particular resettlement for Istrian fishermen, thereby Italianising the sea and the crucial corridor linking the city to solidly Italian territory to the west. This also neutralised Slovene claims to a deep-rooted maritime tradition, a reality that contradicted long-standing nationalist associations of Italians and italianità with the coastline.87 The constitution of separate, largely self-sufficient refugee quarters also helped reinforce and even privilege an Istrian-Dalmatian refugee identity that created resentments on the part of other Triestines, who had also suffered material losses and unemployment as a result of the war but did not receive special compensations for them.88 Here we can see at work some of the mechanisms identified by Liisa Malkki for the refugee camp,89 which tends to nurture a distinctive sense of the nation in exile. At a general level, Trieste itself became home to ‘history in exile’,90 but at a more specific level, the spatial dynamics of the refugee quarters within and adjacent to the city helped perpetuate a refugee identity initially nourished in the actual (Italian) refugee camps in the city. In using the language of the ‘bonifica’ to conceptualise and justify the creation of compact refugee resettlements, the proponents of reclaiming mixed or historically Slovene areas for the Italian nation and its symbolic carriers (the esuli) used the Italian term for land reclamation. The term carried other meanings and connotations, however, including the historical associations with the well-known land reclamations or bonifiche of fascism, most famously the draining of the Pontine marshes. With the distance of more than half a century, we can see the ways in which the post-war ‘bonifica nazionale’ of Trieste relied – as had the bonifiche of fascism – on the coercive power of the state to bring about physical and social engineering. In both cases, as well, more metaphorical understandings of moral uplift and positive hygiene (draining sites of contagion or infection) accompanied projects of literal reclamation. For the proponents of an Italian province of Trieste, Slovenes were ‘matter out of place’ (to use Mary Douglas’s famous phrase),91 potentially polluting and threatening the territory. Dislocating the autochthonous Slovene populations and replacing them with Italian refugees became the ‘purifying’ solution to this danger. From an anthropological point of view, such a solution reveals an unintended irony, given that refugees themselves often appear as liminal figures and ‘matter out of place’. Although the resettlement of these refugees was intended to Italianise the territory around Trieste, the

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liminality of the Istrian refugees was in fact neutralised through their nationalisation, a project of first spatial and conceptual differentiation from foreign refugees and then integration into the national territory.

Reconstructing Trieste, reconstructing the nation In practice, the process of differentiating Italian from foreign refugees did not always prove so clear-cut, as internal debates within IRO about how to distinguish the Italians from the Slavs among the Venezian Giulian refugees demonstrate. IRO staff on the ground recognised the complexities of identity in Venezia Giulia, thereby mirroring the self-understandings of some of the refugees, whose identities were not monocultural (or monolingual). The necessity of fitting one’s identity into a clear-cut definition in order to receive aid, however, meant that many refugees of mixed identity learned to articulate claims in a national idiom.92 The motivations of international bodies like IRO in sorting out national refugees from those deemed to be outside their home country proved different from those of the Italian state and pro-Italian groups. For IRO, this classificatory separation proved necessary in practical terms for it to fulfil its mandate (helping those outside of their home country). Agencies like IRO inherited identity categories from states, however, and their work ultimately reinforced ethnic and national distinctions. In Trieste, those refugees classified as clearly non-Italian and those who appeared ethnically indeterminate (i.e. liminal) received IRO help to leave the territory. Likewise, the AMG’s attitudes towards refugees (Italian and other) reflected specific concerns about order and governance in Zone A and broader strategic interests in the Cold War. Though motivated by different interests than those of the Italian government and pro-Italian groups in Trieste, the AMG’s policies also ultimately reinforced the national and foreign refugee distinction and the divergent goals of their respective relief regimes (resettlement and integration versus transit and resettlement abroad). As I have only begun to address in this chapter, such differentiation processes occurred throughout the Italian peninsula as Italians from Venezia Giulia and other lost possessions in Africa and the Aegean received aid and assistance to integrate into Italian life whereas other DPs transited through Italy. (Admittedly, a significant number of these Italians also emigrated abroad due to the economic devastation of Italy during the war.) In an ongoing research project, I am exploring the national/foreign refugee distinction for Italy more generally.

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The seemingly straightforward distinction drawn between national and foreign refugees was anything but simple in practice, since it required considerable ideological and actual labour to sort out the national from the foreign for inhabitants of Italy’s former territories. For residents of Italy’s various ex-possessions, retaining (or reacquiring) citizenship in the post-fascist First Republic thus required a demonstration of Italianness which, in turn, highlighted the very question of what constituted this Italian identity. Not everyone was entitled to citizenship in the new Italian state, even if, like the ethnic Slavs from Venezia Giulia or ‘blacks’ from Ethiopia or Muslims from Libya or Greek Orthodox residents of the Dodecanese Islands, they had been citizens or subjects of fascist Italy and used Italian as their ‘language of customary use’. In examining the legal and social criteria for determining which individuals in the former territories (not just those regulated by the 1947 Peace Treaty) had the right to migrate ‘back’ to Italy, explicit importance was given to language and domicile. Implicit assumptions about ethnicity, blood, and race nonetheless proved just as crucial to the definition of Italian citizens after the Second World War.93 The process of sorting-out and thereby also constituting Italian national and foreign refugees thus represented a critical nationalisation process for all of Italy, not just for Trieste. Just as being a refugee in post-war Europe tended to reinforce ethno-national sentiments among the displaced, for individuals from the former possessions (who may previously have nurtured bicultural or hybrid identities) the experience of displacement often helped consolidate an Italian identity.94 The refugees also served as key symbols of fascist Italy’s defeat and territorial losses, making visible the necessity to remake Italians and Italy both conceptually and physically (in terms of infrastructure like housing and the securing of new territorial borders). In contrast to Trieste, the consciousness or intentionality of such a strategy at a national level was not explicit. The effects nonetheless proved the same: to reinforce an Italian ethno-national identity. In this sense, the Triestine case thus appears not as an anomaly or as set off from developments in post-war Italy as a result of the border dispute and the AMG rule, but as an exaggeration of processes of ‘normalisation as nationalisation’ going on elsewhere in the peninsula. Certainly, the visibility and the duration of the refugee problem (both that of national and foreign DPs) in Trieste lasted much longer than in most other parts of the peninsula. Furthermore, the specific regional history of Italian–Slav (Slovene and Croat) ethnic relations cannot be downplayed. Nonetheless, the OAPGD that concentrated its efforts on

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creating housing and finding employment for the Istrian and Dalmatian refugees in the province of Trieste operated throughout the peninsula. There is also a broader context within which such housing efforts may be read that refers to the normalisation of particular kinds of domestic space and ideas about urban planning in post-war Italy. Other major building programmes that sought to deal with the physical devastation of the war included UNRRA-CASAS and INA-CASA. Building housing for impoverished Italians, a category that encompassed (but also proved much broader than) the national refugees, these projects resulted in the construction of over 1000 settlements in Italy.95 The design of these houses reflected a new focus on domesticity and the private, an ethic tied to emerging norms of consumerism and redefined understandings of self and citizen.96 Scrivano contends that these transformations in the understanding and valorisation of private space constituted a conscious assault on ‘fascism’s populist myth of the masses’ and ‘the 1950s effort to make over Italian home life as a symbol of post-fascist progress and prosperity’.97 If the reconfigured home became a prominent sign of Italy’s overcoming of fascism, then the housing of those visibly associated with fascism – the national refugees who had lost their homes as a direct result of fascism’s defeat – became an even more potent symbol of normalisation. At the same time, it underscores how the experiences of these Italian national refugees offer a window into other issues bound up with Italian reconstruction and normalisation after the Second World War, including changing ideas about urban planning and consumerism.

Notes A modified version of the arguments contained here appeared as Pamela Ballinger, ‘Trieste: The City as Displaced Persons Camp’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas (Yearbook for the History and Culture of South Eastern Europe) 8 (2006): 153–74. The research for this article was made possible by a 1999 Summer Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NEH Post-Classical Humanistic/ Modern Italian Studies Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and multiple awards from the Fletcher Fund at Bowdoin College. I am grateful to the staffs at the UNRRA archive (New York), Archives Nationales (Paris), the archive at the Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Rome), and the Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome). As always, I thank the many Istrians who have shared their experiences with me. 1. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York, 2005), 1–2. 2. For a critique of the new Cold War history’s relative neglect of the realms of the socio-cultural, as opposed to those of ‘high politics’, see P. Major and R. Mitter, ‘East is East and West is West? Towards a Comparative SocioCultural History of the Cold War’, Cold War History 4, no. 1 (2003), 1–2.

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3. Ilaria Poggiolini, ‘Translating Memories of War and Co-Belligerency into Politics: The Italian Post-War Experience’, in Memory and Power in Post-War Europe, ed. J. W. Müller (Cambridge, 2002), 232. 4. See my critique of Karen Pinkus’s reading of L’Eclisse as a story of silencing about decolonization. P. Ballinger, ‘Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 3 (2007), 714. 5. Michael Dunford and Lidia Greco, After the Three Italies: Wealth, Inequality and Industrial Change (Malden/Oxford, 2006), 5. 6. Much of the scholarship on the immediate post-war period in Italy has instead examined political and economic reconstruction under American tutelage, with a focus on the Anglo-American desire to shore up Italy as a strategic bulwark against communism. See John Lamberton Harper, America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945–1948 (Cambridge, 2002). 7. Sandi Volk, Esuli a Trieste: Bonifica nazionale e rafforzamento dell’italianità sul confine orientale (Udine, 1994), 316–17. 8. Barrett McGurn, ‘Trieste Still a Refugee Hub’, New York Herald Tribune, 6 April 1952. 9. On the ever-growing literature on the Istrian exodus, see Gloria Nemec, Un paese perfetto: Storia e memoria di una comunità in esilio. Grisignana d’Istria, 1930–1960 (Trieste, 1998); Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton, 2003); Raoul Pupo, Il lungo esodo. Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l’esilio (Milan, 2005). Also see Gustavo Corni’s contribution to this volume. 10. Literature on the broader post-war refugee crisis in Europe with discussion of Trieste includes United Nations, The Refugee in the Post-War World: Preliminary Report of a Survey of the Refugee Problem (Geneva, 1951); Anthony Bouscaren, International Migrations since 1945 (New York, 1963); A. Lane, ‘Putting Britain Right with Tito: The Displaced Persons Question in Anglo-Yugoslav Relations 1946–7’, European History Quarterly 22 (1992), 217–46. 11. Volk’s Esuli a Trieste provides a partial exception, though he devotes only a few pages to the demands by pro-Italian groups in Trieste that foreign (‘Balkanic’) refugees be removed from Trieste. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 196–9. 12. Ariella Verrocchio, ‘Introduzione’, in Trieste Anni Cinquanta. Ricostruzione: Trieste tra ricostruzione e ritorno all’Italia (1941–1954), ed. A.Verrocchio (Tavagnacco, 2004), 19. 13. Tullia Catalan, ‘L’organizzazione dell’assistenza a Trieste durante il Governo Militare Alleato’, in Trieste Anni Cinquanta. La città reale: economia, società e vita quotidiana, 1945–1954, eds Pier Angelo Toninelli, Bianca Cuderi, Adriano Dugulin, Giulio Mellinato, and Annamaria Vinci (Tavagnacco, 2004), 112. 14. These terminological differences between types of refugees reflects the reality that no one definition has been universally accepted for ‘refugee’, an essentially contested concept. See Rune Johansson, ‘The Refugee Experience in Europe after World War II: Some Theoretical and Empirical Considerations’, in The Uprooted: Forced Migration as an International Problem in the Post-War Era, ed. Göran Rystad (Lund, 1990), 229.

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15. United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Archive (UNRRA), United Nations, New York, S-520, Box 295. 16. Catalan, ‘L’organizzazione dell’assistenza a Trieste durante il Governo Militare Alleato’, 105. 17. UNRRA Archive, S-520, Box 295 (24 August 1944). 18. UNRRA Archive, S-520, Box 249, Antonio D’Andrea, Campi Profughi, Centri di Lavoro, di Studio e di Educazione Professionale. On sfollati as a descriptive term for internally displaced Italians, go to M. Sanfilippo, ‘Per una storia dei profughi stranieri e dei campi di accoglienza e di reclusione nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra’, Studi Emigrazione/Migration Studies XLIII, no. 164 (2006), 838 (fn. 16). 19. International Refugee Organization Archive (IRO), Archives Nationales, Paris, Fond AJ 43, 107, 15 November 1949, Program Committee Paper No. 1. During the war, the Allied Expeditionary Force distinguished ‘refugees’ (stateless civilians) from ‘displaced persons’ (individuals displaced out of their everyday environment in terms of state, language, and family). DPs were then further subclassified as ‘United Nations Displaced Persons’ (displaced individuals from Allied or neutral states) and ‘Enemy DP’ (DPs from enemy states) or ‘Ex-Enemy Displaced Persons’ (individuals from states like Italy). Gerald Steinacher, ‘L’Alto Adige come regione di transito dei rifugiati (1945–1950)’, Studi Emigrazione/Migration Studies XLIII, no. 164 (2006), 821. 20. A 1951 United Nations report cited 400,000 from the lost African colonies. United Nations, The Refugee in the Post-War World: Preliminary Report of a Survey of the Refugee Problem, 238. These numbers are the object of contestation and political manipulation, particularly in the Giulian case. The numbers of persons returning to the Alto Adige were small when compared to the Giulian refugees and colonial repatriates. Approximately 74,500 persons emigrated from the South Tyrol to Austria and Germany as the result of the 1939 option brokered between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In 1945, around 38,000 of these optants were in the Bundesland in the Austrian Tyrol; their reacquisition of Italian citizenship and repatriation to the Italian Tyrol occurred only in 1948. Gerald Steinacher notes that these South Tyrol optants constituted only a fraction of displaced persons coming into Italy through the Alps. Steinacher, ‘L’Alto Adige come regione di transito dei rifugiati (1945–1950)’, 827–8. 21. Bouscaren, International Migrations since 1945, 25. 22. I thank Peter Gatrell for bringing the World Refugee Year example to my attention. 23. On citizenship in post-war Italy, see Ballinger, ‘Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II’. 24. United Nations, The Refugee in the Post-War World: Preliminary Report of a Survey of the Refugee Problem, 239. 25. On IRO and debates over Italians from Venezia Giulia, see P. Ballinger, ‘Opting for Identity: The Politics of International Refugee Relief in Venezia Giulia, 1948–1952’, Acta Histriae 14 (2006), 115–40. 26. United Nations, The Refugee in the Post-War World: Preliminary Report of a Survey of the Refugee Problem, 340.

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27. UNRRA Archive, S-0527-1001 PAG-4/3-0-14-3-2-12 UNRRA Subject Files 1944-49. ‘Italian Refugees: Secret Intelligence Memorandum’. 28. For the agreement regarding the transfer of responsibility for displaced persons from SACMED to UNRRA, see UNRRA, S-0527-0980 PAG 4/30-14-3-0-1, UNRRA Subject Files 1944-1949. UNRRA S-0527-0846 PAG-4/3.0.14.0.2:4, UNRRA Subject Files 1944–9. ‘Displaced Persons Agreement (SACMED)’ (29 July 1946). UNRRA S-0527, Box 864. ‘Minutes of the First Meeting of the Displaced Persons Committee, UNRRA Italian Mission’ (4 July 1946). 29. On this, see Ballinger, ‘Opting for Identity: The Politics of International Refugee Relief in Venezia Giulia, 1948–1952’. 30. Guy Goodwin-Gill, ‘Different Types of Forced Migration Movements as an International and National Problem’, in The Uprooted: Forced Migration as an International Problem in the Post-War Era, ed. Göran Rystad (Lund, 1990), 28. 31. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 64–6. 32. Liliana Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, in Storia di un esodo. Istria 1945–1956, eds Cristiana Colummi, Liliana Ferrari, Gianna Nassisi, and Germano Trani (Trieste, 1980), 433; also Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 71. 33. Spazzali claims that the Italian state offered aid to over a million national refugees. Roberto Spazzali, ‘Assistenza, come?’, in C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945–1970), ed. Piero Delbello (Trieste, 2004), 45. The OAPGD later became the Ente Nazionale Lavoratori Rimpatri e Profughi (ENLRP), which was dissolved in 1977. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 94. 34. For the complex picture of relief for refugees from Venezia Giulia, see Volk, Esuli a Trieste. 35. Enrico Neami, ‘Campi profughi in Italia: Tanti archivi per un archivio?’, in C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945–1970), ed. Piero Delbello (Trieste, 2004), 32–3. 36. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 75. 37. Neami, ‘Campi profughi in Italia: Tanti archivi per un archivio?’, 32. 38. Istituto Regionale per la Cultura Istriana, Esodo e Opera Assistenza Profughi: Una Storia Parallela, 7–9; Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 99–103. 39. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 314. 40. On the ‘situation of foreign refugees in the zone of Trieste’, see the telespresso of 4 August 1950 from the Ufficio Consigliere Politico Italiano Trieste. Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAP), Affari Politici (AP), 1950–7 Jugoslavia, b. 546. For various rolls on displaced persons in the FTT between 1949 and 1952, consult the United States National Archives, Washington, DC, AMG. FTT, Box 874 165.70. Some of these foreign refugees in Trieste organised themselves into ‘National Refugee Committees’; on the Bulgarian section, go to MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950–7 Trieste, b. 514, ‘Trieste: Comitati bulgari’ (23 October 1951). 41. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 427. 42. Catalan, ‘L’organizzazione dell’assistenza a Trieste durante il Governo Militare Alleato’, 110. 43. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 159. 44. Spazzali, ‘Assistenza, come?’, 47.

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45. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 433. See also the letter from Castellani at the Ministero degli Affari Esteri Presidenza Consiglio Ministri (20 May 1950). MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950–7 Italia, b. 571. See also the letter (30 June 1949) from F. G. A. Parsons at AMG HQ to the Italian Mission Trieste. MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950–7 Italia, b. 571. 46. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 427. 47. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 158, 164, 169. 48. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 428. Also refer to the Confidential letter to David Hunter from Karel Ornstein, ‘Repatriation to Central and Eastern European Countries through the AMG Evacuation Camp at Udine’ (12 June 1946). UNRRA Archive, S-0527-0998 PAG 4/3-0-14-3-1-1-2, UNRRA Subject Files 1944–9. 49. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 430. 50. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 454. 51. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 82. 52. H. W. Brands, The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960 (New York, 1989); Beatrice Heuser, Western Containment Policies in the Cold War. The Yugoslav Case, 1948–53 (London, 1989); Ann Lane, Britain, the Cold War and Yugoslav Unity, 1941–1949 (Brighton, 1996). 53. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 337–8. 54. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 187; Elena Marchigiani, ‘Una lunga emergenza abitativa’, in: Trieste Anni Cinquanta: La città della ricostruzione urbanistica, edilizia sociale e industria a Trieste 1945–1957, eds Paola Di Biagi, Elena Marchigiani, and Alessandra Marin (Tavagnacco, 2004), 42–71, 69. 55. Ferrari, ‘Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947–1953)’, 455–6. 56. For various uses of the term bonifica nazionale (or etnica), see Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 195, 205, 252. 57. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 196–9. 58. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 197–8. 59. MAP, AP, 1950–7 Trieste, b. 693. 60. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1038. Letter (13 November 1947) from E. G. Shinkle to Officer in Charge, IRO, Rome. 61. US National Archives, AMG-FTT, Box 869. 62. In response, the Yugoslav authorities began to direct optants away from Trieste and towards Gorizia. On this, refer to the letter (4 December 1951) from M. Paulucci to the Legazione d’Italia in Belgrade and the Ministero degli Affari Esteri Rome. MAP, AP, 1950–7 Trieste, b. 513. 63. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1041, ‘Request for I.R.O. Classification of Trieste Hard Core’ (11 August 1951). 64. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1041, ‘Request for I.R.O. Classification of Trieste Hard Core’ (11 August 1951). 65. For the lease agreement of 23 May 1949 between the AMG and IRO to lease the Casa Emigrante, consult IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039 Italie. Initially, however, IRO had rejected the Casa Emigrante as unsuitable for its needs. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1038. 66. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1053 Bureau di Trieste, ‘I.R.O. Space in A.M.G. Refugee Camps’ (19 September 1951). 67. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1044 ‘Report on Field Trip to Trieste’ (16–19 August 1951).

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68. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1030 Italie, ‘Inspection of Trieste’ (7 May 1949). 69. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1039 Italie, ‘Emigrant Transit of Italy’ (n.d). 70. UNRRA Archive, S-527-1138; ‘History of the Port Traffic Office – Trieste: Austrian Mission’ (26 June 1947). For the roster of UNRRA ships coming into Trieste for the Austrian Mission up to 25 June 1947, see UNRRA Archive, S-527-1138 UNRRA. 71. Giulio Mellinato, ‘Il governo delle risorse’, in Ricostruzione. Trieste tra ricostruzione e ritorno all’Italia (1945–1954), ed. Ariella Verrocchio (Tavagnacco, 2004), 38–49, 43. 72. UNRRA Archive, S-527-1177; ‘Investigation of pilferage in Trieste 20–29 August’ (7 September 1946). See also UNRRA Archive, S-527-1138; ‘History of the Port Traffic Office – Trieste: Austrian Mission’ (26 June 1947). 73. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1039 Italie, ‘Trieste embarkation port for IRO refugees’ (13 June 1949). 74. IRO Archive, AJ 43, 1039 Italie (8 May 1950). 75. Bouscaren, International migrations since 1945, 17–18. 76. MAP, AP, 1950–7 Trieste, b. 693 (April 1954). 77. MAP, AP, 1950–7 Trieste, b. 693 (15 February 1954). 78. Kaye Webb and Ronald Searle, Refugees 1960: A Report in Words and Drawings (London, 1960), 26. 79. Bouscaren, International Migrations since 1945, 55. 80. Alan Male, ‘Sovraffolamento e promiscuità’, in C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945–1970), ed. Piero Delbello (Trieste, 2004), 129–31, 129. 81. Male, ‘Sovraffolamento e promiscuità’, 129. 82. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 252. 83. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 260, 259. 84. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 274. 85. Massimiliano Lacota, ‘Recuperare la dignità attraverso la memoria’, in C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945–1970), ed. Piero Delbello (Trieste, 2004), 13. 86. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 319. 87. P. Ballinger, ‘Lines in the Water, Peoples on the Map: Maritime Museums and the Representation of Cultural Boundaries in the Upper Adriatic’, Narodna umjetnost 43 (2006), 15–39; Maura Hametz, Making Trieste Italian, 1918–1954 (Woodbridge, 2005), 162. 88. Volk, Esuli a Trieste, 323; Spazzali, ‘Assistenza, come?’ 89. Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago, 1995). 90. Ballinger, History in Exile. 91. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966), 35. See also Malkki, Purity and Exile. 92. For the nuances of the IRO debates and examples of refugees from Venezia Giulia who requested IRO aid, go to Ballinger, ‘Opting for Identity: The Politics of International Refugee Relief in Venezia Giulia, 1948–1952’. 93. For a detailed analysis, see Ballinger, ‘Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II’.

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94. Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Ithaca, 1998), 57, 101. 95. P. Scrivano, ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism’, Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (April 2005), 322. 96. Scrivano, ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism’, 338–9. 97. Scrivano, ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism’, 323, 337.

7 Return, Displacement and Revenge: Majorities and Minorities in Osnabrück at the End of the Second World War Panikos Panayi

In recent years the study of migration in Germany has begun to move to the centre of historical study. While Ulrich Herbert has played a central role in this process,1 the work of Klaus Bade proves a more useful starting point both because of his focus upon Lower Saxony2 and even Osnabrück,3 but, more importantly, because his research has always recognised the importance of all migratory movements into and out of Germany including those of refugees and displaced people.4 Nevertheless, those Germans who migrated out of or returned to Germany at the end of the Second World War received immediate attention. As Robert Moeller has demonstrated, they became part of ‘the useable past’ of Germans, who wanted to distance themselves from the crimes of the Nazis.5 Historians and social scientists played a role in this process, above all Theodor Schieder.6 While post-war return and displacement in Germany may have received constant academic attention, it has recently experienced something of a revival. At the same time scholars writing in the English language, who had previously paid little attention to this issue, have now also begun to write about it.7 This chapter will illustrate German-centred population movements at the end of the Second World War through the experiences of one medium-sized town in Lower Saxony – Osnabrück. It will first examine the experience of those who returned in a physical sense. These consisted of adults and children who had fled the bombing either into the surrounding countryside or further south. In addition, attention will focus upon the experience of return of those who served in the German armed forces, some of whom would not get back until the 1950s following a period of internment in the Soviet Union. To these two groups, we also need to add the few surviving Jews and Romanies who made their way 141

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back to the town. The second theme of the chapter consists specifically of displacement, as experienced by people who had no previous connection with Osnabrück, which applies to two groups in particular. First, the 9000 German refugees from Eastern Europe, who moved to a town devastated by war and who would not have the few advantages connected to familiarity with the surroundings which the native population had. In addition, the chapter will also look at the 20,000 foreign workers and prisoners of war who found themselves in Osnabrück at the end of hostilities. The chapter finally examines the violent acts of foreign workers and one returning Romany at the end of the war, and asks whether these constitute revenge. A focus upon all of these population groups allows a summary of the totality of experiences in Germany during this period, rather than focusing upon one particular ethnic group.

Osnabrück The city of Osnabrück offers a case study of the experiences of different population groups in Germany during the middle of the twentieth century. On the one hand we may see it as a typical medium-sized German town for a series of reasons. With a population of 97,745 in 1948, it represented the forty-sixth largest settlement in West Germany (out of a total of 427) with a population of more than 10,000 people.8 It clearly remained much smaller than the largest cities with over a million people, but experiences here mirror life in other medium-sized German towns. The ethnic make-up of Osnabrück reflects the national picture. The 435 Jews in 1933 would appear to constitute a small percentage of the population of the town at just 0.45 per cent. This falls below that of the larger cities, where members of this minority were concentrated. Nevertheless, the Osnabrück figure resembles the overall percentage of Jews in the population in 1933, which stood at 0.76 per cent.9 Similarly, the 54 Romanies residing in Osnabrück in the early 1940s10 reflect the fact that just 30,000 lived in the expanded German Reich in 1939.11 The distinguishing features of Osnabrück include its denominational make-up in the north German setting with a significant Roman Catholic minority of 37 per cent.12 These two groups made up virtually the entire population and constitute what might be described as the ethnic majority population, which corresponds with the Nazi-defined Aryan group. Another distinguishing factor about Osnabrück was its relative isolation, between 50 and 60 miles from the nearest large cities. Clearly, it has its own unique history. It had served as the seat of an archbishop from the ninth century. It also played a crucial role in the cessation of hostilities

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at the end of the Thirty Years War in the seventeenth century. Like much of the rest of Germany, population growth and industrialisation transformed the town during the course of the nineteenth century so that it became an important engineering and textile production centre. Its political history during the Weimar Republic reflected the national picture, with the NSDAP emerging as the largest party by the early 1930s. Here, as in the rest of Germany, profound transformations occurred following the Nazi seizure of power.13 The Second World War meant complete economic mobilisation, the full implementation of Hitler’s racial goals, and the destruction of much of Osnabrück as a result of Allied bombing.14 In April 1945 Osnabrück was invaded by the Eighth Corps of the Second British Army, on their way to Berlin.15 The arrival of the British meant that the town returned to some sort of peacetime normality. While ultimate executive authority lay in the hands of the military authorities, the evolution of local and regional democratic structures after 1945 meant that Germans increasingly played a role in their own destiny, particularly as political parties came back to life again. Denazification did not discover any serious offenders but helped to eliminate obvious traces of the Third Reich. The town would experience economic and nutritional difficulties in the immediate aftermath of the war, but found itself on the way to economic recovery by the end of 1948.16 The Nazi period had resulted in significant changes in the demography of Osnabrück, which would unravel themselves at the end of the Second World War. In the first place, racial policy aimed at the disappearance of the local Jewish and Romany population. In fact, the number of Jews had declined significantly before the deportation to Auschwitz, mostly as a result of migration to other German towns with larger Jewish communities or because of emigration. Only 66 found themselves deported to eastern Europe after the outbreak of war.17 We know much about the fate of Osnabrück Jews under the Nazis, largely due to the work of Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer, who have traced the experiences of all the town’s Jews.18 However, information about the local Romany population remains largely non-existent other than a list of 54 Sinti and Roma deported to Auschwitz on 1 March 1943, which has survived in the Osnabrück Staatsarchiv,19 virtually all of whom would perish. While Nazi racial policy eliminated the longstanding Jewish and Romany population during the Second World War, the needs of the Osnabrück war economy and the dictates of Nazi ideology meant the importation of over 20,000 foreign workers and prisoners of war into the town. Although this group remained separate from the native population, especially due to the fact that the vast majority lived in camps

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and that penalties faced those Germans and foreigners who illegally interacted with each other, some mixing inevitably took place.20 By the end of the war, Karl Kühling (who produced the first major study of Osnabrück under the Nazis) estimated that 20 per cent of the town’s population consisted of foreigners and prisoners of war from Russia, Poland, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.21 The explanation for this high percentage does not lie simply in the import of foreigners, but also in the decline of the native population due to mobilisation, evacuation and flight from Allied bombing. The military call-up often resulted in the permanent loss of men. The number of Osnabrückers who perished totalled over 5000.22 The death rate in the town reached its height in 1944 at 13.8 per thousand as deaths exceeded births.23 Military call-up of men meant that the population of Osnabrück became more dominated by women and younger people, as revealed in Table 7.1. The largest change occurred between 1942 and 1943 when the proportion of men over 16 fell from 36 per cent to 34 per cent. From 1944, evacuation as a result of Allied bombing meant a decline in the overall number of people living in Osnabrück.

Return During the war the town had clearly experienced significant demographic transformations. Return therefore represents one of the central post-war experiences. It is a physically permanent process and refers to a series of groups who had left the town due to the consequences of war, although they would have experienced short-term problems in readjusting to an environment which had changed as a result of Allied bombing during their absence, as well as dealing with the early post-war economic and

Table 7.1

Changing composition of Osnabrück’s population, 1939–45

Date March March March March March March March

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Males over 16

Males under 16

Females over 16

Females under 16

Total

35,401 36,015 36,953 37,314 32,822 33,192 24,397

10,287 10,656 10,677 10,627 10,324 10,275 6,382

43,005 43,456 45,174 45,730 44,035 44,630 25,794

9,940 10,296 10,324 10,274 9,980 9,934 7,485

98,633 100,423 103,128 103,945 97,161 98,631 64,058

Source: NSO Dep-3c-335, Angaben zur Bevölkerungsstatistik.

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political upheaval. The returnees belonged to both the ethnic minority and majority populations who made their way back to their homes (or what remained of them) at the end of the conflict. A number of groups illustrate this process. First, there are those Germans who had left the town to escape the bombing and who subsequently returned to Osnabrück. The number of people living here may have decreased to a low point of 61,399 at the end of April 1945, but this had increased to 81,859 by the end of the year.24 By June 1946 the total had risen to 96,118, which, however, represented a 10.7 percent decrease from the 107,081 counted in May 1939.25 By 1948 a total of 99,211 people lived in the town.26 Apart from those Germans returning from the countryside, which occurred fairly rapidly, the increase of population also finds partial explanation in the arrival of German prisoners of war, which took place gradually. The continued absence of men still in the Soviet Union proved one of the most depressing aspects of the post-war experience for native women and children, although when they eventually returned problems concerning reintegration into the family as well as local society and economy arose.27 But Heinz Frank recalled his happy arrival in Osnabrück from Russia in November 1945: I returned home early in the morning – with slippers, wearing no shoes. I knocked on the door and then explained everything. My grandfather was asleep downstairs, my parents were asleep upstairs and then my mother came down and said: ‘Heinz are you here again’, and touched me, felt my whole body to see if I still had all of my arms and legs and then shook me.28 Frank reached Osnabrück fairly early, as the return of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union continued until Konrad Adenauer visited Moscow in 1955 and secured the release of the final 10,000.29 Until the end of 1949 as many as 30 former prisoners of war returned to Osnabrück every month, although 1444 were still missing.30 On 16 March 1948 the Red Cross opened a reception room on platform 1 of the railway station to greet returning prisoners and begin the process of reintegration.31 Thirty Jews also returned to Osnabrück together with perhaps just one Romany. The returned Jews included five who had faced deportation to Riga, together with four who had survived Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.32 Irmgard Ohl had come back from Riga together with her mother in July 1945 and would subsequently marry a Christian.33 Only one Romany appears to have returned home.34

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Returnees of all ethnic groups faced a series of disorienting experiences. In the first place, they may have lost their homes as a result of Allied bombing. About 55 per cent of residences may have disappeared from the town, comparing with some of the most heavily damaged locations in Germany.35 The number of people who found themselves without a roof over their heads in 1945 may have totalled 88 per cent of the town’s population. But some people lost their homes more than once, moving from one form of temporary accommodation to another. While more than four-fifths of the housing in the city centre was destroyed, the figure fell to below 50 per cent elsewhere and to 5 percent and 4 percent in the suburbs of Eversburg and Haste respectively.36 Allied attacks had also damaged all aspects of the transport system in Osnabrück, making movement almost impossible in the immediate aftermath of the war, both to and from Osnabrück and within it.37 The returnees also faced the problem of hunger, which would persist until the introduction of the Deutschmark in 1948, although Osnabrückers did not suffer the privations of the large conurbations.38 In the immediate aftermath of Nazi defeat Osnabrückers helped themselves to food supplies which lay in the harbour and in depots run by the Wehrmacht, but by the end of April 1945 problems with transport meant that people had difficulties obtaining butter, milk and potatoes. By the end of May the military authorities had issued 77,569 ration cards.39 In August 1945, when the daily ration stood at 1100 calories, it proved difficult to reach even this target due to the problems with securing enough produce from the surrounding countryside.40 During the winter Osnabrückers had problems obtaining all manner of foodstuffs including basics such as flour, cabbages and potatoes.41 The situation remained dire during 1946,42 and conditions further deteriorated during the 1946–7 winter when temperatures dipped to as low as –30 ºC. In March 1947, Osnabrückers received 1383 calories per day instead of the 1550 promised on their ration cards. Shortages continued for much of the year so that between May and July individuals received an average of just 1000 calories per day.43 As late as May people still spoke about food shortages on an almost obsessive basis.44 The introduction of the Deutschmark in June 1948 represented the real breakthrough in food supply in Osnabrück because the new currency provided a foundation for stable prices and wages by wiping out debts, both governmental and personal.45 The new notes arrived in the middle of June and on 20 June, ‘X-Day’, every Osnabrücker obtained DM40 from designated points. A police report from 21 July commented on the change of mood among the working classes. ‘Amazingly goods arrived overnight to be set up in the shops and display windows opened for view.’46 While rationing may

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have continued after the introduction of the Deutschmark, the hunger years had ended. But even during the immediate post-war period few Osnabrückers starved. Helmut Segschneider and Wido Spratte have written about the lengths to which people in the town went to avoid hunger. Segschneider included ‘hunting’, ‘agricultural activity’, stealing, begging, hoarding and black market activity.47 Economic activity in the first few months of peace came to a virtual standstill, which meant unemployment became a significant problem. By September 1945 a total of 30,295 employable people lived in Osnabrück, with 26,851 in work and 3444 without a job, giving an unemployment rate of 12.8 per cent.48 During the summer of 1945 many people found themselves either clearing up bomb damage or working in the service of the British.49 The return to full production and full employment faced further hindrance because of the arrival of thousands of refugees from Eastern Europe. By the summer of 1946, 532 concerns employed more than five people, but the total number of people involved totalled 17,334 compared with 22,422 in 1937–8. Some of the biggest falls in employment had occurred in firms involved with metal production and therefore directly connected to the war, while others, such as transport, had seen an increase in the numbers they employed.50 But recovery took place fairly rapidly after 1946 so that in the following year a total of 13,500 businesses of all sizes existed in the Osnabrück Regierungsbezirk, 90 per cent of the 1939 figure.51 Economic recovery may have occurred relatively quickly. But reintegration into family life proved one of the most difficult problems for returning soldiers and prisoners of war, as well as their dependants. Some marriages failed for a variety of reasons, as explained in a local newspaper article which listed ‘quick marriages during the war’, ‘marriages by proxy’ and ‘the housing shortage, which has resulted in people constantly being on top of each other in a single tiny room’ which ‘has completely changed people’.52 While members of the ethnic majority usually returned to their families, this rarely happened for Jews and Romanies. Just a handful of Jews survived in Osnabrück although their numbers increased to 64 due to the liberation of the European concentration camps53 (which sent people westwards) and the presence of Jewish prisoners of war among Yugoslavs held in a camp in the Osnabrück suburb of Eversburg during the conflict.54 On 19 August 1945 the opening ceremony of the synagogue took place in Rolandstrasse, which then held weekly services.55 The number of Romanies returning seems even smaller, and those who did would face the sort of persecution which had characterised the previous history of this community in Germany.56

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Displacement Displacement may have affected all residents of Osnabrück at the end of the war in the sense that returnees also found themselves in a different environment from the one they had left, but displacement applies to two groups in particular. First, those German refugees arriving from Eastern Europe to an unfamiliar landscape with which they had even less connection than those ethnic minorities returning home to a town where their relatives had once lived. These German refugees eventually integrated more slowly than the returnees. Displacement also applied to those foreign workers and prisoners of war who had laboured in the town and now found themselves liberated and, in most cases, desperate to return home. While many of those who returned may also have experienced similar feelings of displacement, this phrase is used especially for these two groups because there seemed no obvious reason for their presence in Osnabrück other than the upheavals of war. The end of the conflict meant that the foreign workers had no reason to stay in the town anymore because the Nazi war economy had collapsed. Their displacement here lasted until they made their way back home. However, the refugees’ displacement lasted for longer because integration as measured through the securing of permanent housing in particular did not occur until the 1950s in some cases, although the presence of other refugees who had faced similar experiences helped, as did the efforts of the local state. About 9000 refugees from Eastern Europe may have found themselves in Osnabrück by the end of 1949, originating particularly from parts of Prussia now ceded to either Poland or the Soviet Union.57 They formed part of a mass displacement of as many as 13 million Germans who had fled out of Eastern Europe. These included people who simply escaped the advancing Soviet armies. However, much of the migration occurred as a result of the westward movement of the Soviet border, which took over much of Poland. In turn the Polish border migrated further to the west leading to an ethnic cleansing of German parts of Poland. At the same time, those nation-states invaded by, but now liberated from, the Nazis – including Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania – also expelled their ethnic German populations, which had lived in these nation-states before they had emerged as such entities in the fall-out from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. These westward movements received sanction in the Potsdam Treaty. As a result, the rump Germany found itself housing millions of refugees.58 The displacement of these newcomers struck them in a variety of ways, as Osnabrück illustrates. For example, they experienced traumatic

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uprooting in the process of fleeing westward en masse from their land of birth. Liselotte Burchardt, who lived in Alt-Christburg in East Prussia, left her home with her children, Polish servants and seven wagons on 22 January 1945 as the Red Army advanced. She eventually reached Osnabrück in December of the same year via Berlin with just her children.59 Her story reflects the experience of flight. In addition, ‘Action Clobber’ released about 400 prisoners of war from the East in Osnabrück who found themselves concentrated in one location, described as an ‘isolation house’. The city authorities tried to use their labour power, but many fled in a vain attempt to return to their homes.60 Orphans arriving in Osnabrück had perhaps the most harrowing experiences of all. These included seven-year-old ‘Peter’, ‘picked up at the traveller’s aid society in Osnabrück. In his company was an aunt, who was 15-years old. Both came from Tilsit and hiked through Saxony to Hamburg in order to find their collective great-aunt there. The people of Hamburg said: “Not here”, and put a card for Osnabrück in their hands.’61 Nothing could stress the displacement of the newly arrived refugees from Eastern Europe more than their unfamiliar housing in a city facing shortages. The newcomers therefore found themselves in different types of temporary accommodation. Some lived in camps.62 Others lived in sheds, huts, ruins, or basements. An article in the Neues Tageblatt of 30 September 1948 carried the title of ‘The Hut Man’ and described the conditions in which such an individual had to reside, including ‘finger thin’ walls, doors which did not close and coal and potatoes stored in the living room. Other refugees found themselves billeted in the homes of natives. Renate Schlectriem remembered one particular family, who moved into a five-bedroom home of 220 square metres, ‘with father, mother and grandmother’. Her father built one ‘apartment by joining together two rooms’.63 Along with housing, the most difficult problem facing refugees consisted of the search for employment, even if in many cases the newcomers found jobs fairly quickly.64 Together with Hildesheim, Osnabrück had the lowest refugee unemployment rate in Lower Saxony,65 reflecting the picture for the town’s population as a whole. Refugees in Osnabrück actually had a diverse employment experience, which makes generalisations difficult. One of the groups which suffered most, in terms of the loss of status, consisted of professionals. The Neues Tageblatt carried one story under the headline of ‘Professor Hawks Shaving Cream’, as the individual concerned could not secure any other employment, at least in the short run. However, significant numbers of refugees opened up their own businesses by the end of the 1940s.66

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The employment experience points to the temporary nature of ‘displacement’ for the newly arrived refugees in Osnabrück. The creation of a refugee identity through the establishment of organisations at both the local and national level also helped to alleviate the trauma which individuals felt at having left their homes behind. These bodies aimed at memorialising their areas of origin and also had the futile desire of reclaiming them. They partly represented a manifestation of pride in the difference of eastern Germans from natives, even though the newcomers did not all come from the same places. The organisations established in Osnabrück included the Gemeinschaft der Ostvertriebenen, which developed connections with a larger national body established in 1949 in the form of the Zentralverband der Vertriebenen Deutschen.67 The efforts of the local state and churches to help the exiles also aided their integration. A local refugee office came into existence in October 1945. Its first task simply consisted of registering the newcomers.68 Other measures included helping with the search for and provision of accommodation, supplying clothing, giving out ration cards and assisting with medical needs.69 While the local state gradually took control of the care of refugees in Osnabrück, the major charities also played a role in looking after them. The Red Cross, for instance, established an office at the railway station, which aimed at assisting all of those moving into Osnabrück.70 The Caritasverband also established a mission at the railway station.71 The Roman Catholic Church provided food for refugees, through its various parishes in Osnabrück.72 While the experience of displacement did not last as long for the newly liberated foreign workers and prisoners of war as it did for the German refugees in Osnabrück, they did not receive the type of support offered to the newcomers, perhaps because they left quite quickly. Living and working hundreds or thousands of miles from their homelands in temporary accommodation, under attack from the skies, their experience during the Second World War had been traumatic. The end of the war eliminated the reason for their presence in German towns, and the lack of work further emphasised their displacement. In 1945, 15,000 foreigners from the entire Osnabrück Regierungsbezirk faced repatriation from a camp set up for this purpose.73 Their repatriation lasted into the late 1940s. Many remained in camps, changing – in the words of the main historian on the national picture – ‘from forced labourers to homeless foreigners’, often with no desire to return to the Eastern Bloc where they would potentially face charges of treachery. Some chose, instead, to remain or move west.74 In July 1947, two repatriation camps still existed in Osnabrück, housing about 2700 people. In January 1949, 739 former prisoners remained in a camp in

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the suburb of Eversburg made up of: 505 Poles; 24 Estonians; 75 Latvians; 1 Turk; 3 Armenians; 3 stateless people; 11 Lithuanians; 51 Yugoslavs; 5 Hungarians; 57 Polish Ukrainians; 1 Russian; and 3 Czechs.75

Revenge Revenge can be examined in the post-war context among liberated minorities who found themselves freed from their nightmarish Second World War experience. Some chose to attack those who had persecuted and controlled them. Foreign workers had already descended into a spiral of criminality even before the end of the conflict, partly because the range of offences established by the Nazis made crime inevitable.76 Describing the behaviour of foreign workers at the end of the war as revenge is, however, problematic. Research on this theme remains rather limited. The collection of essays on The Politics of Retribution in Europe has looked at a range of actions, especially those of a judicial nature.77 John Sack has written of the incarceration and death of up to 80,000 Germans in Poland following the arrival of Soviet forces in 1945.78 Meanwhile, Jim G. Tobias and Peter Zinke have pointed to the formation of organised Jewish revenge brigades in the western zones of occupation in Germany and Austria. The actions which these groups undertook included running over Germans with lorries and carrying out acts of summary execution against suspected members of the SS.79 One of the reasons for the lack of research on revenge may be the fact that it occurred on a fairly limited basis. However perhaps the way in which Western historiography has forgotten the Germans as victims may also offer an explanation, evidenced most clearly by the blind spot with regard to the consequences of Allied bombing until recent years.80 We can examine the actions of perhaps the only Romany who returned to Osnabrück in 1945. As an entire file exists in the Osnabrück Staatsarchiv on this case, it serves as a useful illustration of revenge at the end of the war. Two sides exist to his story, resolved in court. According to local resident Anna Braun,81 the following happened in her house in Kornstraße 40: At midday on 20 June 1945 an unknown man appeared in my house and demanded pieces of clothing from me. He said that he had come out of a concentration camp and had the right to completely plunder my house. As I had to take the behaviour of the person seriously on the assumption that he would carry out his threats, I gave him 2 good suits, 1 shirt and 1 hat belonging to my husband.

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However, the other side of the story, recorded by West on 27 June 1945, was somewhat different: The allegation about my behaviour in the house of Mrs Braun is correct. In February of 1943 I was taken to the concentration camp. My release from the camp at Belsen occurred in the middle of April this year as the English military occupied the area. I did not take any clothing with me during my absence from Osnabrück. With regard to my clothing I found myself in a desperate situation at the moment. It was known to me that a Mrs Braun, whose husband was employed by the Gestapo, lived at Kornstraße 40. He then went to the house on 20 June: ‘I introduced myself with the remark that I had come from the annihilation camp at Auschwitz. At the same time I said that the husband had worked for the secret police’. West stated that he asked for some clothes belonging to Mrs Braun’s husband but that he did not threaten her. He continued: ‘We spoke about how life in the concentration camp went. I therefore mentioned that our children were thrown at the wall’. In fact, they had faced medical experiments there and his wife had also died in Auschwitz. In total, 27 members of the West family lost their lives, ten of them from his immediate family. The case went to court on 31 March 1947, with the following verdict: The accused is charged with having visited Mrs Braun in her house in Kornstraße 40 in Osnabrück on 21 [sic] June 1945 and to have threatened her to such an extent, by stating that he could throw her children against the wall where they would remain hanging, plunder her home and chase her out, that she gave him two suits, one shirt and a hat. The facts are not, however, considered to have been established. The accused was certainly in the house of the witness Braun on the day mentioned, and allowed himself to be handed the items, but whether he received them through threats or by describing his concentration camp experiences could not be established. The witness Braun, the single adult eyewitness deviating from her earlier statements – and her sworn statement before the requested judge – stated that the accused did not exactly behave audaciously. He told her that he would not deal with what happened to his relatives in the concentration camp, although he could do that. He could also have ransacked her house, but he would not do that. She then became scared because she was a woman alone in her house and

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because the Russians had plundered elsewhere. She gave him things because she sympathised with him. The suspicion certainly remains that the accused alluded to his experiences in the concentration camp with the purpose of making the witness pliable. Using the evidence available from today’s statements from the single witness the court has not adduced from the evidence, that the accused had threatened her beyond doubt. The court therefore decided to release the prisoner. It seems safe to say that West may have wished to exact some kind of revenge on the people responsible for the death of his whole family but he also wanted to tell the wife of a member of the Gestapo about the realities of Romany life in a German death camp. Perhaps the act of confronting such a woman with the actions of her husband represented a form of revenge. The court did not reach a definite decision about how he had obtained the clothing. Even so, West felt that he had the right to take his own form of `revenge’, in an act of ‘natural justice’. Surely, he was entitled to two suits, a shirt and a hat from someone whom he believed had sent his family to their deaths in Auschwitz. West would probably have rationalised his actions, in visiting Mrs Braun, in this way. Those foreigners who had survived the war years also had a reason for revenge similar to that of West. Looting in Osnabrück, involving both Germans and foreigners, began as British troops approached the town. On 5 April the Stadt-Chronik focused upon crimes carried out by ‘an unchained gang of foreigners – Italians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavians, and above all, however, Poles and Russians’ who wandered through the streets ‘and plundered businesses and warehouses’. They were ‘absolutely starving and mostly badly clothed’ and used the opportunity to ‘satisfy their instincts’. On the following day the Stadt-Chronik reported that Hordes of East European workers of both sexes are wandering through the streets in order to plunder businesses. A gang of about 100 people broke into the cellar of the Leffers warehouse in Johannisstraße, which is packed with textile goods. They are stealing to their heart’s content. The narrative asserted that the police remained powerless. All bicycles fell into the hands of East European workers, who simply stopped and took them from Germans. The Stadt-Chronik also mentioned house burglaries as well as assaults upon women at gunpoint. On 30 May, it spoke about ‘The Plague of Foreigners’, although by this time excesses seem

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to have declined as the British military authorities had taken control, eventually placing most foreigners in repatriation camps. The British also ordered the city authorities to provide for them, which the writer of the Stadt-Chronik resented. As late as 28 June Dr Glenewinkel wrote that ‘many Russians’ preferred to remain in Osnabrück and continue their ‘free life of robbery’ rather than return home. On 19 August he reported an attack on a house in the suburb of Dodesheide by a group of Italians and Yugoslavs who tied up the residents and took all of their possessions.82 While the compiler of the Stadt-Chronik revealed his racism in his narratives, other documents from the summer of 1945 support his reporting, often in more graphic detail. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church in the suburb of Haste became victim to several crimes carried out by Russians in June 1945, which included attacks on the priest, the chaplain and ‘several nuns’, while ‘religious events […] could not take place because of the Russian plague’. Furthermore, ‘The Russians gather together on various street corners in groups of 20 men and attack all churchgoers and remove all watches, jewellery and pieces of clothing which they carry on their bodies, so that the believers are too afraid to attend services and religious events’.83 Police reports from August 1945 provide even more disturbing information. One from 16 August provides the following details of events which occurred in the previous week: 1. Murder. A German man was shot in Iburger Strasse after being ambushed by Poles. 2. Rape. In the month of July 1945 a young woman was raped by a Serb. 3. Dangerous Attacks. Ten Poles attempted to stop a motorcycle in Osnabrück-Haste. The driver drove further. The Poles shot him and hit the passenger on the motorbike. The person shot died from his injuries. 4. Burglaries. The number of robberies has increased. In two cases the perpetrators were reported. In three cases it was asserted that the robberies were carried out by Poles. The following were stolen: 3 pigs, 2 geese, 10 chickens, 11 rabbits, machines, tools, clothing and groceries. 5. Robberies

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Sixteen robberies of bicycles and five other robberies were carried out. These robberies were committed in: 9 cases by Poles 5 cases by Italians 4 cases by Russians 3 cases by foreigners of unknown nationalities 1 case by a German 2 cases by people in English uniforms. The following cases committed were armed robberies: In three cases Russians In three cases Italians In three cases Poles In two cases people in English uniforms.84 The police report of the following week told a similar story.85 The crimes carried out by freed foreigners reached their height in the few months after liberation and then subsided as the British authorities gained control by interning those foreign workers and prisoners of war awaiting repatriation. In fact, after the summer of 1945, little criminality was in evidence. Interviews with 30 native Osnabrückers suggest that few of them had any personal memories of such crimes. Only two did: Lora Kraft and Hermann Tewes. The former remembered the fear caused by the activities of ‘the Russians’ on the streets, which meant that she went out with several of her friends but, nevertheless, still had her bicycle taken away.86 More interesting is a story told by Tewes. Antonia Moskalenko lived with his family for six months after the end of the war, together with one of her friends. Tewes claimed that their presence in the house of his parents prevented an attack by Russians, who wanted to loot a bakery opposite their shop. ‘Antonia opened the window and said something in Russian – what I don’t know – in any case they went away’.87

The Return to ‘Normality’ Osnabrück can be seen as an example of the demographic and migratory upheaval in Germany at the end of the Second World War, but also of the war itself, which meant that German towns underwent dramatic change as a result of ethnic cleansing, Nazi labour policies and border changes in Eastern Europe. We might wish to isolate this period in German history because of the scale of the migration which took place. However, as stressed in the work of scholars such as Bade and Herbert, it

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can also be used to illustrate the centrality of migration in the evolution of modern Germany. The ‘return’ of the population to Osnabrück at the end of the conflict symbolised a return to stability for German towns, away from the chaos and disorientation which had characterised the war years. Return for Osnabrückers occurred in a purely physical sense because they moved back to the town in which they had lived before the war. In the short run some of the returnees experienced hunger and homelessness, which lasted until 1948 for many. Some also had problems reintegrating back into the society which they had left. But while they may have felt displaced, at least they had gone back to their home town, if not to their homes, which Allied aeroplanes may have flattened. However, following the introduction of the Deutschmark in June 1948, which symbolised the beginning of the German economic miracle, the returnees must have begun to feel at home, even though they may not have lived in the same accommodation as during the pre-war years.88 Some normality also emerged for the Jewish population of Osnabrück in the sense that here, if not elsewhere in Germany,89 a rebirth of the community occurred, although the members who had emerged after the resettlement of the Jewish population in the early nineteenth century (following medieval expulsion in 1431)90 had largely disappeared. The Romany population, which has left few traces of its history before the Second World War has left just as little since that time. Displacement certainly occurred for the post-1945 refugees who moved to a town which they had never even seen before in the overwhelming majority of cases, unable to return to homes which most of them had left behind forever. If these two physical realities did not make them feel displaced, residence in temporary accommodation and the inability to find employment must have done so in many cases. The solution to these problems helped their integration into wider society as did the efforts of the local state and churches. Feelings of disorientation and displacement therefore disappeared gradually, but would have lasted until the 1950s in many cases, especially because of the difficulties of securing permanent housing. While they experienced many of the problems of the returning Osnabrückers the fact that they found themselves initially as outsiders in a strange, bombed-out environment would have emphasised their displacement in contrast to natives who, while they may have returned to a transformed and destroyed city, at least found themselves in the town they had left during the war. Foreign workers in Osnabrück had lived in a strange environment away from their families throughout the course of the Second World War and probably felt displaced throughout their stay.

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When the war ended, they were literally displaced because the reason for their presence in Osnabrück, the Nazi war economy, no longer existed. They therefore tried to return home as quickly as possible. Before doing so, as German sources reveal, they indulged in acts of criminality, a picture repeated throughout Germany. Whether these crimes merit the description of revenge proves more problematic. Most of the crimes actually involved seizing useful items such as bicycles, food and clothes, rather than attacking Germans, which we might expect in acts of revenge. However, attacks certainly did take place upon Germans, in which revenge must have served as a motivating factor. However, the Romany Johannes West did not attack Mrs Braun, perhaps because he wanted to return to some sort of normality (despite the fact that the Nazis had robbed him of his entire family) by resuming his life in his home town of Osnabrück, but revenge certainly played some role in his actions. Violence certainly occurred involving victims of the Nazis at the end of the war. While some of this violence and general criminality did not have revenge as a motivating factor, some actions, both in Osnabrück and beyond, certainly did. Osnabrück represents a case study of a medium-sized German town at the end of the war. While it experienced its own unique historical development in the immediate post-war period after 1945, the events which occurred here serve as a good case study of the history of Germany in these years. During this period the country began to recover from the effects of Nazism and war. Millions of people experienced return and displacement, whether in the form of westward-moving Germans or eastward and westward-migrating foreign workers, desperate to return to their homes and families which many had not seen for years. Osnabrück can be seen as a microcosm for the whole of Germany, although it does have its own distinguishing characteristics. The experience of the natives, both majorities and minorities, as well as of German refugees and foreign workers in this particular town, provides one example of everyday realities in early post-war Germany.

Notes 1. Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Forced Labour in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1997). 2. Klaus J. Bade, ed., Fremde in Land: Zuwanderung und Eingliederung im Raum Niedersachsen seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Osnabrück, 1997). 3. Klaus J. Bade, Hans-Bernd Meier and Bernhard Parisius, eds, Zeitzeugen im Interview: Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene im Raum Osnabrück nach 1945 (Osnabrück, 1997).

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4. See, for instance, his edited volume, Klaus J. Bade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland, Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gengenwart (Munich, 1992). 5. Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (London, 2001), pp. 51–87. 6. Theodor Schieder, ed., Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, 4 Volumes (Bonn, 1954–61). See also, for instance, Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, eds, Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland: Ihre Eingliederung und ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistleben, 3 Volumes (Kiel, 1959). 7. See, for instance: David Rock and Stefan Wolff, eds, Going Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic (Oxford, 2002); Perti Ahonen, After Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe, 1945–1990 (Oxford, 2003). 8. Statistisches Jahrbuch deutscher Gemeinde, vol. 37 (Schwäbisch Gmünd, 1949), pp. 14–30. 9. Panikos Panayi, Ethnic Minorities in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Turks and Others (London, 2000), pp. 133–4. 10. This was the number deported to Auschwitz, as indicated in N[iedersächsisches] S[taatsarchiv] O[snabrück] Rep 430-201-16B-65-39-Bd.1. 11. Hans Joachim Döring, Die Zigeuner im nationalsozialistischen Staat (Hamburg, 1964), p. 18. 12. Osnabrücker Volkszeitung, 30 November 1930. 13. Panikos Panayi, Life and Death in a German Town: Osnabrück from the Weimar Republic to World War Two and Beyond (London, 2007), pp. 13–93; Ludwig, Hoffmeyer, Ludwig Bäte and Heinrich Koch, Chronik der Stadt Osnabrück, 6th edn (Osnabrück, 1995); Gerd Steinwascher, ‘Die Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus’, in Gerd Steinwascher, ed., Geschicte der Stadt Osnabrück (Belm bei Osnabrück, 2006), pp. 706–66. 14. Panayi, ibid., pp. 94–132; Wido Spratte, Im Anflug auf Osnabrück: Die Bombenangriffe, 1940–1945 (Osnabrück, 1985). 15. Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic (London, 1947), p. 212. 16. Panayi, Life and Death, pp. 134–61. 17. Panayi, ibid., pp. 181–98; Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer, Stationen auf dem Weg nach Auschwitz: Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Juden in Osnabrück, 3rd edition (Osnabrück, 2000). 18. Junk and Sellmeyer, ibid. 19. This list can be found in NSO Rep 430-201-16B-65-39-Bd.1. 20. Panayi, Life and Death, pp. 221–38. For an introduction to the national picture, see Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers. 21. Karl Kühling, Osnabrück, 1933–1945: Stadt im Dritten Reich (Osnabrück, 1980), p. 214. 22. Hoffmeyer, Chronik der Stadt Osnabrück, p. 576. 23. Margret Osege, ‘Vergleichende Untersuchung über sozialhygienische Probleme in der Stadt Osnabrück vor und nach dem zweiten Weltkrieges’ (unpublished University of Münster medical dissertation, 1949), p. 14. 24. NSO Dep-3b-XV-41, Chronik von Dr Hans Glenewinkel, 5. April–31. Dezember 1945, pp. 23, 128 25. Osnabrücker Rundschau, 9 July 1946. 26. Karl Ordelheide, Am Ende war Anfang: Osnabrück, 1945–1948 (Osnabrück, 1982), p. 167.

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27. Albrecht Lehmann, Gefangenschaft und Heimkehr: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der Sowjetunion (Munich, 1986); Annette Kaminsky, ed., Heimkehr, 1948 (Munich, 1998). 28. Interview with Heinz Frank, 13 August 2001. 29. Andrea Hilger, Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der Sowjetunion, 1941–1956: Kriegsgefangenenpolitik, Lageralltag und Errinerung (Essen, 2000), pp. 353–64. 30. Neues Tageblatt, 16 November 1949. 31. Niedersächsischer Kurier, 20 April, 8 December 1948. 32. Z. Asaria, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Osnabrück und Umgebung: Zur Weihe der Synagoge in Osnabrück (Osnabrück, 1969), p. 32. 33. Interview with Irmgard Ohl, 28 July 2000. 34. See below pp. 151–3. 35. Hans Rumpf, Das War der Bombenkrieg: Deutsche Städte im Feuersturm (Oldenburg, 1961), pp. 195–200. 36. Spratte, Im Anflug auf Osnabrück, p. 155. 37. Hoffmeyer, Chronik, p. 626; Wido Spratte, Zwischen Trümmern: Osnabrück in den Jahren 1945 bis 1948 (Osnabrück, 1990), pp. 133–7. 38. See, for instance: Gabriele Stüber, Der Kampf gegen den Hunger, 1945–1950: Die Ernährungslage in der Britischen Zone Deutschlands, insbesondere in SchleswigHolstein und Hamburg (Neumünster, 1984); and Günter J. Trittel, Hunger und Politik: Die Ernährungskrise in der Bizone (1945–1949) (Frankfurt, 1990). 39. NS0 Dep-3b-XV-41, Chronik von Dr Hans Glenewinkel, 5 April–31 Dezember 1945, pp. 23, 36. 40. NSO Dep-3c-380, Ernährungsamt Abt. A to Oberbergurmeister, 2 August 1945. 41. NS0 Dep-3b-XV-41, Chronik von Dr Hans Glenewinkel, 5 April–31 Dezember 1945, p. 130. 42. NSO Dep-3b-XV-42, Stadtchronik, Januar bis Dezember 1946, pp. 135, 154, 190. 43. Helmut Segschneider, ‘Osnabrück im “achten Kriegsjahr”: Zwei Skizzen nach Zeitzeugenberichten’, in Nils-Arvid Bringéus, ed., Wandel der Volkskultur in Europa, vol. 2 (Münster, 1988), p. 860; Neues Tageblatt, 4 March, 3 October 1947; NSO Dep-3b-XV-43 Stadtchronik, 1947, p. 270. 44. NSO Rep-430-201-16B-65-165-Bd. 1, Monatsbericht über Moral und öffentliche Meinung, 17 May 1948. 45. Alan Kramer, The West German Economy, 1945–1955 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 134–40. 46. NSO Rep-430-201-16B-65-78-Bd. 1, Monatsbericht über Moral und öffentliche Meinung, 21 July 1948. 47. Helmut Segschneider, ‘Not kennt kein Gebot: Formen der Nahrungsbeschaffung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg im Raum Osnabrück’, Rheinisch-westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, vol. 34–5 (1989–90), pp. 205–38; Spratte, Zwischen Trümmern, pp. 33–4. 48. NSO Rep-640-Osn-14, Die Erwerbspersonen in September 1945 in Osnabrück. 49. Nordwest-Nachrichten, 31 August 1945. 50. NSO Rep-430-108-26-73-447, ‘Industrie, Handel und Gewerbe im Kreise: Osnabrück Stadt über 5 Beschäftigte 1946’. 51. Heinz-Günther Borck, ‘Chronik der Handwerkskammer Osnabrück, 1900–1975’, in Handwerkskammer Osnabrück, ed., Geschichte des Osnabrücker Handwerks (Osnabrück, 1975), p. 458.

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52. Niederdeutscher Kurier of 4 November 1949. For the national picture, see: Robert G. Moeller, ‘Reconstructing the Family in Reconstruction Germany: Women and Social Policy in the Federal Republic, 1949–1955’, in Robert G. Moeller, ed., West Germany Under Reconstruction: Politics, Society and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor, 1997), pp. 109–33; Barbara Willenbacher, ‘Zerrütttung und Bewährung der Nachkriegs-Familie’, in Martin Broszat, Klaus Dietmar Henke and Hans Woller, eds, Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland (Munich, 1988), pp. 595–618. 53. Koppel S. Pinson, ‘Jewish Life in Liberated Germany’, Jewish Social Studies, vol. 9 (1947); Ruth Gay, Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II (London, 2002). 54. The camp is discussed by: Junk and Sellmeyer, Stationen, pp. 212–16; and Asaria, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Osnabrück, pp. 33–9. 55. Bistumsarchive Osnabrück (BAOS) 04-88-1; Asaria, ibid., p. 43. 56. For the local picture in the Osnabrück region, see NSO Rep-430-201-16b-6510, Vol. 3. The national picture can be traced in Katrin Reemstma, Sinti und Roma: Geschichte, Kultur, Gegenwart (Munich, 1996). 57. NSO Dep-3c-983, Monatlicher Nachweis der Bevölkerungsvorgänge, Osnabrück Stadt, 1 Juni 1949. 58. General accounts of the exodus out of Eastern Europe include: Günter Böddeker, Die Flüchtlinge: Die Vertreibung der Deutschen im Osten (Berlin, 1997); Alexander von Plato and Wolfgang Meinecke, Alte Heimat – Neue Zeit: Flüchtlinge, Umgesiedelte, Vertriebene in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone und in der DDR (Berlin, 1991); Paul Erker, Vom Heimatvertriebenen zum Neubürger, 1945–1955 (Wiesbaden, 1988); Rock and Wolff, Going Home to Germany?; Ahonen, After Expulsion. 59. Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien, Universität Osnabrück, Expellee Interview No. 2, with Liselotte Burchardt, 26 January 1995. 60. NSO Dep-3c-962. 61. Neues Tageblatt, 5 May 1948. 62. Spratte, Zwischen Trümmern, p. 75; NSO, ‘Verwaltungsberichte der Stadt Osnabrück 1945–6’. 63. Interview with Renate Schlechtriem, 8 August 2000. 64. For the national picture, see: Paul Erker, Vom Heimatvertriebenen zum Neubürger, 1945–1955 (Wiesbaden, 1988), pp. 67–86; Paul Lüttinger and Rita Rossmann, Integration der Vertriebenen: Eine Empirische Analyse (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 83–6; Lemberg and Edding, Die Vertriebenen, Vol. 2. 65. Bade, Meier and Parisius, Zeitzeugen, p. 55. 66. Neues Tageblatt, 29 June, 28 October 1949; NSO Rep-430-304-15-65-44. 67. Bade, Meier and Parisius, Zeitzeugen, p. 79; Niedersächsischer Kurier, 4 August 1948. 68. Bade, Meier and Parisius, Zeitzeugen, p. 33; ‘Verwaltungsberichte der Stadt Osnabrück 1945–6’; NSO Dep-3c-972, Städtisches Wohlfahrtsamt – Flüchtlingstelle – to Städtisches Verkehrsamt, 23 November 1945. 69. NSO, ‘Verwaltungsberichte der Stadt Osnabrück 1945–6’; Regierung Osnabrück, Die Aufgaben des Ortsflüchtlingsbetreuers (Osnabrück, 1950). 70. 100 Jahre Rotes Kreuz in Osnabrück, 1870–1970 (Osnabrück, 1970), p. 40.

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71. Caritasverband für die Diözese Osnabrück e.v., Festschrift zum 50 jährigen Bestehen des Diözesan-Caritasverbandes Osnabrück 1916–1966: Berichte vom Dienst der Kirche an den Menschen (Osnabrück, 1966), p. 86. 72. BAOS 10-02-51, Caritasverband to Bishop Berning, 16 October 1948. 73. Michael Gander, ‘Beziehungen zwischen sowjetischen Zwangsarbeitern und deutscher Bevölkerung in Osnabrück’, in Babette Quinkert, ed., ‘Wir sind die Herren dieses Landes’: Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen des Deutschen Überfalls auf die Sowjetunion (Hamburg, 2002), p. 158. 74. Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer (Göttingen, 1985). 75. These statistics come from NSO Rep-430-201-16B-65-70-Bd. 2. 76. Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers, pp. 359–81. 77. István Deák, Jan T. Gross and Tony Judt, eds, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ, 2000). 78. John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945 (New York, 1993). 79. Jim G. Tobias and Peter Zinke, eds, Nakam: Jüdische Rache an NS-Tätern (Hamburg, 2000). 80. See, for instance, A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? (London, 2006). 81. The names in this file have been changed. 82. NSO Rep-945-85, Chronik von Dr Hans Glenewinkel, 5 April–31 Dezember 1945, pp. 1–4, 21, 35, 59, 80. 83. BAOS 04-79-71. 84. NSO Rep-430-201-16B-65-76, Kommando der Schutzpolizei to Pol. Offz. B/ Det. 902, 16 August 1945. 85. NSO Rep-430-201-16B/65-76, Police-Headquarters to Public Safety Officer of the English Military Government, 23 August 1945. 86. Interview with Lora Kreft, 20 August 2001. 87. Interview with Hermann Tewes, 10 January 2001. 88. For an introduction to the beginning of recovery, see, for example: A. J. Nicholls, Freedom with Responsibility: The Social Market Economy in Germany, 1918–1963 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 122–36; Michael Kramer, The West German Economy, 1945–1955 (Oxford, 1991). 89. For the rebirth of German Jewish communities see, for instance: Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1997); and David Bankier, ed., The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin After World War II (Oxford, 2005). 90. Karl Kühling, Die Juden in Osnabrück (Osnabrück, 1983), pp. 14–57.

8 Stateless Citizens of Israel: Jewish Displaced Persons and Zionism in Post-War Germany Avinoam J. Patt

In the spring of 1948, with an acute manpower shortage facing the Yishuv (Jewish settlement) in Palestine in advance of the war that would commence following the newly created state of Israel’s declaration of independence on 15 May 1948, a conscription and military taxation programme was initiated in the Jewish displaced persons (DPs) camps in Europe. Between 1948 and 1949, some 22,000 DPs (7800 from Germany alone) were enlisted in the Haganah (Hebrew for ‘The Defence’, a Jewish paramilitary organisation which later became the core of the Israel Defence Force) (and sent to Palestine/Israel from the DP camps in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Cyprus. This vital contribution of manpower from the Holocaust survivors to the war effort in Israel makes the giyus (conscription) campaign a most significant episode in the post-war history of European Jewry.1 The elected bodies officially representing the Jewish DPs in Germany endorsed the giyus plan enthusiastically. The Third Congress of the She’erit Hapletah (the surviving remnant of European Jewry) meeting from 30 March to 2 April 1948, called upon all able-bodied men and women between the ages of 17 and 35 to fulfil their ‘national duty’.2 Those who refused this obligation would be subject to excommunication from DP social and political life and were subsequently threatened with loss of employment, denial of American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC; the ‘Joint’) rations, and other forms of coercion. Jewish DPs were also called upon to contribute to a special mas am lochem, or tax for a fighting nation, to assist in subsidising the war effort. By assigning the Jewish DPs with the responsibilities of taxation and conscription, the Congress was, in effect, asking its stateless constituents to act as citizens of a non-existent state. How was it that in the short period of time following the conclusion of the war, the Jewish 162

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DPs, while still residing on foreign soil, could be called upon to fulfil the duties of citizenship to a state still in the making? The ultimate success of the conscription and taxation campaign, which was largely dependent on the political and financial support of the Jewish DPs, was representative of a strong Zionist position among the DPs and their leadership. The disproportionately large role played by the DPs on the international diplomatic stage in policy decisions impacting the future of Palestine, the reconstruction of Germany, and Anglo-American as well as Soviet relations in the post-war context makes this overwhelmingly Zionist position, as well as the reason for its existence, most significant.3

The origins of DP Zionism While there has been general historiographical consensus over the fact that the Jewish DPs gave enthusiastic support for Zionism in the years following the war, there has been considerable debate as to the source of this enthusiasm. Assessments of the origins of this strong Zionist impulse have focused for the most part on one of two broad explanations for its existence. One view of Zionism among the DPs suggests that it was a unique, home-grown conclusion to wartime and post-war experiences, thereby revealing the tremendous agency of the DPs themselves in reconstructing political and cultural life in the aftermath of destruction.4 Contemporary observers sought to explain the almost immediate manifestation of Zionist enthusiasm on the part of the DP leadership. In 1947, Koppel S. Pinson emphasised the overwhelming role of experience in confirming the Zionist position for many of the survivors: The events of 1939–1945 seemed to discredit completely those philosophies of Jewish life prevailing before the war which were not centered around Palestine. The Zionists were the only ones that had a program that seemed to make sense after this catastrophe […] Without Palestine there seemed to be no future for them. AntiZionism or even a neutral attitude toward Zionism came to mean for them a threat to the most fundamental stakes in their future.5 Thus, according to this explanation, the turn to Zionism was an active response to the experiences of the war and its aftermath that could serve to channel the anger and bitterness of survivors in a practical manner.6 In addition to serving as a response to the past and providing hope for

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the future, however, Zionism could also empower DPs in their political functioning in the present. The alternative explanation largely ascribes political affiliation to external sources, thus explaining Zionism in the DP camps as the product of Yishuv manipulation of the DPs into a position which would enable them to be used as a tool in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Many of the analyses of Zionism among the She’erit Hapletah by Israeli historians have focused upon the early encounter between the survivors and soldiers from the Jewish Brigade or emissaries from the Jewish Agency in Palestine to explain the high degree of Zionist enthusiasm among the DPs. In this sense, the overwhelming consensus around the Zionist solution may have been an acknowledgement that the Zionists in Palestine were most likely to supply the future needs of the DPs in Germany. While early contact from soldiers in the Jewish Brigade was vital in demonstrating such a commitment, such an approach attributes political motivation among the DPs predominantly to external sources.7 Among the proponents of such a view, Yosef Grodzinsky and Idith Zertal point to events like the conscription campaign and the illegal immigration movement known as Aliyah bet as particularly noteworthy examples of instrumentalised use of the DPs by Zionist agents from Palestine.8 Another approach has suggested Zionism as the political ideology most in line with the post-war organisation of nations and states; Zionism filled the need of Jewish survivors after the war for membership in a state within the international filing system of citizenship.9 Although these historiographical contributions provide a number of noteworthy reasons for DP Zionist affiliation following the war, they tend to ignore the significant pragmatic concerns of the Jewish DPs, which may have been best addressed by the Zionist choice, and they tend to focus on the DP situation based on sources created by outside observers, not by the DPs themselves. Nonetheless, an abundance of sources does reflect the DP position and points to the embrace of a functional Zionism by the DPs as the political choice which seemed most capable of filling both present needs and future goals. The giyus (conscription) episode in particular provides an opportunity for an alternative view of how Zionism and Zionist groups functioned politically within the DP camps, and the central role played by the DP leadership in facilitating its success. By empowering the stateless She’erit Hapletah through the opportunity to embrace the rights of citizenship while still residing on German soil, Zionism also served a practical purpose representing the most plausible way out of Europe and allowed the DPs to assume some measure of control over their own fates.

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The initial organisation of the displaced persons in Germany Despite indications pointing to the overall success of the giyus campaign in 1948, Zionism was not a foregone conclusion for Holocaust survivors after the war. The formative period of the She’erit Hapletah and the choices faced by the DPs after the war were crucial for many in making Zionism a desirable political choice. Most of the liberations of the camps and the ‘death marches’ took place in April and May of 1945 (Buchenwald, 11–12 April; Bergen-Belsen, 15 April; Dachau, 29 April; Mauthausen, 3 May; Theresienstadt, 9 May). Immediately following the liberation of Germany by the victorious Allied forces on 8 May 1945, the country was inundated with up to 10 million forced labourers, POWs, and other DPS who flooded the roads in their desire to return home. According to statistics prepared by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), there were 1,488,007 DPs in Germany, Austria, and Italy immediately after the war, of whom 53,322 were Jews (3.6 per cent).10 According to Allied policy, a displaced person was defined as ‘any civilian who because of the war was living outside the borders of his or her country and who wanted to but could not return home or find a new home without assistance’. Displaced persons were initially divided into categories by place of origin into those from enemy and Allied countries. Germany and Austria were divided into American, British, and Soviet zones of occupation, with a small area in the southwest of Germany made into the French zone of occupation. The majority of the Jewish population, perhaps some 35,000 out of 50,000 liberated, was in the American zone of occupation in Germany, many of them around the city of Munich. Soon after liberation, Jewish survivors began to search for surviving family members, although most Jews found that few had survived. For those Jewish DPs who made the decision to remain in Germany, the majority chose to live in a DP camp (generally German military barracks, former POW and slave labour camps, tent cities, industrial housing, and the like); approximately 15,000 German Jewish survivors chose to rebuild their prewar communities in German cities.11 Those survivors who remained in the camps faced deplorable conditions: poor accommodation, no plumbing, no clothing, rampant disease, continuing malnourishment, and a lack of any plan on the part of the American military. And indeed, of the approximately 50,000 Jewish survivors at the time of liberation, within the first weeks following liberation, many thousands perished from complications arising from disease, starvation, and camp conditions.

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Members of pre-war and wartime Zionist groups began to advocate immigration to Palestine, while members of the Jewish socialist Bundist Party argued for a return to Poland, where Jewish workers could assist in the struggle to rebuild Poland. Most survivors, however, were less concerned with political debates so soon after liberation. Many Jewish survivors did in fact choose to return to Poland (and elsewhere) to seek family first and foremost, Bundist and Zionist arguments notwithstanding.12 Unsure of what awaited them at home, often fairly certain that their families had been destroyed during the war, those who decided to stay in a DP camp also had to face the fact that this meant continuing to live with collaborators who also refused to return home. In general, Polish and Baltic Jews were the least likely to return to their home countries, while Jews from countries like Hungary, Romania, France, and to a lesser extent Greece (where the destruction of the Jewish community had been far more extensive), were far more likely to return to their countries following liberation.13 For the first two months following liberation in May 1945, the Jewish DPs had little contact from the outside Jewish world, with the first Jews they met being either chaplains serving in the US military, soldiers in the Jewish Brigade from Palestine organised by the British Army, or Jews serving in the Red Army. Upon liberation (and in some cases before), the Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps began to organise themselves into a uniform, politically active group. Ze’ev Mankowitz, in his work on the early organisation of the She’erit Hapletah, has emphasised the crucial role played by the survivors themselves in organising and reaching a Zionist conclusion even before liberation, accounting for the almost immediate organisation of the survivors in the wake of liberation.14 While demonstrating striking resourcefulness in the wake of tragedy, the survivors were also disenchanted with the slow arrival of Jewish relief organisations, leading to a sense of abandonment which would remain a central feature in the constant striving for independence on the part of the She’erit Hapletah. Shortly after liberation, Dr Zalman Grinberg (a survivor from Kovno) secured the use of a hospital for the survivors at St Ottilien (near Schwabenhausen in Bavaria), which was to become one of the early centres for survivor organisations. In a letter to the World Jewish Congress written by Grinberg at the end of May 1945, his disappointment was evident: ‘It has been four weeks since our liberation and no representative of the Jewish world, no representative from any Jewish organisation has come to be with us after the worst tragedy of all time, to speak with us, to give us help, and to lighten our burden. We must,

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ourselves, with our own diminished strength, help ourselves’.15 This sense of abandonment was instrumental in leading the survivors to organise the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bavaria in June and July 1945, with the assistance of a US Army chaplain, Abraham J. Klausner, and representatives from the Jewish Brigade.16 Similarly, from its initial organisation, the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American Zone of Germany (Zentral Komitet, ZK) fought for the Jewish DPs to be recognised as a separate national group and to be located in separate Jewish camps, apart from former Nazis and collaborators also housed in DP camps. Thus, almost immediately upon liberation, the She’erit Hapletah emerged as a group with a commitment to national rebirth, determined to be an active and unified force in the fulfilment of this goal.17 This unity in mission was evidenced in the demands of the first conference of the She’erit Hapletah at St Ottilien on 25 July 1945, where 94 delegates represented 40,000 Jews from 46 centres in Germany and Austria. The two major demands voiced by the representatives at the conference – demonstrating an awareness of their present and future situation – were: first, free and immediate immigration to Palestine; and second, preparation for a more extended stay in Germany.18 While other DP groups quickly asserted their national identities after the war, the survivors were aware of their stateless condition. At the first conference of the Liberated Jews of Bavaria, Captain Choter-Yishai of the Jewish Brigade reminded the DPs that ‘you are no longer Hungarian, Polish, etc. […] you are stateless’.19 While the Jewish Brigade could try to assist the DPs in securing their rights, facilitating contact with administration authorities, the Central Committee of Liberated Jews would have to assert and represent the rights of the Jewish DPs, and this was the position they secured for themselves, obtaining official recognition from the American zone authorities as the representative body of liberated Jews in September 1946. This position as representative of the DPs, both in a political and material sense, was significant in securing support for the Zionist leadership and assisted them in the later successful functioning of the giyus and taxation campaign.

Jewish displaced persons in the diplomatic arena Reports of continuing deprivation and poor organisation of recovery sent by the DPs and Jewish chaplains eventually prompted American officials to take a greater interest in the problem of the DPs. President Truman dispatched Earl Harrison to survey conditions, and Harrison

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sent back a scathing report in which he concluded that the Americans were ‘treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them’.20 He proposed that Jews be separated in their own camps (until then they had been forced to live with other national groups and former collaborators). To resolve their refugee status, he proposed that 100,000 immigration certificates to Palestine be granted immediately to the Jewish DPs. Following Harrison’s report, American authorities, under the leadership of General Eisenhower, worked to ameliorate conditions for Jewish DPs, moving Jews to separate camps and agreeing to the appointment of an Adviser for Jewish Affairs. Equally importantly, the Harrison report served to link the resolution of the Jewish DP situation with the situation in Palestine, thereby elevating the diplomatic implications of the Jewish DP political stance. In his October 1945 visit to the DP camps, David Ben-Gurion (head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine Executive) became convinced of the Zionist enthusiasm of the She’erit Hapletah, witnessing its early organisation and initiative in the creation of training farms. Through his meetings with General Eisenhower and General Walter Bedell-Smith, Ben-Gurion learned that the US Army authorities did not intend to stop Jewish infiltrees from Eastern Europe from entering the American zone. Sensing an opportunity, he outlined a plan that was to bring as many Jews as possible into the occupation zones that were under US command.21 In the wake of the Harrison report, in which American authorities had been excoriated for poor treatment of Jews, American officials provided separate camps for Jews and were determined to improve conditions for them in the US zone. Furthermore, Ben-Gurion submitted a number of suggestions to Eisenhower on how to improve the morale of the Jewish DPs, which included allowing them to govern themselves, subject to the ultimate authority of the US Army, and providing agricultural and vocational training on confiscated Nazi farms.22 American officials were impressed by the early success of training farms like Kibbutz Buchenwald and Kibbutz Nili, the latter created on the estate of imprisoned Nazi Gauleiter Julius Streicher, in not only improving DP morale and spiritual rehabilitation, but in providing for many of their own food needs and preparing for their future in Palestine (and not in the US). For example, Judah Nadich, adviser for Jewish affairs to General Eisenhower, noted that: Kibbutz Buchenwald stood as an object lesson for all those who were interested in the welfare of the displaced persons. This type of assembly center was by far the most satisfying from every point of view. [...] Not

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only was their work helping to fill their present requirements, particularly with regard to fresh vegetables, fruits, and grains, but they were successfully preparing for their future, the kind of future they greatly desired, life in a cooperative colony in Palestine’.23 At the time of Ben-Gurion’s visit to the DP camps in late October 1945, five agricultural training settlements were already in existence, with their early success demonstrating the viability of an agricultural plan on a larger scale. Still, American officials had to balance their Jewish policy with the increasingly more important task of German reconstruction, which quickly shifted from a focus on denazification, disarmament, and democratisation to an increased emphasis on anti-Communism and capitalist economic reconstruction by 1946.24 Following Earl Harrison’s blistering report, the British Foreign Office reluctantly agreed to dispatch a joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AACI) in the autumn of 1945. After some negotiation over its task and composition, the AACI was authorised to study the DP situation and estimate the number who wished to journey to Palestine, with a report to be issued within six months.25 The apparent importance of Zionism for the increasing numbers of arriving DPs confirmed the necessity of the Zionist solution for representatives of the AACI. After beginning their work in Washington and London in January 1946, members of the commission visited the DP camps and Poland to assess the Jewish situation beginning in February. On 20 April 1946 the AACI recommended ‘(A) that 100,000 certificates be authorised immediately for the admission into Palestine of Jews who have been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution; (B) that these certificates be awarded as far as possible in 1946 and that actual immigration be pushed forward as rapidly as conditions will permit’. This was the conclusion that the committee came to, much to the chagrin of the British Foreign Office, not only because of a lack of any other options but also because the committee genuinely believed that this was the truest expression of the Jewish DPs’ desires. ‘Furthermore, that is where almost all of them want to go. There they are sure that they will receive a welcome denied them elsewhere. There they hope to enjoy peace and rebuild their lives.’ This was a conclusion based on surveys conducted among the DPs. However, the committee also firmly believed that, based on what it had observed among the Jewish DPs, they were a group ardently preparing themselves for a Zionist future. While many among the DPs were seen as reluctant to work, ‘On the other hand, whenever facilities are provided for practical training for life in Palestine they eagerly take advantage of them’.26

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Despite the recommendations of the AACI, however, over the course of 1946 and into 1947, diplomatic efforts stalled and it became clear that for the majority of the Jewish DPs life would continue in Germany and not on the path to Palestine. As their stay dragged on in Europe, DPs staged mass protests condemning the British blockade of Palestine and participated in the illegal immigration (aliyah bet) movement to Palestine, most noticeably in the Exodus Affair of 1947. Eventually, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) would recommend that the problem of the 250,000 Jewish DPs in Europe be dealt with through the partition of Palestine. By the end of 1946, the Jewish population in the American zone of Germany had swelled with the arrival of 120,000 Jews from Poland. Both before and after the Kielce pogrom in July of 1946, in which at least 42 Jews were killed following a false blood libel, the impossibility of Jewish existence in Poland became obvious for most Polish Jews.27 The Jews arriving from Poland with the Bricha (literally ‘Escape’; the semi-organised movement of Jewish departure from Poland) included not only survivors of extermination and concentration camps, but also a majority who had survived the war in the Soviet Union, as well as those who survived in hiding, as partisans in Poland or as soldiers in the Red Army. By the summer of 1947, two years after the liberation of concentration and death camps, 156,000 Jewish DPs had concentrated in the US zone of Germany in 63 camps, 48 hospitals, 14 orphanages/children’s homes, over 100 separate independent communities (kehillot), and 39 agricultural training centres (hakhsharot).28 The surviving population was characterised by a highly youthful demographic: reports and surveys consistently estimated the proportion of Jewish DPs between the ages of 15 and 30 at more than 50 per cent and often above 80 per cent of the total Jewish population.29 In the absence of families, many survivors quickly created new families, as evidenced by the many weddings and the remarkable birth rate among the surviving population in the first year after liberation. While still living in a transitional situation, hoping for the possibility of emigration, DPs succeeded in creating a vibrant and dynamic community in hundreds of DP camps and communities across Germany, Italy, and Austria. With the assistance of representatives from UNRRA, the AJDC, the Jewish Agency, and other organisations, schools were established throughout the DP camps. The largest camps, including Landsberg, Feldafing, and Föhrenwald in the American zone of Germany, and Bergen-Belsen in the British zone, boasted a vibrant social and cultural life, with a flourishing DP press, theatre life, active

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Zionist youth movements, athletic clubs, historical commissions, and yeshivot testifying to the rebirth of Orthodox Judaism. The DPs took an active role in representing their own political interests: political parties (mostly Zionist in nature, with the exception of the Orthodox Agudat Israel) administered camp committees and met at annual congresses of the She’erit Hapletah. The Zionist youth movements, with the assistance of emissaries from Palestine, created a network of at least 40 agricultural training farms throughout Germany on the estates of former Nazis and German farmers, demonstrating their ardent desire for immigration to Palestine and performing an act of symbolic revenge against the Germans.

The Central Committee of Liberated Jews and the DPs The concentration of DPs in the American zone of Germany was accompanied by the expansion of an extensive and highly assertive bureaucratic apparatus that sought to represent the day-to-day needs of the She’erit Hapletah. A vital element of the high degree of authority and legitimacy accorded to the Central Committee as leader of the DPs was its position as the apparent patron and guardian of the She’erit Hapletah’s material needs. While it was not the Central Committee which actually supplied the material resources of the DPs (with rations and materials being provided by the AJDC, the US Army, and UNRRA), from an early point, the Central Committee fought to claim for itself the responsibility for delegation of rations and hence the position of ultimate provider to the DPs. Growing out of the early sense of independence, the Central Committee leadership expressed its view as ‘an agency representing the political and material needs of the people’.30 After one of many disputes with the Joint, the Central Committee informed Edward Warburg (cochairman of the AJDC) in June 1946 that while ‘the American Joint, if it so desires, can supply the budgetary needs of the Central Committee it [would] not be granted the right to determine whether or not we shall support a newspaper, purchase a clarinet, or manufacture talethim’.31 The Joint would have the right to supply rations, but it would absolutely not have the right to determine how they were distributed. Throughout the years in the DP camps, distribution of rations continued to be a source of tension between the DPs and the Joint. In a December 1947 letter to the Central Committee, Charles Passman, Zone Director of the AJDC in Munich, outlined again the nature of the relationship between the Joint and the DPs as to the distribution of rations.

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Despite continuing problems with persons receiving double rations and the Central Committee’s tendency to fabricate lists in order to create reserves, under the continuing system of distribution, it was the Central Committee and the local committees which, at the point of individual distribution, would still have ultimate control over the delegation of rations.32 Allocations of supplies to religious or other specific groups or individuals would also be made through the channels of the Central Committee. Rations were distributed on the basis of employment, with workers divided into 12 categories on which distribution would be based.33 Thus, the Central Committee and local camp committees’ control over DP employment also had significant ramifications for the acquisition of material needs by individual DPs. In this regard, political support for the Zionist leadership was closely linked to the ability to fulfil the needs of daily life. In discussions among various agencies on German soil, the Central Committee also articulated the present needs and future goals of the Jewish DPs to those organisations, claiming an unquestioned underlying Zionist enthusiasm on the part of its constituency. By early 1948, in such discussions with the Joint, UNRRA, and military authorities there was great concern over whether the DPs had become apathetic and complacent after years of waiting in the camps, a status not aided by the prevalence of black market trade, search and seizure raids by the Army, the negative attitude of the Army resulting from this (and from suspicion of Communist infiltration by East European Jews), and low levels of employment. On 15 March 1948, at the first meeting with the newest Adviser on Jewish Affairs to the American Zone, William Haber (who was the brother of Samuel Haber, AJDC US Zone Director), there was considerable concern over the morale of the DPs after over two-and-a- half years of dwelling in the DP camps, with the possibility of at least another year of waiting in the camps.34 While there was general consensus among the parties at the meeting that emigration to Palestine would be the best solution, the Central Committee was most insistent on the need for immediate departure. At the March meeting with Haber, David Traeger, head of the ZK, argued that now was the time that ‘the Camps must be shaken up and the people must be reminded of their mission with respect to Palestine’. Traeger reassured those present that ‘the Central Committee [was] endeavouring to work along this line’. In fact, Traeger had no doubt as to the underlying Zionist enthusiasm of the DP population, and concluded that ‘the fact that approximately 90% of those eligible to vote participated in the election for the Congress of the Central Committee shows

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the dynamic interest of the people in Palestine’. Political participation thus represented an automatic assumption of Zionist affiliation on the part of voters which was in a sense unavoidable, with all the represented parties in the Congress elections coming from the Zionist camp, with the notable exception of Agudat Israel.35 The only other political alternative present in the DP camps, the Bund, was unable to muster a great deal of support and thus had no representative to the Congress. Prior to the initiation of the conscription campaign, in the February bulletin of the ‘Executive for the Bundist groups in Germany’, the Bund called upon all of its members to vote for the Left Zionist bloc, which was aligned with the Central Worker’s Committee, in the forthcoming elections at the end of February 1948.36 While the call to vote for the Left Zionist bloc may have represented a lack of non-Zionist options rather than a pro-Zionist solution, it is significant to note that even the Bund called upon its members to participate in the elections to the decidedly Zionist Congress.37 If the Zionist enthusiasm of the DP population was as evident as was believed by the leadership, this would have also indicated to them the legitimacy of implementing a conscription and taxation campaign, which could prove to be the ideal method by which to remind the people of their mission with regard to Palestine. Nonetheless, the need to ‘shake the camps up’ perhaps also indicated that while people may have voted Zionist, they were frequently more concerned with other issues of daily life, such as locating or starting families or obtaining food and work. From the leadership’s perspective, emigration was presented as a solution to the authorities’ two major problems: black market participation, and the fear that DPs immersed in vocational training within the German economy would make departure from the camps even less likely.38 As the ZK representatives attested to the strong underlying enthusiasm of the DPs for the Zionist cause, it is thus unsurprising that the Haganah emissaries from Palestine would have viewed the DPs as ideal candidates for reinforcements to the depleted forces of the Yishuv.

The giyus operation in the DP camps The implementation of the giyus operation represented the interplay of two major factors, the initiative of Zionist emissaries (of the Haganah, Jewish Agency, and Mossad le-Aliyah Bet) from the Yishuv active in postwar Europe, and the organisation and enthusiasm of the pro-Zionist leadership of the Central Committee, with the support of its subsidiary regional and local committees. The idea to employ the She’erit Hapletah

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as a manpower reserve originated in the mind of Nachum Shadmi, head of Haganah operations in Europe, apparently without direction from the Yishuv.39 Initially, the stated mission of the Haganah in Europe was to train the She’erit Hapletah for self-defence of their camps against external threats from non-Jewish DPs and the surrounding German population.40 Graduates of the Haganah training schools in Hochland and Wildebeer were dispatched to the individual camps to serve as a Haganah presence among the She’erit Hapletah in the camps, with up to 500 commanders trained from among the DPs who would later play a vital role in implementing the giyus operation.41 With the return of Nachum Shadmi to Europe in June 1947, the Haganah mission began to take a more definite shape. Shadmi’s plan was reinforced by the tremendous excitement for the Jewish state exhibited by the DP population following the UN Resolution supporting partition on 29 November 1947. Witnessing the enthusiasm of the Jewish DPs, Shadmi believed that he could enlist between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers within 6–8 months.42 At a 29 February 1948 meeting in Paris between representatives of the Haganah, Mossad l’Aliyah Bet, Brichah, and members of camp committees to discuss the giyus operation, Shadmi emphasised three key aspects of the plan: (1) the obligation to enlist those eligible DPs who ‘are Israeli citizens not allowed to reach Israel’; (2) the need to secure resources; and (3) priority in aliyah (or immigration to Palestine) to be given by the Bricha and Mossad to enlisted individuals.43 Nonetheless, Shadmi was still dependent on support from the Yishuv in order to put the plan into effect. In March 1948 Shadmi visited Palestine to convince Ben-Gurion of the necessity and viability of the plan, a visit which ultimately led to its financial and political endorsement. Notwithstanding his initiative and Yishuv support, Shadmi asserted that the idea and plan never would have come to fruition without the enthusiasm and assistance of the DP population. Not only was Shadmi dependent on the support of the Central Committee and camp committee leadership, he was ultimately dependent on much of the operation’s finances ($300,000 in Germany) and relied upon DP graduates of Haganah schools to serve as many of the Haganah commanders in Europe.44 Moreover, it seems likely that although the Haganah was accorded a certain degree of authority by the general DP population, it was dependent on the ZK to provide it with the legitimacy it needed to implement a giyus operation. In this sense, recruitment of Holocaust survivors for service in the Haganah was dependent on local initiative, receiving official approval from Israel in March 1948, only after activity in the DP camps had commenced.

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The effort to remind the people of their mission with respect to Palestine began at least as early as mid-February 1948, as the Central Committee, the Zionist Federation, the Sochnut ( Jewish Agency), and seven of the main political parties active in the DP camps (excluding the Revisionist Zionists, who opposed the Labour Zionist leadership of the Jewish Agency), joined together to form the Executive Far Bitachon Le’Am U-Moledet.45 In Circular No. 1, addressed ‘to the entire She’erit Hapletah’, the Executive announced its formation, which coincided with the initiation of a wide, all-inclusive campaign on the part of the She’erit Hapletah to assist the Yishuv in its struggle to lead ‘a normal, nationally independent life’. The proclamation called upon local committees in camps, in cooperation with the Executive in Munich, to implement a ‘material and financial campaign for security’ as rapidly and broadly as possible. Thus, while the operation would devolve upon the entire DP population, considerable agency was given to local committees in the organisation of camp campaigns, with the expectation that contact would be maintained with the Executive in Munich. In each camp, the ‘Merkaz le-Sherut Ha’am’ of the Jewish Agency in Munich advocated that a corner for ‘sherut ha-am’ (service to the nation) be set up, where slogans calling on DPs to ‘fulfil your duty to the people’, and suggesting that ‘not one deserter should be found among us’, were to be distributed.46 This language of national duty indicated the implicit responsibility of citizenship that had been assigned to the DP population in the Central Committee’s presentation of their Zionist enthusiasm. Posters published by the Jewish Agency, the Central Committee, and the Zionist Federation called upon the entire Jewish people to ‘stand in a united front’, as the Haganah in the war and in the creation (of the state), ‘in order to open the gates of aliyah and defend the future of the Jewish people’.47 The Central Committee and the local camp committees, beyond publicising the need to provide support for the Yishuv, were also active in executing the giyus and magbit habitachon (security tax) campaigns in the individual camps. Shortly after the publicity campaign was initiated within the DP camps, efforts had already commenced to discuss the implementation of the giyus operation in certain camps, in advance of the Third Congress of the She’erit Hapletah. For example, at Feldafing near Munich, one of the largest DP camps in the American zone, an invitation to discuss giyus with various members of the Feldafing community and a representative from the ZK, Yechezkel Eife (of Poalei Zion Smol), was sent out on 16 March 1948.48 At the meeting on 19 March two weeks before the Congress, Eife declared the policy of the ZK to be

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one of releasing from work those persons who were of giyus duty age. A giyus commission was formed at the meeting, with representatives from the camp committee, the ORT school, the youth movements, and the Haganah.49 In addition, it was agreed that more ‘drastic measures’ would be employed to implement the taxation campaign in Feldafing, in order to achieve the desired goal of $10,000 for the camp.50 The Third Congress of the She’erit Hapletah in the US zone took place at Bad-Reichenall from 30 March to 2 April 1948. Representatives from the US Army, AJDC, Agudat Yisrael, the Jewish Agency, and Haganah in Europe were in attendance.51 The DPs were called upon to fulfil their ‘national duty’, which, it was expected, would accompany membership in the Jewish State. Nachum Shadmi, in his address to the Congress, called for ‘each man and woman, from 18–35, to be in the ranks of the Haganah […] with no excuses’.52 The Congress declared that ‘the She’erit Hapletah would stand together with the Yishuv […] and do all in its power to mobilise all forces and material to achieve a rapid and final victory’.53 To this end, the Third Congress called upon ‘all men and women between the ages of 17 and 35 to fulfil their duty to the people’, and that all those ‘who failed to fulfil their (giyus) duty would be excluded from social and political life’. The Congress also called upon the She’erit Hapletah to support the ‘mifal habitachon, the fund for Jewish arms and security in Eretz Israel’.54 While certain aspects of the giyus and magbit habitachon operations seem to have commenced prior to the Third Congress, beginning in April the application of the giyus resolution commenced throughout all the camps. Circular No. 31, sent from the Central Committee in Munich on 11 April 1948 to the various camp committees, outlined the implementation of the conscription resolution. In the circular, camp committees were called upon to support the work by the Waadot Liszrot Haam (committees for service to the nation) and to assist them in their work in any way possible. Those between the ages of 17 and 35 who failed to enlist by 15 April would be subject to dismissal from work. Lists of workers and their birth dates were also requested to be compiled and sent to the Organisation Department.55 In addition to working to ensure compliance with the conscription demand, the Executive far Bitachon Leam Umoledet (Executive for Security for the Nation and the Homeland) also sought to collect funds in individual camps to support the giyus operation in Europe and the ‘fighting Yishuv’.56 The contribution of approximately $300,000 from the DP population in Germany enabled the giyus operation to continue functioning well into August 1948.57

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Still, the call to ‘national duty’ was not always successful in garnering full support for the campaign. Beyond denying employment and hence rations, coercive measures also included the publication of lists of nonsupporters in the press and in immigration offices so that they might suffer the appropriate consequences.58 In his report on the progress of the giyus in the camps, Yehuda Ben-David, a Haganah commander from the Yishuv, relates that initially, the ‘giyus of the “first thousand” was not easy, and in fact, the organisation only managed to enlist 700 people […] an atmosphere of overall obligation to enlist was created […] It was this atmosphere which would later bring the many thousands who enlisted to Israel’.59 Some individuals managed to dodge recruitment, while a number of Bund members reported evidence of physical and emotional coercion employed by the Zionist leadership in the giyus and magbit habitachon initiatives.60 In addition to complaints raised by the few members of the Bund in the DP camps, there were complaints from camp committees over the loss of vital employees and teachers, and the Joint felt compelled to reprimand the local committees for denying rations to DPs.61 This can perhaps reveal the tensions which arose from a future-oriented project at odds with efforts to supply the present needs of the DPs in the camps. Nonetheless, in each of these cases, those who voiced scepticism over the conscription and taxation campaigns still functioned within the larger Zionist framework, with the Joint and local camp committees ultimately affirming the validity and necessity of the giyus campaign. And it is clear that the Jewish DPs from Germany and throughout Europe who joined the Haganah played a vital role in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. A total of 20,239 people were conscripted in Europe by the Haganah between January and July 1948.62 Of those who arrived in 1948, 292 were killed in the fighting.63

Conclusion While we still do not have a sense for the Zionist pulse of the general DP population, we do, however, begin to get an indication of how the Zionist political system functioned within the DP camps through the election of representatives, allocation of resources, and distribution of employment. The participation of the DP leadership and individual DPs in the implementation of the giyus programme suggests that the DPs were well aware of their own political and physical currency. Rather than serving as tools to be manipulated by others, the DPs seem to have been very willing to make use of themselves in order to speed

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their departure from Europe. Jewish DPs made the choice to identify collectively in a Zionist manner, with the belief that the Zionist solution could provide the greatest benefit for the group, though not necessarily proving ideal for each individual DP. It is in this context that Zionism must be viewed as a uniquely functioning transnational political system, which could force its ‘stateless’ adherents to confront the very real duties of citizenship while still residing on ‘foreign’ soil. A dynamic Zionism could thus fulfil both the needs of the DPs and the Yishuv, albeit in different ways. For the DPs, Zionist affiliation, while not just an ideological conclusion, could be a functional Zionism which addressed their most pressing post-war needs while also responding to the reality of post-Holocaust existence. At the same time, it indicated to the Yishuv a willingness to defend the homeland they had never seen.

Notes 1. See Hanna Yablonka, Foreign Brethren: Holocaust Survivors in the State of Israel, 1948–1952 ( Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1994), p. 82. Yablonka estimates that the 22,000 enlisted DPs comprised perhaps onethird of the Israel Defence Forces’ 60,000 combat soldiers during Israel’s War of Independence. The Haganah was the underground military organisation for self-defence and security established by the Zionist organisation in Palestine in 1920. 2. YIVO, DPG, MK483, Reel 1, Folder 5, #639–41 (Yiddish). For a more detailed report of the Congress, see below. 3. The Jewish DPs were a key factor in the deliberations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry of 1946 and the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommendations for the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine. For the larger diplomatic context after the war, see Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 4. For work on the early organisation of the She’erit Hapletah, see the work of Ze’ev Mankowitz, ‘The Formation of She’erit Hapletah: November 1944–1945’, Yad Vashem Studies, 1990. See also Yehuda Bauer, ‘The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria’, Yad Vashem Studies 8 (1970): 127–57. Ze’ev Mankowitz, ‘Zionism and She’erit Hapletah’, in Yisrael Gutman and Avrtal Saf, eds, She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990) gives a number of reasons for DP Zionism. Margarete Myers argues that above all the first priority of the DPs was to locate families, followed by the desire to create new ones. See her, ‘Jewish DP’s: Reconstructing Individual and Community in the U.S. Zone of Occupied Germany’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1997, 42: 303–24. Judith Tydor Baumel, Kibbutz Buchenwald: Survivors and Pioneers (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997) studies the experience of one kibbutz formed

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5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

by survivors of Buchenwald, noting that frequently membership in the kibbutz had less to do with a strong Zionist background, but was instead viewed as the most expedient method out of the DP camp. Angelika Konigseder and Julianne Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), provide a valuable analysis of DP life in post-war Germany. Koppel S. Pinson, ‘Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DPs’, Jewish Social Science, vol. 9, no. 2, April 1947, p. 117. Mankowitz, ‘Zionism and She’erit Hapletah’, in Gutman and Saf, eds, She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, p. 216. See most notably in this regard, Yosef Grodzinsky’s work, Homer Enoshi Tov (Israel: Hed Artzi, 1998). A number of works in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf, eds, She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, reflect this view including Yoav Gelber, ‘The Meeting Between the Jewish Soldiers from Palestine Serving in the British Army and She’erit Hapletah’, and Anita Shapira, ‘The Yishuv’s Encounter with the Survivors of the Holocaust’. The work of Zeev Tzahor, ‘Holocaust Survivors as a Political Factor’ (Middle Eastern Studies, 1988, 24 (4): 432–44) reflects this approach. Although to a lesser degree, the work of Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 (English)) also takes this view of DP Zionism as a Palestinian import. A number of works address the issue of Holocaust survivors as immigrants to Palestine and their role in the creation of the State. The debate between Yechiam Weitz and Hagit Lavsky is also part of this stream: Weitz, ‘Sheelat HaPlitim HaYehudim BaMediniut HaTzionit’ and Lavsky, ‘Sheerit HaPletah veHakamat HaMedinah: Hizdamnut asher Nutzlah’ (Cathedra, 55, 162–74). See also Dalia Ofer, ‘The Dilemma of Rescue and Redemption: Mass Immigration to Israel in the First Year of Statehood’ (YIVO Annual, 1991, 20: 185–210). The work of Irit Keynan, ‘Lo Nirga Ha-Ra’av: Nitzulei Ha-Shoah ve-Shlichei Eretz Yisrael: Germania 1945–1948 (Holocaust Survivors and the Emissaries from Eretz-Israel: Germany 1945–1948) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1996), also focuses on this relationship but accounts more so for the role of DPs themselves in forming political consciousness. Yosef Grodzinsky, Good Human Material (Homer Enoshi Tov) (Israel: Hed Artzi, 1998). See for example Dan Diner, ‘Elements in Becoming a Subject: Jewish DPs in Historical Context’ ( Jahrbuch zur Geshichte und Wirkung des Holocaust, 1997: 229–48) who points to the role of diplomatic and political realities in contributing to the collective, nationalist identity on the part of DPs. Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics. See Malcolm Proudfoot, European Refugees, 1939–1952: A Study in Forced Population Movement (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1956). See Ruth Schreiber, ‘The New Organization of the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1952’, Ph.D. Thesis, Tel Aviv University, October 1995, p. 11. According to one source cited in Engel, Between Liberation and Flight: Holocaust Survivors in Poland and the Struggle for Leadership, 1944–1946 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1996 (Hebrew) [p. 42 (fn. 30)] in the first month following liberation in Germany, approximately 13,000 Polish Jews returned

180

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Stateless Citizens of Israel to Poland. As noted by the Central Committee of Polish Jews, this number only counted those Jews who had chosen to register with local committees and presumably not all of those who had returned to Poland. See Dos Naye Leben, May 20, 1945 (‘Polish Jews from the West’). The Jewish Labor Bund, founded in 1897 in Vilna, sought to unite all Jewish workers under the banner of socialism. The Bund strongly opposed Zionism and advocated the use of Yiddish as the basis of a secular Jewish national culture. Mankowitz asserts that for the most part the Jews of Hungary and Romania sought to return home following liberation, while the Polish Jews (some 90 per cent of those liberated) were far more divided on the issue. See his ‘The Formation of She’erit Hapletah’, p. 27. Ze’ev Mankowitz, ‘The Formation of She’erit Hapleita’, pp. 337–70. It is important to note that many of these survivors were active Zionists before the war. YIVO, MK 483, Reel 21. Dr Zalman Grinburg, ‘Appel an den judischen Weltkongress’, St. Ottilien, 31 May 1945. For more on the early and extensive involvement of American Jewish chaplains in the relief efforts and organisation of DP institutions, see Alexander Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944–1948 (1993). Grobman emphasises the work of the young reform rabbi Abraham Klausner, who was instrumental in helping the Central Committee to become organised, as well as in compiling lists of survivors for publication in camps and acting as a vital liaison between the ZK and the Army. The Jewish Brigade was a Jewish military unit, composed mainly of Jews from Palestine, which served in the Second World War in the British Army. At the conclusion of the war, the Brigade was stationed in northeast Italy, where its soldiers first came into contact with survivors of the Holocaust. Mankowitz, ‘The Formation of She’erit Hapleita’, p. 361. The Jews in the British Zone, for example in the camp at Belsen, had to fight against the British refusal to categorise Jews as a separate nationality – ostensibly, a refusal by the British to adhere to Nazi racial categories, but also a position that would have conflicted with the current British policy in Palestine. YIVO, MK 483, Reel 61, #721–7. YIVO, MK483, Reel 61, #727. Harrison report to Truman, 24 August 1945. See treatments in Kochavi, p. 89 and Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, chapter 2. Kochavi, p. 134. See Meir Avizohar, ‘Bikkur Ben-Gurion Be-makhanot Ha’akurim Ve-tefisato Ha-leumit Be-tom Milkhemet Ha’olam Ha-sheniah’ (Ben-Gurion’s visit to the DP Camps and his national outlook in the aftermath of Word War II), in Benjamin Pinkus, ed., Yahadut Mizrach Eiropah Bein Shoah Le-tekuma 1944–1948 (Sde Boker: Ben Gurion University, 1987), p. 260. See also as described in Kochavi, p. 94 and Judah Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1953), p. 238. Much of this report is based on Ben Gurion Archives, Ben-Gurion’s report of his visit to the DP camps, 11-6-45 diary entry, in Kochavi and Avizohar. Reference, p. 137. For more, see Rebecca L. Boehling, A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 1996).

Avinoam J. Patt 181 25. See Kochavi, p. 103. 26. Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Lausanne, 20 April 1946. 27. For more on the factors leading to Jewish departure from Poland in the Bricha and the nature of post-war Polish Jewish politics, see David Engel, Between Liberation and Flight (Hebrew). On the Kielce pogrom, see Jan Gross, Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006). 28. Irit Keynan, p. 65. See also YIVO, MK 488, Leo Schwartz papers, Reel 9, File 57, #715, Age structure of Jewish population in the US zone (November 1945–January 1947). 29. YIVO, MK 488, Leo Schwartz papers, Reel 9, File 57, #715, Age structure of Jewish population in the US zone (November 1945–January 1947). 30. YIVO, MK483, Reel 3, #37. June 1946 letter from the ZK (Zalman Grinburg and David Traeger) to Edward M. Warburg. (English). 31. Ibid. Talethim are Jewish prayer shawls. 32. YIVO, Leo Schwartz Papers, Reel 10, #884. Letter from Charles Passman to Central Committee, 10 December 1947. 33. See Leo Schwartz, Reel 39, #79–80 for rations of non-workers (including children, pregnant women, students, hospital patients, invalids, and the elderly [over 55 years of age]) as of 1 April 1948. DPG MK 483, Reel 7, #13–15 also includes various categories of workers as of July 1947. 34. YIVO, Leo Schwarz Papers, Reel 10, #1378, ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held in the Office of the Jewish Adviser on Monday, 15 March 1948’, recorded by Major Abraham S. Hyman, JAGD (English). Also see the description in Yehuda Bauer, Out of the Ashes: The Impact of American Jews on Post-Holocaust European Jewry (Pergamon Press, 1989), p. 262; Grodzinsky, Homer Enoshi Tov, pp. 153–4. 35. Among those seated on the 80-man committee selected at the Congress, were 16 representatives from Poalei Zion Hitachdut, 16 from the Revisionist party, eight from Poalei Zion (ZS), eight General Zionists, eight members of Mizrachi, six from Poalei Zion Smol, six from Hashomer Hatzair, four from Pachach (the organisation of ex-partisans and soldiers), and eight from Agudos Yisrael. 36. YIVO, MK483, Reel 113, Folder 1553, #180–3. 37. Total membership in the Bund in the camps in Germany seems not to have totalled more than 1000 (905 according to one source), with 54 members in Feldafing, and apparently the most in Ulm-Danube Sedan, with 83 members (YIVO, Bund Archives, MG2-523, Zusamenstelung fun di Bundisze grupe in di lagern in Daiscland. No date is given on the document). 38. YIVO, LS, Reel 10, #1384. Also significant in view of efforts on the part of the ZK to assert control over the DP camps was the demand, in light of recent abuses in police raids, ‘that, in the interest of law and order, the executive power over the DP camp police should be taken from IRO and turned over to the Central Committee’. LS, Reel 10, #1385. 39. Yablonka, p. 85. 40. Yehuda Ben-David, The ‘Haganah’ in Europe (Israel: TAG Publishing House, 1995), p. 208. 41. Ben-David, p. 221. Yehuda Ben-David uses this number of 500 in his work on the Haganah in Europe, while Yablonka asserts that at least 133 mefakdim were trained from the DPs.

182 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61.

62. 63.

Stateless Citizens of Israel Yablonka, p. 87 (Hebrew). Yablonka, p. 90 (Hebrew). Yablonka, pp. 93–4 (Hebrew). YIVO, DPG, MK 483, Reel 96, Folder 1354, #514, 18 February 1948. The parties signed on to the Executive included Poalei-Zion Smol, Poalei-Zion Hitachdut, the General Zionists, HaShomer HaTzair, Mizrachi, and Agudat Israel. YIVO, DPG, MK483, Reel 96, Folder 1355, #517, 16 March 1948. YIVO, DPG, MK483, Reel 96, #544, date unknown. YIVO, DPG, MK483, Reel 24, #113. In September 1945, Feldafing’s population was over 6000 residents. MK483, Reel 26, #1082, 2 March 1948. The committee included representatives from the camp committee, ORT, youth movements, and two representatives from the Haganah. The committee was formed ‘exclusively’ for the duty of giyus. YIVO, DPG, MK483, Reel 24, #628. DPG, MK 483, Reel 1, Folder 5, #552. Protocol of the Third Congress of the She’erit Hapletah at Bad-Reichenall, 30 March–2 April 1948. DPG, MK483, Reel 1, Folder 5, #580. MK483, Reel 1, Folder 5, #639. Idem., #640. A number of resolutions relating to Sabbath Observance and Kashrut were also passed. YIVO, MK483, Reel 26, #1144 (Feldafing). See also for example, Reel 7, #25, and reel 5, #223 for circulars sent to Rochelle and Schwabenhausen. YIVO, MK483, Reel 96, Folder 1354, #512. Yablonka, p. 97. YIVO, MK 483, Reel 1, #130. Letter from the ‘Sanctions Committee of the Civil Committee for Mas Am Lochem’, Stuttgart, 21 December 1948. Yehuda Ben-David, p. 232. Reports by the Bundist executive, as well as letters from Bund members to family and to Undzer Shtime, the Bund newspaper in Paris, would soon relate ‘Zionist terror’ in the camps, directed against those who did not fulfil their giyus duty. See for example YIVO, Bund Archives, MG2-108, Der Wecker, May 1948, p. 11. For example, in the Rochelle DP camp, the head of the Economics and Residence Office expressed his concern that important work positions were being vacated by the giyus, and demanded that the giyus commission leave the most important workers in their positions. The motion was rejected (YIVO, MK 483, Reel 63, #734, 18 April 1948). For an example of Joint concern over ZK abuse of rations, see the letter from Abraham Cohen (AJDC director in Frankfurt) to representatives of the Central Committee, YIVO, MK 483, Reel 64, #1375. Frankfurt, 11 November 1948. Emmanuel Sivan, Dor Tashakh: Mitos, Diyukan ve-Zikaron (The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory) (Israel: Ministry of Defence, 1991), p. 78. Ya’acov Markovizky, Gachelet Lochemet: Giyus Hutz la-Aretz be-Milchemet Ha-‘atzmaut, (Fighting Ember: Gachal Forces in the War of Independence) (Israel: Ministry of Defence, 1995), p. 195.

Part IV Labour and Employment

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9 Refugees and Labour in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945–9 Jessica Reinisch

The contribution of the population movements examined in this volume to the economic developments of the post-war period have only been understood in outline. The vocabulary and visual imagery of the post-war years reflected the demand for workers, and we are familiar with portrayals of builders, engineers and carpenters attempting to build a new world on the ashes of the old. But the participation of the millions of refugees and people on the move in these reconstruction programmes after 1945 would still benefit from explanation and analysis. This chapter looks at one particular group of refugees – German expellees in the Eastern area of Germany after 1945, now under Soviet control – and examines the role of labour and employment policies in their initial reception and treatment. Among contemporary observers there was considerable concern about, and academic interest in, the economic impact of the millions of dislocated people on conditions in Europe, particularly in Germany. But the issue lost its urgency once growing prosperity began to erase concerns. Analysis since the 1960s has often focused on the functional and structural effects of migration on economic conditions, particularly the overall contribution of these refugees to post-war economic recovery. Historians and economists have demonstrated that the availability of large pools of labour, which the expellees in Germany presented (some time before the organised recruitment of foreign workers commenced in 1955), was a major factor in the remarkable economic growth of the 1950s. Numerous studies have examined the ways in which the expellees in the Federal Republic of Germany helped to relieve initial manpower shortages, which accompanied the stabilisation of the West German economy around 1948 and during its subsequent growth. Similarly, some historians have explained the relatively successful 185

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economic development of the German Democratic Republic in comparison with other Warsaw Pact countries by reference to its comparatively larger manpower reserves. Scholars have also shown that countries which lacked such a substantial increase in the labour supply as a result grew more slowly than the rest.1 While we know that the incoming German expellees began to make a contribution to German industrial production from the early 1950s onwards, the earlier period and developments in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany often remain obscured. By exploring the role of labour and employment in the conception and management of the several million German refugees arriving in the Soviet zone, this chapter aims to show that crucial decisions about the integration of refugees into the workforce were taken immediately after the war. Developing and broadening some of the conclusions reached by Philipp Ther, Dierk Hoffmann and other authors, the chapter argues that it is only by looking at this earlier period, the immediate aftermath of war, that we can fully grasp the ways in which economic and political considerations coloured proposals on how refugees could and should be dealt with, and ultimately made the refugee problem part of a much more extensive process of social, political and economic reconstruction.2 Although some new paths were taken in the Soviet zone, this chapter also seeks to restore the comparability of the refugee problem there by putting it side by side with research on refugees in western Germany, and indeed in other parts of Europe.

Planlessness The territory of the future Soviet occupation zone became flooded by tens of thousands of Germans expelled or fleeing from their homes even as the war still raged on. Around five million came during 1945 and 1946, of whom around 4.3 million were still there in 1949.3 The Allies’ insistence at the Potsdam conference that these movements were to be conducted in an ‘orderly and planned’ manner had little effect; the Allied Control Commission’s directive a few months later on the distribution of the refugees among the four zones proved equally unrealistic and unrealised.4 By 1948, when the biggest population shifts had been completed, expelled people made up a quarter of the Soviet zone’s population. Although the incoming flood generated panic among Allies and Germans alike, the Soviet authorities only began to make arrangements for their reception after many thousands had already arrived.5 In July

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1945, The Commander-in-Chief and Military Governor of the Soviet Zone, Marshal Georgi Zhukov, issued an order on the regional distribution of the new arrivals within the zone’s territory, based primarily upon the availability of transport and housing. According to this plan, all expellees from the Polish territories north of the river Warta were to be sent to the zone’s northernmost province, Mecklenburg, while refugees from the regions south of the Warta and east of the river Oder were to be sent to four districts in the province of Brandenburg. Refugees from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were to be sent to the southern districts of Brandenburg and the eastern areas of Saxony-Anhalt. The Soviet approach, like that of the other Allies, was to direct the flood of newcomers to the thinly populated agricultural areas, mainly because the destruction of housing had been less extensive there and the countryside was more suitable for setting up reception camps.6 Zhukov’s directive, like those of the other Allies, gave no consideration to whether there were opportunities to work and thus possibilities for economic integration in the receiving areas. Not only did around 75 per cent of the expellees come from non-agricultural backgrounds, but local farmers soon proved to be particularly resistant to employing the newcomers.7 In other words, the two agricultural provinces Mecklenburg and Brandenburg had the largest population increases and were least able to cope with them. By October 1945 the Soviet authorities had adjusted the planned distribution of refugees across the zone by setting quotas for each region, but continued to allocate the majority of refugees to the rural areas: Brandenburg was to receive another 700,000 expellees from Czechoslovakia, Mecklenburg another 1.2 million expellees from Poland. In practice, Mecklenburg and Brandenburg were also more heavily affected because the other provinces repeatedly tried to reduce their share. Problems were thus made worse by the fact that some local officials simply refused to accept their allocation of new arrivals and sent trains and lorries with refugees to neighbouring districts. Saxony, the most heavily populated and industrialised region in the zone, was a particular culprit in this practice. Reports from neighbouring areas complained that the Saxon authorities had organised the transport of over two million expellees and returnees (Heimkehrer) across the Saxon border, and then simply left them there, no longer their responsibility.8 Enraged officials from the other regions protested fiercely about the selfishness of such a local perspective, but in practice there was little they could do. Some pleaded with their Soviet commanders to intervene, but Soviet officers were often unable to control either obstinate local authorities

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or the stream of refugees.9 Many refugees were at any rate unwilling to be the subject of official quotas, and continued to trek across the zone even after a stop to all movement had been declared by the Soviet commanders. As a result of widespread housing shortages many refugees stayed in the quarantine camps for longer than the prescribed 14 days. By October 1945, 631 reception camps were in operation in the Soviet zone, accommodating a total of 488,000 people, with many thousands still left without a roof over their heads.10 Tens of thousands settled in the Mecklenburg countryside, looking for food and work. In the light of this flood of people, German reports on the refugee situation were often written in highly emotional tones, and depicted the arrival of the refugees as synonymous with the end of German civilisation. The capital Berlin, for example, was a bombed-out pile of rubble and, as typhus and dysentery began to flare up, was fast becoming a ‘city of the diseased’ – so how could it cope with 25,000 new people arriving every day?11 In many officials’ eyes the influx of so many refugees threatened to destroy the last vestiges of social structure and cohesion in the defeated country. ‘The Russian-occupied zone is too small and too poor’, they said, ‘to take on several million foreign people [landfremde Menschen]’.12 There could only be two options, they argued: either the newcomers had to be sent back, or they should be distributed evenly across the zone and made self-sufficient as fast as possible. Reluctantly, but without a real alternative, they focused on the latter.

Employment plans The refugee problem was just one of many issues that concerned the newly established state authorities across Germany. While in each of the four Allied zones local and provincial offices began to take shape, the Soviet occupiers also soon took steps for the creation of German zonal authorities. Soviet Order No.17 of 27 July 1945 provided for the establishment of so-called Central Administrations, which functioned essentially like ministries, with offices in Berlin but responsible for the entire zone. In spite of widespread fears about the chaos caused by the influx of refugees, a ministry responsible for refugees was actually one of the last to be established. When the Central Administration for German Resettlers (Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler, ZVU) was created on 14 September 1945 to oversee and coordinate the refugee problem at the level of the zone, eleven other offices were already up and running.13 Nonetheless, this was an authority of a kind that the British, American and French occupation zones lacked.

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Whereas most of these newly founded ‘ministries’ in the Soviet zone contained a broad selection of so-called antifascists (communists tended to be in leading positions, but were joined by social democrats, liberals and non-political specialists), the ZVU was predominantly staffed by communists. Of the initial staff of 62 (including translators, drivers, secretaries and typists), all but 9 social democrats and 16 ‘antifascists’ were communists.14 By December 1946, most of the now 97-strong group were members of the new Socialist Unity Party, the SED.15 This heavy concentration of communists as officials in charge of the refugee problem may have made their work harder, as they encountered significant resistance on the ground. Officially the expellees were now referred to as ‘resettlers’ (Umsiedler) or ‘new citizens’ (Neubürger), to underline that they were there to stay. Michael Tschesno, Vice-President of the ZVU, explained the reasoning behind this new terminology: An ‘evictee’ or ‘expellee’, he thought, was: someone who is being expelled, who is not worthy of a welcome, who was himself responsible for having been expelled. But do we have to assign those expelled resettlers a greater guilt than those who have to accommodate them? ‘Refugee’: once the storm has died down, he is allowed to return to from where he has fled. But the resettler will have to stay here. So say the resolutions of the Potsdam Conference. He and his children and his children’s children. For their sake, for the sake of Germany, he has to and we all have to ensure that he will take part in the reconstruction effort and feel useful and adequate. To lose one’s Heimat is bitter and hard. To not be able to gain a new one is a terrible destiny. Don’t we have to help him find a new Heimat? ‘Resettler’ – that is the right word. But this term obliges both the resettler as well as those to whom he moves. The term also commits us in a wider sense to do everything so that the resettler soon will no longer be a resettler, and will no longer feel as such.16 Along with the new vocabulary, the ZVU focused on the integration of these newcomers into the social, economic and political fabric of the zone. Apart from relieving immediate hardships, officials in Berlin argued that the refugees’ lasting integration demanded, first, that steps be taken to give them legal equality and full German citizenship, and second, that they were fully integrated into the labour market.17 Of those two fields, the issue of employment soon dominated the authority’s activities. Over the coming months officials designed a series of

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proposals aimed at turning the refugees into workers and employees. A number of different themes emerged here about the importance of putting newcomers to work. First evolved ideas on how they could be turned into an economically beneficial presence. Industrial experts and economic planners saw the mass of expellees above all as a vital source of manpower, which could invigorate industrial production and agriculture. Soviet economic demands were central to developments in the zone, and the refugees were to help fulfil demands for reparations from current production. One report stated that the wagon factory in Wismar was a prime example of the valuable contribution that was being made by refugees in the fulfilment of reparation demands; of the 1700 employees, over 1000 were refugees.18 Once the Soviet authorities presented the German labour exchanges with requests for workers to carry out dismantling works, the exchanges began to resort to compulsory work drafts to fulfil these demands. Refugees were least protected by local interests, and thus disproportionately affected by these drafts.19 Later the refugees were also enrolled in Soviet plans for uranium mining, which was so labour-intensive that it required a vast number of workers. In late 1947, the president of the ZVU, Rudolf Engel, thought that the need for workers in this field was, in fact, far greater than could be satisfied by resettlers alone – but at least they could make a substantial contribution.20 Soviet stipulations aside, economists and refugee officials hoped that a planned integration of refugees into the workforce could be used to alter and improve the industrial make-up of the zone. Part of the problem was that in 1945 the territory of the Soviet zone emerged as heavily dependent on intra-German trade, particularly on deliveries of raw materials from parts of Germany now occupied by the other Allies. As the continuation of the Soviet zone’s trade with the other zones looked uncertain, a new focus on economic independence motivated a number of plans. The re-foundation and expansion of the chemical industry (particularly the so-called Leuna- and Buna-works, also of heavy industry generally) was to boost the self-sufficiency and competitiveness of the Soviet zone, and refugees were to be recruited to enable this expansion. A May 1946 memorandum from the Central Administration for Industry (Deutsche Zentralverwaltung der Industrie, ZVI) spelled out that in the context of the substantial restructuring of the zone’s industry, refugees should be used as workers in the iron works in Thuringia and the Buna-works in Saxony.21 Similarly, Rudolf Engel explained to the Soviet authorities that businesses such as the Leuna- and Buna-works, the copper mines in Mansfeld and the textile industry in Saxony should

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be able to recruit workers straight from the reception camps.22 Although the Soviets seem to have rejected this proposal, in practice recruitment in the camps appears to have taken place with little intervention. Other proposals gave thought to the many refugees in the rural regions of the zone. Not only were they to be given an income by learning how to manufacture handicrafts from local materials, some officials proposed, but the development of cottage industries in these areas was to become a means for the future industrialisation of these parts. Karl Marx had shown that the pre-modern cottage industries had been a precondition for the shift towards factory production and assembly lines. Now that parts of Germany had been plunged back to pre-industrial conditions, they argued, the newcomers should be employed to speed up developments. ‘Cottage industry’, wrote one official from Mecklenburg, ‘is the buzzword for the future’.23 A different interpretation of the benefits of cottage manufacture appeared in a report from Saxony-Anhalt, where some of the refugees from the Sudetenland were being settled. Refugee-run home manufacture was a special asset, the report argued: not only were these handicrafts particularly sought-after abroad and thereby offered possibilities for increasing exports, but the Potsdam Declaration had at any rate put a question mark over the future development of heavy industry in Germany. Alternatives had to be found, and the skilful and rich artisans would be of great economic benefit to the zone. ‘The conclusion for us has to be’, this administrator wrote, ‘to develop such cottage industries in Germany’. A decision had to be taken quickly, he urged, before other provinces in the zone would recognise these advantages and snap up the economically valuable people for themselves.24 Others argued that due to the high proportion of women, disabled and old people among the refugees, cottage industries could provide an income to those who would otherwise be unable to find work.25 Many of these plans required a sorting of refugees by occupation and their distribution to areas which could make the most use of them. It made no sense to keep so many refugees in agricultural Mecklenburg, Dr Ballersted from the provincial administration in Mecklenburg argued, since ‘[y]ou can’t simply give every one a hoe or a shovel. This isn’t going to expand agricultural production infinitely’. After all, he added, ‘[w]e can only accommodate a limited number of additional people in agriculture’, since thousands of locals were already unemployed, having previously worked in munitions factories. At any rate, the lack of raw materials made the industrialisation of Mecklenburg highly improbable. ‘That’s why it is one hundred per cent my opinion’,

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he stated, ‘that we have to devise a grand strategy which considers all these aspects, and through which we can integrate people productively into the work process’.26 Refugee miners should be sent to mining districts, textile workers to the new textile plants, and chemical workers to the new chemical works. People without skills should be trained. Not only would the refugees themselves benefit from full employment in their own occupations and professions, but reconstruction could proceed significantly faster this way. Apart from these schemes to recruit refugees so as to bring about the economic reconstruction of the zone, there were a number of ideas regarding the social, psychological and political benefits of employment. For a start, it was pointed out repeatedly that large-scale employment of refugees was of obvious benefit for the recovery of German society, not least since unemployment among the resettlers was corrosive and demoralising to their neighbours.27 Others maintained that only if the mass of refugees was employed would they stop being a drain on the already overstretched state welfare services.28 Apart from the desire to reduce the economic and social costs of dislocation, officials also emphasised the psychological effects of being in work. Employing refugees seemed to be the only way to counter their intentions to return to their former homes and to prevent them from falling ‘easy prey to nationalist demagogues spouting irredentist talk’.29 Officials in the ZVU – like those in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and other authorities looking after refugees’ livelihood and welfare – were convinced that only full employment and earning a living could help to end the refugees’ lethargy and contribute to their psychological recovery from their traumatic pasts. ‘The only thing that’s wrong with them’, said one official, ‘is that they need their own roof over their heads’, and to go to work and be active. They had to be helped to ‘come out of their misery’.30 In fact, work appeared to be a means of socialising people, and employment would stop the resettlers from being ‘asozial’.31 As Ottomar Geschke from the Berlin City Council (the Magistrat), explained, once the refugees were sent to areas where their occupations were needed, they would no longer have to depend on state welfare or any charitable benefits, and so would quickly become independent and settle permanently.32 Or as Georg Chwalczyk, a statistician at the ZVU, put it: the refugees had to be turned from ‘recipients of welfare and onlyconsumers into producers’.33 By encouraging permanent settlement and integration into their new locations, work, in other words, would help to create viable communities.

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Employment was also seen as a means to integrate the refugees into the political life of the zone. The leadership of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) was often ambivalent about the possibilities for political reeducation among the refugees at large, since Germans outside the Reich had appeared to be an important bedrock of support for Nazi foreign policy. But the trade unions hoped that through employment they could ultimately be turned into responsible, voting citizens – regardless of their political pasts. In fact, a number of authorities advocated turning a blind eye to the refugees’ previous political and ideological commitments so as to facilitate their integration. In denazification matters, for example, the refugees were at times treated more leniently than the population at large, which enabled them to take up positions which had become vacant by the denazification of the natives. Although they had to fill in lengthy questionnaires after arrival in the transit camps on such topics as their health, educational and professional qualifications and their willingness to participate in reconstruction tasks, there were generally few questions about their political pasts.34 Their claims could at any rate rarely be verified, since evidence of their previous political activities was in the majority of cases impossible to come by.35 In his review of the ZVU’s first year, Michael Tschesno tried to be upbeat: although many resettlers were clearly still ‘contaminated by fascism’, he thought that the majority of them actively wanted to make a new start, and in this they should be helped by both native population and state administrations. Every pair of hands was needed in the major reconstruction tasks ahead, and the employment of refugees would help to give them a new political outlook.36 At the same time, ZVU officials had high hopes about the employability and political potential of a particular subset of the refugees. Between autumn 1945 and summer 1946, thousands of German social democrats and communists arrived from Czechoslovakia, and from the start they were to be used strategically in political work.37 A report from the Saxon Office for Resettlers noted in October 1945 that from the latest arrival of 10,000 communist resettlers, 2000 were being sent to Thuringia, 3000 to Brandenburg, 3000 to Halle and 2000 to Mecklenburg.38 The ZVU’s work plans for the winter months 1945/6 stated that after intensive training courses these ‘responsible forces’ were to be appointed to all kinds of political and administrative positions in the parties, the new resettler committees, the labour exchanges and provincial administrations.39 Growing suspicion among communist officials about the political allegiances of some of the social democratic refugee groups ultimately cast doubt on their desirability in important offices.40

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Nonetheless, the appointment of ‘antifascist resettlers’ to the budding administrations seemed desirable, and from the start the ZVU itself contained a significant number of people who were born outside the post-war German borders.41 Overall, officials across the zone argued that the situation was so dire that the employment of refugees had to be pursued in a coordinated manner. ‘It is quite impossible to deal with these issues locally or provincially’, wrote one exasperated officer in Brandenburg, demanding a plan for the entire zone to match the distribution of refugees with available work placements.42 Another declared that if ‘we in Mecklenburg are to re-settle refugees, then we can’t simply do this off the cuff. It requires a strategy’. Others agreed that it was high time for some form of central coordination, if it was not too late already.43 The solution of the refugee problem really had to be tackled as a ‘German problem’ (and deal with all four occupation zones simultaneously), but since that was not possible, at least it had to be done for the Soviet zone as a whole, rather than for its different regions in isolation from each other.44 Much of this line of argument focused on defining authorities’ responsibilities and formulating overall procedures. If some regions thought they could accept no more refugees, they should negotiate and help to find solutions, rather than taking matters into their own hands.45 Overall, it seemed obvious that refugees should fill those vacancies for which they were qualified; as a result they could help the zone to recover and they could settle and integrate themselves. Regional conflicts and the selfishness of local officials could only be regulated, this was argued particularly in Berlin, if central coordination was in place.

Plans and realities In spite of the many arguments for the large-scale employment of refugees and their integration into the labour market, most of these proposals were not implemented, if at all, until the early 1950s. In fact, the employment of refugees proved problematic throughout the immediate post-war period. Authorities anxiously inspected census figures and employment statistics for signs of economic recovery and social improvement, but in spite of increasing numbers of refugees, the share of employed refugees stayed approximately the same (around 1.4 million) between October 1946 and March 1949.46 The plans proved to be unrealistic for a number of reasons, but demographic factors played a significant role, since the already obvious excess of women over men in the population was further exaggerated

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by the arrival of the refugees. Millions of men had died on the battlefields or remained in captivity abroad. In addition, Polish and Czech authorities had kept behind able-bodied German men, in view of their desperate need for manpower to fuel their own reconstruction programmes. As a result, the October 1946 census of the German population registered one million fewer men than there had been in 1939.47 The historian Elizabeth Wiskemann argued in 1956 that the arrival of expellees in the Western zones had, in fact, done something to redress this gender imbalance.48 But this observation does not seem to hold for the Soviet zone. As one official from Mecklenburg observed, he had to deal with a population of newcomers which consisted predominantly of women, ‘accompanied by their children and their parents.’49 Statistics prepared in autumn 1946 showed that 23.9 per cent of the refugees in the zone were men, 45.8 per cent women and 30.3 per cent children.50 In Thuringia, for example, there were 148 women for every 100 men among the 600,000 ‘new citizens’ who had already arrived. Since they entered a population in which there were 133 women for each 100 men, they thus helped to increase the already critical shortage of men.51 The employment plans had thus failed to take into account the demographic composition of the arriving flood of refugees, which had direct implications for their employability. In Germany as in the rest of Europe, primary demand was for male workers. The plans had also not anticipated the widespread bureaucratic reluctance to train and employ women in traditionally male jobs. Michael Tschesno from the ZVU was disheartened by the failure to employ female refugees in reconstruction tasks. After all, he wrote, ‘[w]omen were good enough to work for the battlefields before and during the war. So who seriously dares to suggest that they are useless for reconstruction?’52 Nonetheless, the lack of men and the failure to train women resulted in a consistently lower ratio of employed refugee women compared to men.53 Of the 600,000 refugees in Thuringia in autumn 1946, 82,000 men were employed but only 68,000 women.54 The expellees in the Soviet zone also contained a high proportion of people who were physically incapable of working (the young, old and disabled). One estimate stated that although by 1 December 1946 a respectable 84.1 per cent of the able-bodied refugees had found jobs in some capacity or other, altogether only 41.6 per cent of the refugees overall were physically fit enough to work. By contrast, 60.1 per cent of the native population was classed as able to work. Another estimate was that by January 1946, 55 per cent of the refugees were ‘employable’, but only 29.6 per cent of this group were actually employed.55

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Assessments from various parts of the zone confirmed this picture. In the long term, Wiskemann was undoubtedly right in pointing to certain demographic advantages that the expellees offered, especially since they ‘were accustomed to have larger families’.56 The many refugee children in the zone – in autumn 1946, almost 40 per cent of the refugees were under the age of 19, and over 30 per cent were 14 and under – ensured the supply of labour in the future.57 But in the short and medium terms, the proportion of employable and employed people among the refugees was significantly lower than in the population at large, which presented an additional burden on the municipalities and provinces and made the ambitious plans for full employment and fast economic integration of the refugees seem quite unrealistic. Apart from demographic problems, a further obstacle to the employment of refugees was the slow establishment of their systematic registration, particularly of their occupations. It took several months before initial confidence in the possibility of registration began to wane. The ZVU had announced optimistically in September 1945 that all new refugees were to fill in a questionnaire and be registered by their qualifications and occupations.58 Other authorities in Berlin, such as the Central Administration for Work and Social Security (Deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, ZVAS), echoed this call. On 6 September 1945 it ordered the reception camps to register the refugees’ occupation and possible work placements, as well as the occupations of all travelling family members. This data was then to be matched with the regions’ reported labour shortages in any given field, and refugees were to be sent to areas where their skills were most needed.59 The Allied authorities, too, urgently wanted to see the registration of professions and occupations. In January 1946, the Allied Control Commission ordered that all women between the ages of 15 and 50, and men between the ages of 14 and 65, were to register at their local labour exchanges. The Soviet authorities also insisted on the registration of occupations among the refugees; non-compliance could lead to the loss of their ration cards.60 But such threats notwithstanding, the labour exchanges and camp administrators did not manage to establish a basic occupational registration system until the majority of refugees had already arrived. The provisional census of 1 December 1945 corroborated that almost 2.5 million refugees (not including children under five) had already arrived, over half of the eventual total in the Soviet zone. Less than one year later, the October 1946 census recorded 3.5 million refugees.61 But throughout this time, some areas remained without labour

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exchanges, and even much more basic registration of refugees’ age, place of birth and destination proved to be unworkable. Dr Eberlein from Brandenburg thought that by September 1945 as many as 400,000 refugees had not been registered in his province. They lived without ration cards, residence permits and health certificates; their presence distorted official statistics; and, he went on, they contravened all official attempts to control movements through the province. Eberlein regretted that no ‘refugee passport’ had been introduced since so many of the refugees claimed to have lost their identification papers.62 The ZVU had actually planned such a passport, but later dropped this idea as impractical.63 But without this data, officials complained, their work was made impossible.64 With growing concern, in November 1946 the two main offices in Berlin concerned with the employment of refugees (the ZVU and the ZVAS) issued a directive which ordered the labour exchanges to register refugees within 48 hours of their arrival. But even that was slow to be implemented.65 Another problem concerned the failure to provide accommodation for refugees and the fact that refugees at large were often not privileged in the allocation of housing. Many of the planned work placements failed because the refugees could not be put up, or because the local authorities refused to grant residence permits. Those with dependent families were particularly disadvantaged – and even though many of them were being recruited by the large firms, they often could not actually take on these jobs.66 Other firms insisted that they could only employ workers who were single and without any dependent family members, because they could not provide sufficient accommodation.67 Only from late 1947 onwards were special rations and housing privileges given to workers in certain priority fields such as uranium mining, from which refugees benefited particularly.68 Even the appointment of ‘antifascist refugees’ suffered because of the unwillingness of authorities to give priority status to the refugees. Although the stream of communists from Czechoslovakia into the zone was welcomed by the Berlin office, elsewhere things were not as rosy. The problem was, one memorandum spelled out, that these ‘valuable people’ were not being treated as well as they should be. In spite of various Czech-Allied agreements, and in spite of an arrangement with the antifascist parties in the zone, these refugees often had to wait for weeks before they were given any accommodation, which was often sub-standard when it did materialise. They were treated badly by the local housing and employment offices, the memo went on, and were generally made to feel extremely unwelcome.69 Kurt Benda from the

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ZVU reported after a trip through the zone that the ‘antifascist refugees’ in practice did not receive any preferential treatment. A Soviet order had specifically stated that former Nazis with large apartments should be forced to free up space for homeless antifascist refugees. Nonetheless, he reported, local officials were coming up with a variety of excuses for why these orders could not be enforced: ‘We went to school together’, they told Benda, or ‘they never did us any harm in the time of Hitler’. Benda concluded that this lack of preferential treatment in housing matters was one of the greatest obstacles to the proper deployment and employment of antifascist refugees in the zone.70 A further, crucial reason for the failure of early plans to employ refugees concerned the conflicts between regional and central authorities, and between the regions themselves. The ZVU’s instructions to labour exchanges and local authorities to prioritise the allocation of jobs to refugees caused much resentment and resistance. The ZVU’s jurisdiction over the provincial governments was, at any rate, often unclear, and it frequently lacked the means and the power to enforce its directives. For weeks after its establishment it had apparently no funds whatsoever.71 When Saxony refused to accept its official quota of refugees and deposited hundreds of thousands in neighbouring provinces, there was little the ZVU could do. It called meetings to coordinate the distribution of refugees across the zone and find overall solutions, but for some time the Saxon authorities simply refused to participate and ignored all official correspondence.72 Appeals to the Soviet occupiers were often equally futile. Some local officials may even have been encouraged by the behaviour of their Soviet commanders, a number of whom treated their areas as autonomous fiefdoms, cut off from the rest of the zone.73 At the same time, Soviet officers in Berlin were often as disillusioned by and critical of conditions and the authorities’ efforts to deal with refugees as their German counterparts.74 It was precisely the absence of agreed structures and procedures which characterised the years after the war and fuelled disagreements. Throughout the early years of the Soviet zone, officials from the provincial authorities appealed to the ministries in Berlin when they felt they were being treated unfairly or given impossible tasks to do, but they were often unwilling to follow central directives when they appeared not to be in their local or personal interest. The allocation of refugees to the different parts of the zone caused particularly intense clashes. Authorities from Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony complained that a shortage of food prevented them from taking on their quotas of refugees, whereas officials from Mecklenburg argued that while food could be transported,

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accommodation could not, and there was simply not enough housing available. Infectious disease rates were also higher in Mecklenburg, they pointed out, and the dangers associated with overcrowding far greater. But since no province fully accepted the authority of the ZVU as arbiter between regional disagreements, they were often left to squabble among themselves, while refugees were shipped backwards and forwards or simply evaded registration and made their own arrangements. These conflicts were eventually settled as the flood of newcomers ceased and both politically and administratively ‘suitable’ individuals began to congregate in the provincial administrations. But throughout its existence the ZVU had difficulty in making itself heard, and could not prevent the regions from frequently sifting the refugees for useful individuals, before dumping the rest onto another area. At times this behaviour was quite illogical and based on the whim of a local official. For example, the Land employment office in Mecklenburg refused to send refugee miners currently employed in other jobs to the mining areas in the south of the zone, insisting that they might soon be requiring miners themselves.75 On top of that, whatever agreement about procedures was reached among the German authorities was often superseded by Soviet priorities. Germans resented above all the evident randomness of the Soviet appropriations and their apparent lack of interest in the plight of the population. German officials complained regularly about how some Soviet commanders had taken over transport or housing earmarked for refugees. The Red Army was living on the already scarce resources of the zone, one official complained at a zonal meeting, and it was ‘never clear just how much they were taking’. Another added that since all public buildings such as schools and barracks were occupied by the Russians, possibilities for the accommodation of refugees were thus ‘completely exhausted’.76 In such conditions, long-term planning and development of a zonal strategy was near impossible and responsibility for the chaos lay to a large degree with the Soviet authorities. One memorandum from December 1945 urged the Soviet military authorities to recognise that ‘a clear plan’ was not enough if its implementation was not guaranteed77 – but seemingly to little avail. For months the only benchmark for the labour exchanges comprised the lists of Soviet priorities, according to which workers were to be sent to enterprises which worked towards the delivery of reparations and in other vital fields.78 Any planning had been made impossible, so one memo explained in May 1946, by the persistent uncertainty about the future, the divergences between the Potsdam resolutions and the actual situation, and the frequent Soviet confiscations of workers or material. As a result, the only

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thing that could be done was to match the remaining zonal industrial capacities with raw materials and labour.79 The grand schemes on the employment of refugees, said Georg Chwalczyk, had become illusory by ‘schematic application of quotas’.80 Moreover, such Soviet procedure further damaged the already poor reputation of the ZVU and its officials. As Dr Ballersted pointed out, ‘[t]he whole question also has a political side. It presents a huge burden on the new forces in Germany. Since we cannot solve these tasks sensibly, a result is that from the start the Left is standing in disrepute’.81 A serious obstacle to the social and economic integration through employment was the fact that refugees and returnees were particularly affected by compulsory work drafts. The Soviet priority to jump-start the zone’s economy by any means lacked a longer-term vision, refugee officials were quick to point out. A Soviet order from August 1945 stated that industrial branches of primary importance to Soviet reconstruction needs had to be supplied with manpower by 15 September 1945. People refusing to work in industry were to lose their ration cards.82 Faced with this deadline, the labour exchanges resorted to compulsory drafts into industrial work. Some reports stated that people were being caught on the streets so as to fulfil the labour quotas, and refugees were disproportionately affected.83 Some of the Berlin ministries tried to limit this practice, as these short-term drafts would be damaging to the long-term integration of refugees into the social fabric of the zone. They insisted that refugees should not be employed at any cost, but rather should be given jobs they were qualified to do and which offered them a chance to settle permanently in their new locations and find a new ‘Heimat’.84 As Gustav Gundelach, president of the ZVAS, pointed out, the aim was to distribute refugees ‘in such a way that they can settle, and this requires a close inspection of local circumstances in advance’.85 The refugee problem could not be solved, Rudolf Engel agreed, until the phase of provisional placements could be ended and permanent settlement could be achieved. This would also decide, Engel thought, ‘whether the resettlers will remain as foreign bodies in our country or whether they can be drawn on for active contribution to reconstruction’.86 Neither supporters nor opponents of work drafts made any reference to previous experiences of compulsory labour conscription, nor were there any attempts to differentiate these measures from the National Socialists’ widespread use of forced and slave labour.87 Refugees, among the weakest members of society and not protected by local interests, were frequently disadvantaged in working conditions. As

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the journalist Peter Galliner observed in the Federal Republic in 1949, the expellees were often given the least desirable jobs and were forced to take on occupations other than those they had trained for. Not only did this mean that their skills were wasted, he thought, but they were also ‘unable in some cases to fill a particular job as well as a local man brought up to it’. They were often the first to be laid off since, as Galliner noted, ‘[m]any employers, perhaps understandably, prefer to retain a local man rather than a refugee, other things being equal’.88 Similar observations could be made of the Soviet zone. A survey in autumn 1946 showed that many of the trained metal workers, miners and textile workers among the refugees in the zone – all jobs in particularly high demand – were employed as farmhands. Many others who had trained in valuable occupations worked as unskilled builders and miners, and women as domestic workers.89 In the Soviet zone, too, refugees were among the first to be sacked when unemployment began to rise in late 1947. Altogether it proved virtually impossible to produce realistic plans in this period. The demographic starting conditions, the initial distribution of refugees to rural areas, the failure to register them and give them housing privileges, conflicts between local and central authorities and the priority of Soviet economic demands, all proved detrimental to the plans for full employment and fast integration of refugees in the Soviet zone. By the time the German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949, roughly two-thirds of the refugees were still without work. However, there were signs that some of the job creation measures were beginning to show results. By 1952, the 11,800 refugees working in the Leuna-works made up 47 per cent of the workforce; and in some uranium and coal mines the share of refugees was as high as 80 per cent.90 Many refugees also benefited from the land reform measures of September 1945, although opinion is divided about the significance of this measure.91 By late 1946 a large proportion of the refugees had found work in agriculture (around 44%), whereas only 19.4 per cent were working in trade and industry, and only 2.5 per cent in mining and metal industry.92 Many of them stayed in the rural areas for several years, and as late as January 1948, officials in Brandenburg worried that ‘far more resettlers are employed on farmsteads than the size of agriculture demands’.93 But during this time, both refugees and natives also increasingly began to move to areas where their occupations were most in need and where job conditions and prospects were most promising. In August and September 1946 alone, one memo reported, 1128 textile workers (together with their 1335 family members), 522 chemical workers, 1220 glass workers and 50 coal miners had moved from Mecklenburg to

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various locations in Saxony and Thuringia. Another 5767 glass workers, 250 miners, 2500 textile workers and 1800 other labourers were to follow shortly.94 By December 1946, almost 9000 refugees had been moved from Mecklenburg to industrial jobs in the south of the zone.95

Conclusions Thinking about labour and employment was an important facet of the post-war years. Even though most of the ambitious plans for employment and fast assimilation of the refugees were not implemented until the early 1950s, the subject of labour is a useful lens through which to look at the population movements in the aftermath of war. The material presented here documents a widespread belief in the integrative power of employment. But it also shows that in spite of the many reasons to integrate newcomers through employment, it actually took some years before the majority of the refugees could be turned into an economically advantageous presence. The fact that the initial settlement plans were not oriented towards employment proved to be disastrous. Economic concerns over manpower and resources shaped proposals for how these refugees were to be dealt with, but at the same time also made the refugee problem part of a much more general process of recovery and reconstruction. This material also sheds light on the processes through which society and the state in the Soviet zone and future GDR were being rebuilt after 1945. For some months the labour exchanges were practically the only form of state organisation in operation. Once the regional authorities and central departments in Berlin were formed or re-formed, employment and labour were among the first issues to occupy their attention. In this early period the central authorities had little control over life on the ground, but they began to realise that the influx of refugees offered a potentially useful lever for building a new society. The chaos resulting from the arrival of so many newcomers seemed to them to offer a blank new slate onto which new things could be built. In this process, the accounts, recommendations and complaints by officials and administrators of the newly emerging state authorities offer us useful insights into the refugee problem. They were often the immediate contact points between high-level policy decisions and the grassroots experiences of refugees, and it was partly through them that proposals were implemented, adapted, or changed. Nor were these connected processes of movement and reconstruction over by 1949. Although the population transfers of Germans from

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Eastern Europe were mostly completed by then, internal migrations to new jobs within the GDR were only just beginning. In this context, the story of this chapter highlights the attractiveness (to some officials) of centralised direction to combat chaos and conflicting responsibilities. The problem of putting refugees to work and integrating them seemed to offer a convincing reason for why some central direction in devising economic and political criteria was necessary and unavoidable. The insistence on the need for ‘a plan’ by the officials in Berlin became not just a means of criticising the selfishness displayed by the local authorities, but also an attack on the seeming randomness of Soviet reparations policy, which proceeded at the cost of the economic recovery of the zone and added yet more uncertainty. Thus, this chapter also documents the difficulties of making plans and establishing the authority of the Berlin office over the regions. Central bodies attempted to deal with refugees in the context of a centralised strategy for the entire zone, but local and regional authorities resented any reduction in their freedom to use or send back refugees as they saw fit. Rivalries between different regions and the persistent tensions between political and economic criteria further complicated matters. At all times, the ZVU had to balance conflicting priorities: employing refugees in their own occupations, satisfying Soviet demands for labour in priority fields, and carrying out urgent reconstruction tasks.96 The ZVU urgently tried to impose order in the distribution and allocation of refugees, but in the period discussed here did not manage to come to grips with chaos and local resistance. Before too long, the ZVU itself became a casualty of the state-building process. In 1948 it was substantially reduced in size and became a small department in the new Ministry of the Interior, before being wound up completely in 1949. Since official statistics and the census stopped counting refugees as a separate group in 1948, longer-term developments and results are harder to measure. The new Law on Resettlers (Umsiedlergesetz) of September 1950 allocated around 400 million East marks to provide short-term credits and loans to refugees, as well as other financial assistance.97 Together with the GDR’s formal recognition of the Oder-Neisse border with Poland in July 1950, it aimed to end all speculation about the possibility of their eventual return to their former homes. But the new legislation was in itself proof of the unresolved problems and the ongoing processes of assimilation and integration. It would take decades for tender sprouts of new identity to emerge, ones not based on the past and linked to lost lands.

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Notes 1. Charles P. Kindleberger, Europe’s postwar growth: The Role of Labour Supply (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). Jonathan Power, ‘Europe’s Army of Immigrants’, International Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 3, July 1975. Alan Kramer, The West German Economy, 1945–1955 (Oxford: Berg, 1991). Rita Chin, The Guest Worker Question in Postwar Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labour in Germany, 1880–1980: seasonal workers, forced laborers, guest workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990). Anthony Sutcliffe, An Economic and Social History of Western Europe since 1945 (London: Longman, 1996). Wolfgang Zank, Wirtschaft und Arbeit in Ostdeutschland, 1945–1949: Probleme des Wiederaufbaus in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands (München: Oldenbourg, 1987). 2. On expellees in the Soviet zone/GDR, see especially: Dierk Hoffmann, ‘Vertriebenenintegration durch Arbeitsmarktlenkung? Zur Beschäftigungspolitik der SBZ/DDR (1945–1950)’, in: Dierk Hoffmann and Michael Schwartz (eds.), Geglückte Integration? Spezifika und Vergleichbarkeiten in der SBZ/DDR (München: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 173–93. Michael Schwartz, Vertriebene und ‘Umsiedlerpolitik’: Integrationskonflikte in den deutschen Nachkriegs-Gesellschaften und die Assimilationsstrategien in der DBZ/DDR 1945 bis 1961 (München: Oldenbourg, 2004). Manfred Jahn, ‘Zur sächsischen Spezifik der Aufnahme von vertriebene Deutschen 1945 bis 1949: das Fallbeispiel Uranbergbau’, in: Dierk Hoffmann and Michael Schwarz, eds, Geglückte Integration? (München: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 215–32. Manfred Wille, ‘Die Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen ihres Wirkens (1945–1948)’, in: Manfred Wille, Johannes Hoffmann and Wolfgang Meinicke, eds, Sie hatten alles verloren: Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands (Wiesbaden, 1993), pp. 27–54. Steffi Kaltenborn, ‘Herausbildung und Entwicklung der Umsiedlergenossenschaften in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, dargestellt am Beispiel der Ansiedlung der Gablonzer Industrie im Kreis Gotha’, in: Manfred Wille, Johannes Hoffmann and Wolfgang Meinicke (eds), Sie hatten alles verloren: Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993). Philip Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen, 1945–1956 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). Ian Connor, Refugees and Expellees in Post-War Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Philip Ther, ‘Expellee Policy in the Soviet-Occupied Zone and the GDR: 1945–1953’, in: David Rock and Stefan Wolff (eds), Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic (Oxford: Berghahn, 2002), pp. 56–76. Eva Kolinsky, ‘Meanings of Migration in East Germany and the West German Model’, in: Mike Dennis and Eva Kolinsky (eds), United and Divided: Germany since 1990 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), pp. 145–75. 3. See Michael Schwartz, Vertriebene und ‘Umsiedlerpolitik’, p. 51, and compare with Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. 4. ‘Plan der Umsiedlung der aus Österreich, der Tschechoslowakei, Ungarn und Polen ausgewiesenen deutschen Bevölkerung nach den vier Besatzungszonen Deutschlands’, 21 November 1945, in: Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch), DO2/101, ‘Ein Jahr Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. In

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

total two million Germans from Poland and 750,000 Germans from the Czech and Slovak regions were to be settled in the Soviet zone. Dierk Hoffmann argues that the Soviet authorities had no idea about the extent and speed of the expulsions, which is why they only began to build reception camps in autumn 1945. See Hoffmann, ‘Vertriebenenintegration durch Arbeitsmarktlenkung?’, in: Hoffmann and Schwartz (eds), Geglückte Integration?, p. 175. Another explanation is that the expulsions simply did not feature very highly on their agenda until the war was over and the majority of their own citizens had returned to the USSR. Peter Galliner, ‘Germany’s Refugees’, Statesman and Nation, Vol. 38, No. 965, 3 September 1949, pp. 240–1. Galliner was born in Berlin in 1920, emigrated to London during the war, and became a journalist and Director of the International Press Institute. He died in 2006. ibid., p. 241. The labour exchanges in the Soviet zone later estimated that only 22.4 per cent of the registered expellees in the zone came from agricultural backgrounds, see DO2/101, Georg Chwalczyk in: ‘Ein Jahr deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. DO2/101, ‘Einige Zahlen’ [28 September 1946]. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll einer überprovinziellen Besprechung über die Frage der Ausgewiesenen u.Heimkehrer’ [3 September1945]. For example, BArch, D02/109, Report from Dr.H/w, 5 September 1945. See also Hoffmann in: Hoffmann and Schwartz (eds), Geglückte Integration?, p. 175. BArch, DO2/101, Rudolf Engel in: ‘Ein Jahr Zentralverwaltung für Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll über die Sitzung der Hauptverwaltung für Arbeit und soziale Fürsorge in der sowjetischen Okkupationszone’, 4 September 1945. BArch, DQ2/2007, Abt.II, 5 November 1945. Central Administrations for transport, communication, fuel, trade and supply, industry, agriculture, finances, work and social security, health, education and justice were established in the summer of 1945. Later came authorities for resettlers, statistics, sequestration, internal affairs, and export. See Martin Broszat and Hermann Weber, eds, SBZ Handbuch (München: Oldenbourg, 1993). BArch, DO2/3, ‘Personaletat der Zentralverwaltung deutsche Umsiedler’ [no date]. Most of those who were not were typists, drivers and mechanics. BArch, DO2/3, ‘Personaletat, Stand: 31 December 1946’. BArch, DO2/101, Michael Tschesno in: ‘Ein Jahr Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. Tschesno was born in Vilnius on 17 February 1902 and a member of the KPD, then SED. See DO2/3, ‘Personaletat der Zentralverwaltung deutsche Umsiedler’ [no date]. Later he became a filmmaker and a cultural functionary. On the question of the refugees’ citizenship, see Philip Ther in: David Rock and Stefan Wolf, eds, Coming Home to Germany?, 2002. Wolfgang Zank, Wirtschaft und Arbeit in Ostdeutschland, 1987. Also see DO2/49, ‘betr. Einbürgerung der Umsiedler’, 20 April 1946. BArch, D02/101, Georg Chwalczyk in: ‘Ein Jahr deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. Chwalczyk was born on 28 January

206

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Refugees and Labour in the Soviet Zone of Germany 1907 in Berlin and a member of the KPD. See DO2/3, ‘Personaletat’ [no date]. Wolfgang Zank, Arbeit und Wirtschaft in Ostdeutschland, pp.108ff. BArch, DO2/58, report by Engel, 1947. Rudolf Engel, born in September 1903 in Berlin, was a member of the KPD. He worked for the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH) before the war. See ‘Personaletat der Zentralverwaltung deutsche Umsiedler’ [no date]. Later he became Director of the Akademie der Künste. BArch, DO2/58, ZVI, ‘Arbeitseinsatz – Strukturwandel der Industrie’, 2 May 1946. BArch, DO2/58, Engel to SMAD, 9 September 1946. BArch, DO2/58, Landesregierung Mecklenburg, ‘Rundschreiben Nr.181/47’, 15 November 1947. DO2/58, Elisabeth Lüdy to Tschesno, ‘Vorschläge für eine wirtschaftliche Betreuung der Flüchtlinge in den Wintermonaten’, 28 October 1945. BArch, DO2/58, Müller, ‘Denkschrift’, 26 October 1945. DO2/52, ‘Umsiedlung der Gablonzer Industrie nach Thüringen’, 12 October 1945. BArch, DO2/58, Johann Marschner, ‘Über Heimat und Heimindustrie’, 25 February 1947. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’, 4 September 1945. BArch, DO2/58, Elisabeth Lüdy to Tschesno, ‘Vorschläge für eine wirtschaftliche Betreuung der Flüchtlinge in den Wintermonaten’, 28 October 1945. BArch, DO2/58, Deutsche Verwaltung für Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge (President Brack), Zentalverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler (President Engel), 7 November 1946. Bernard Wassermann, Barbarism and Civilisation: A History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 419. Also for example, BArch, DQ2/2007, Abt.II, 5 November 1945. BArch, DQ2/2007, ‘Niederschrift über die Konferenz am 5.9.1946 betr. Umsiedlerfragen’, 5 September 1946. BArch, DO2/109, Dr Eberlein, ‘Bericht erstattet über das Flüchtlingswesen in der Provinz Brandenburg’, 3 September 1945. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September 1945]. Geschke was born in 1882 and died in 1957. BArch, DO2/101, Georg Chwalczyk in: ‘Ein Jahr Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. For example, see Damian van Melis in: Hoffmann and Schwartz, 1999, p. 165. BArch, DO2/101, Zentralfinanzverwaltung to ZVAS, 12 March 1947. BArch, DO2/101, Tschesno, ‘Mit Herz und Kopf’, 28 September 1946. BArch, DO2/10, ‘Referat Arbeitseinsatz’, 4 November 1946. DO2/1/10, ‘Regierungsbeschluss vom 15.2.1946’ [15 February 1946]. BArch, DO2/52, ‘Land Sachsen – Stichworte über die Besprechung vom 5.10.1945’ [5 October 1945]. For example BArch, DO2/10, ‘Planungsaufgaben für die Wintermonate’, 15 December 1945. DO2/10, ‘Arbeitsplan für Januar 1946’, 5 January 1946. DO2/10, Benda to Engel, ‘Arbeitsplan für Februar 1946’, 4 February 1946. DO2/10, ‘Arbeitsplan für März 1946’, 25 February 1946.

Jessica Reinisch 207 40. For example, BArch, DO2/52, ‘Information zur Frage der Umsiedlung von deutschen Sozialdemokraten aus der Tschechoslowakei in die russische Zone’, 11 January 1946. 41. They included Walther Breyer, Michael Tschesno, Wilhelm Wawrzinek, Eleonore Schneider, Anton Jadasch, Erich Weinert, Edgar Bendl, Fritz Lux, Kurt Kühn, Karl Jagodzinski and Anton Fischbach. See DO2/3, ‘Personaletat’ [no date]. 42. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September1945]. 43. ibid. 44. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’, 4 September 1945. 45. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September 1945]. 46. See Zank (op.cit.), p. 151, Hoffmann (op.cit.), p. 183. 47. Hoffmann (op.cit.), p. 179. 48. Elizabeth Wiskemann, Germany’s Eastern Neighbours: Problems Relating to the Oder-Neisse Line and the Czech Frontier Regions (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 145/6). 49. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September 1945]. 50. BArch, DO2/101, ‘Einige Zahlen’ [28 September 1946]. 51. BArch, DO2/58, ‘Auszug aus dem Referat über Arbeitseinsatz von Regierungsrat Hoppe auf der Sontagstagung der Landeskommission für Neubürger in Weimar’, 9 October 1946. 52. BArch, DO2/101, Michael Tschesno in ‘Ein Jahr Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler’, 28 September 1946. 53. BArch, DO2/58, ‘Auszug aus dem Referat über Arbeitseinsatz von Regierungsrat Hoppe auf der Sondertagung der Landeskommission für Neubürger in Weimar’, 9 October 1946. Chwalczyk, ‘Eingliederung der Umsiedler in den Produktionsprozess’ [October 1946]. 54. BArch, DO2/58, ‘Auszug aus dem Referat über Arbeitseinsatz von Regierungsrat Hoppe’, 9 October 1946. 55. BArch, DO2/58, Chwalczyk, ‘Eingliederung in den Produktionsprozess’ [October 1946]. 56. Wiskemann (op.cit.), pp. 145/6. 57. BArch, DO2/101, ‘Einige Zahlen’ [28 September 1946]. 58. BArch, DO2/58, Chwalczyk to Engel et al., ‘Zusammenarbeit mit der Zentralverwaltung für Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge’, 5 December 1945. 59. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Richtlinien für Sondermassnahmen zur zentralen Lösung der durch den Strom der Ausgewiesenen und Heimkehrer entstandenen Probleme’, ZVAS, 6 September 1945. Also see ‘Personalbogen für Ausgewiesene und Heimkehrer’ and ‘Sonderfragen zur zentralen Erfassung und Sesshaftmachung der Flüchlinge’. 60. BArch, DQ2/2007, Abteilung für Arbeitskraft bei SMAD to Oberstleutnant Ugjumov, Abt.für Zivilangelegenheiten bei KDV-SMAD, 12 December 1946. 61. BArch, DO2/58, Chwalczyk, ‘Eingliederung der Umsiedler in den Produktionsprozess’ [October 1946]. 62. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September 1945]. 63. See BArch, DQ2/2007, Abt.II, 5 November 1945. It is not clear how passport registration would have caught those thousands who had, deliberately or not, fallen through the cracks. 64. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’, 4 September 1945.

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65. BArch, DO2/58, ZVAS & ZVU to Landes- und Provinzialämter für Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, Landesämter für Umsiedler, 7 November 1946. 66. BArch, DO2/58, Gundelach to ZVU, ‘Arbeitseinsatz für Umsiedler’, 3 April 1946. Gundelach was born in 1888 in Kiel and died in 1962. 67. BArch, DO2/59, Bezirksverwaltung Eberswalde to ZVU, 15 November 1945. 68. On uranium mining, see Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 235–48. 69. BArch, DO2/9, Präsident des Landes ThüringenLandeskommission für Neubürger, an die Herren Oberbürgermeister, Herren Landräte, 18 May 1946. 70. BArch, DO2/52, Benda to Engel et al., ‘Reisebericht über Arbeitsergebnisse in Schönebeck (Prov. Sachsen), Calbe/Sa., Halle, Weimar, Sondershausen, Eisenach’, 2 February 1946. Benda appears to have been sacked from the Central Administration in June 1946, see DO2/3, ‘Entlassenes Personal der Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler’, 28 December 1946. 71. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’, 4 September 1945. Later it was the cheapest of the central administrations, see DO2/3, ‘Anlage Nr.1’ [5 March 1946]. 72. For example, BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September 1945]. 73. Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany, pp. 26–7. 74. For example, see BArch, DO2/59, ZVU to Dr.Steinhoff (Provinz Mark Brandenburg), 12 December 1946. 75. BArch, DO2/58, ZVAS to Rudolf Engel, ‘Arbeitseinsatz für Umsiedler’, 3 April 1946. 76. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’ [3 September 1945]. 77. BArch, DO2/10, ZVU to Kommandantur-Dienstverwaltung SMAD, UmsiedlerAbteilung, 4 December 1945. 78. Especially Soviet order No. 9 (August 1945), and Soviet order No. 153 (October 1945). 79. BArch, DO2/58, ZVI to ZVU, ‘Arbeitseinsatz – Strukturwandel der Industrie’, 2 May 1946. 80. BArch, DO2/58, Chwalczyk, ‘Eingliederung der Umsiedler in den Produktinsprozess’ [October 1946]. 81. BArch, DO2/109, ‘Protokoll’, 4 September 1945. 82. Soviet Order No. 9 (August 1945) specified that the priority branches included production of liquid and solid fuel, synthesis of petrol, production of artificial fertiliser and nitrogen, electricity generating plants and production of spare parts for operating machinery. In October 1945 this order was superseded by Order No. 153, which stated that workers were particularly to be sent to enterprises which worked towards the delivery of reparation goods, the fuel industry, power plants, agriculture, rail transport, repair and restoration of housing. 83. See Zank (op.cit.), pp. 104–8. 84. BArch, DQ2/2007, ZVAS & ZVU, ‘Entwurf – Richtlinien für die Zusammenarbeit’, 17 September 1946. 85. BArch, DO2/58, Gundelach to ZVU, ‘Arbeitseinsatz für Umsiedler’, 3 April 1946. 86. BArch, DO2/59, Engel to Dr Steinhoff (Präsident der Provinz Mark Brandenburg), 12 December 1946. 87. Similarly, Ulrich Herbert and Karin Huhn argue that in the FRG the category of ‘Displaced Person’ helped to create ‘the fiction that there was no relevant

Jessica Reinisch 209

88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94.

95. 96. 97.

precedent for the new wave of foreign workers’, and that ‘there was no recognition whatsoever in West Germany that the deployment of foreign slave labourers under the Third Reich was among the specific crimes perpetrated by the National Socialists’, see Herbert and Huhn, ‘Guest workers and policy on guest workers in the Federal Republic from the beginning of recruitment in 1955 until its halt in 1973’, in: Hanna Schissler (ed.), The Miracle Years: a Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Galliner, p. 241. BArch, DO2/58, Chwalczyk, ‘Eingliederung der Umsiedler in den Produktionsprozess’ [October 1946]. Hoffmann in: Hoffmann and Michael Schwartz (op.cit.), pp. 183, 178. Zank quotes official registration data, which maintains that 88,000 refugees received new farm placements, and together with their families made up almost 10 per cent of the refugees in the zone. Bauernkämper argues that land reform only played a marginal role in the employment and integration of refugees. BArch, DO2/58, ‘Gliederung der in Arbeit stehenden Umsiedler nach wichtigsten Berufsgruppen’, 18 December 1946. BArch, DO2/59, Landesregierung Mark Brandenburg to Central Administration for Resettlers, 12 January 1948. BArch, DQ2/2007, Deutsche Verwaltung für Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, ‘Aktennotiz – betrifft berufsmässige Umweisung von Umsiedlern’, 8 October 1946. BArch, DO2/58, ‘Von Mecklenburg durchgeführte Facharbeitertransporte nach Provinz Sachsen, Land Sachsen und Thüringen’, 18 December 1946. The conflicting priorities are explained in, for example, BArch, DQ2/2007, Kreil to Redaktion ‘Der freie Bauer’, 18 November 1946. Michael Schwartz, ‘“Ablenkungsmanöver der Reaktion”: der verhinderte Lastenausgleich in der SBZ/DDR’, Deutschland-Archiv, 1999, p. 3.

10 From Displaced Persons to Labourers: Allied Employment Policies in Post-War West Germany Silvia Salvatici

From ‘slaves of the Nazi regime’ to ‘labourers suitable for democracies’ Previous studies have shown how the Anglo-American management of displaced persons (DPs) in West Germany was a basic platform in the construction of the new ‘regime for refugees’ that took place after the Second World War.1 Building upon this body of research, I shall in the following pages attempt a first analysis of the documents produced by the British Element of the Control Commission on Germany (CCG-Be), the Office of the Military Government of the United States for Germany (OMGUS), the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in order to investigate the development of labour policies towards DPs. Their overall direction may be summed up as the aim to turn the ‘slaves of the Nazi regime’ freed by the Allies, into ‘labourers suitable for democracies’ who later on could be resettled in Western countries. In spring 1945 the Allies took many pictures among the ‘former slave labourers’, who were described as the core of displacement, although they were by all accounts not the only component of it.2 The notion that the forced labourers of yesterday were one and the same as the DPs of today came into being towards the end of the process of German liberation. It owed a great deal on the one hand to the Allies’ still imperfect knowledge with regard to the complex composition of the population of the various camps. On the other hand, the emphasis given to the German deportation of manpower from Eastern countries as the cause of displacement contributed to the celebration of the Anglo-American triumph over Nazi tyranny, and to legitimising the Allied role in the protection of Hitler’s victims. The experience of ‘long years of enforced 210

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labour’ was also considered by some commentators to lie at the root of the difficulties encountered in looking after the inhabitants of the assembly centres, difficulties worsened by DP ‘apathy and demoralization caused by long waiting periods in camps’.3 However, the legacy of Nazi exploitation and the negative effects of camp life seem to be far removed from the factors cited in the speech given by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry M. Sage in July 1947, which was aimed at encouraging the US to agree to resettle European DPs. Lieutenant Colonel Sage – from the US Headquarters of the European Command (EUCOM) in Frankfurt – described ‘the average DP’ as ‘a person who long[ed] to participate in political and religious freedom […] and ha[d] skills, ingenuity, and strength which he want[ed] to put to use […] in a friendly country where [he could] strike new roots.’4 The main tool for the accomplishment of this change was DPs’ moral rehabilitation, achievable through the Allies’ labour policies. As I shall try to point out, those policies – which were not without their share of ambiguities and contradictions – came to include measures of direct and indirect compulsion. Moreover, they gave rise to work conditions, which on the one hand introduced and/or enforced inequalities in displacement status on the basis of gender and national affiliation; on the other they created a precedent for the conditions under which DPs were ‘integrated’ into Western societies.

DPs’ work: Between right and obligation The issue of employment was introduced in the Guide to the Care of the Displaced Persons in Germany, circulated by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in May 1945 and effective for subsequent years. The introduction stated that the Guide was aimed at ‘bring[ing] together in one document all of the relevant policies and material which [were] of primary interest to the Assembly Centres’ Directors and their staff’.5 The section devoted to SHAEF guidelines for employment provided for different types of DP labour, inside and outside the camps, at the service of the military forces, but also in the German economy. Engagement in any ‘paid employment while waiting repatriation’ was first of all identified as a right to which all the United Nations DPs were entitled, and which helped validate their difference in status from the Germans. According to the Guide, ‘United Nations DPs [were] given preference over Germans in employment by Military Forces’ (p. 47). The role played by work in emphasising the difference in status between DPs and other sectors of the population was not only stated by the military authorities, it was also claimed by the displaced themselves,

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as a letter from Eino Loorits to General Lucius D. Clay shows. In May 1948, Loorits lost his job as mimeograph operator for the US base in Erlangen (Bavaria), following a significant reduction of personnel by the Army. Several months later he appealed – as did many other disgruntled DPs – to General Clay and asked the Military Governor to put him back to work because in his opinion his dismissal was unfair. ‘I know the order that Displaced Persons are protected and helped’, wrote Eino Loorits in order to argue his position, ‘I know the orders that first must be discharged the Germans from the employment and second the nationals who belong to the United Nations. In our section happened so that I as a Displaced Persons was discharged from my employment, work, job and all other Germans in our section still continued their work [sic]’.6 The denunciation of better living conditions among Germans was a sort of leitmotif in DP complaints about the treatment they received; in this case it highlights their awareness that their right to have work was officially asserted by the Allies. In the Guide to the Care of the Displaced Persons in Germany, employment was identified as a right but also as a duty which the displaced had to fulfil according to the needs of the military occupation. The SHAEF guidelines stated that any DP engaged in ‘essential work’ could be compelled ‘to remain at [his] post until [he] receive[d] further orders from the Military Government’.7 Although compulsion to work was depicted as the exception to the rule, due to the ‘essential’ nature of certain activities, this instruction gave a double meaning to the employment of DPs.8 On one side labour was a right to which victims of the Nazis were entitled, on the other hand it was a duty that they must fulfil in order to cooperate with the Allies in confronting the post-war emergency. This twin-aspected concept of employment was at the centre of the policies implemented by the Allies, although economic and ethical arguments meant that the concept of duty soon came to outweigh the other side of the argument.

Economic advantages and moral rehabilitation From the very inception of the assembly centres, the military forces and UNRRA resorted to the recruitment of DPs for various tasks. In this first phase the engagement of drivers, guards and interpreters selected from amongst the DPs was considered both the first step towards their participation in the management of the camps and the just fulfilment of their right to obtain paid employment while waiting repatriation. This was the reason why the recruitment of Germans – although frequently practised – was perceived as a sort of exception, more or less justifiable, to

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the SHAEF guidelines.9 In autumn 1945, however, there was a significant change of direction. The military authorities and UNRRA started a set of programmes aimed at intensifying and systematising DPs’ work, principally because repatriation had been suspended and the entire population of the camps would have to remain in Germany for the winter.10 The advantages of DP labour were seen mainly as economic, particularly by the British, who in the immediate aftermath of the war invested widely in the reconstruction of local industry and resorted earlier and more extensively to the employment of DPs in the German economy.11 From the beginning there was a general agreement on the potential role to be played by DP labour in lightening the total cost of the military occupation, which was depicted at the same time as a burden on British and American taxpayers and as a service for DPs. It came to be emphasised that DPs were costly for the western countries, and as ‘they [had] been offered every opportunity for repatriation […] it would [have] appear[ed] that such persons would [have] welcom[ed] any proper means to assist the Occupational Forces in every way possible’.12 In this perspective the meaning assigned to DP work went beyond financial advantage. It implied also the DPs’ acknowledgment of their position as beneficiaries, which was complementary to the role of rescuers played by the Allies, and acquired connotations of moral obligation that the displaced had to settle for within this asymmetrical relationship based on the pairing of dependence and gratitude. The tensions engendered by the Allies’ demand for reimbursement for the care and maintenance of the camps’ inmates offer us a good example of the role played by work in enacting dependence and gratitude. In June 1948 – to coincide with the deflationary measures imposed by the monetary reform – the American Military Government decided to subtract from DP salaries the expenses incurred for their care and maintenance. The OMGUS Finance Division calculated the average amount at 70 Deutschemarks (the new currency had just replaced the Reichmark), which was to be deducted from every wage, regardless of its amount. This solution – already adopted by the British Military Government – reduced by one-third the average income of a camp inhabitant and gave rise to many complaints.13 Between September and October 1948, the military authorities received so many letters of such bitterness against the ‘70 Mark law’ that they charged the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which had replaced UNRRA in July 1947, with a public campaign aimed at explaining the reasons for their decision.14 Although the protests were provoked by the deduction of care and maintenance expenses, they actually related more to DPs’ general working

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conditions and even to the management of the assembly centres. A letter sent from the camp of Geislingen to EUCOM Headquarters, for example, was very long and detailed: it outlined the grounds for the dispute and reminded the military authorities of the special status of DPs which – in the opinion of the writers – seemed to have been forgotten.15 The document was signed by the President of the camp committee, but he claimed to be speaking for the whole of the Estonian community that had appointed him. According to him, the Estonian community of Geislingen considered the sum of 70 Marks too high for the care and maintenance received by DPs: food was poor and assembly centre inhabitants had to repair their barracks themselves. Moreover the whole pay system was considered chaotic – some employees received only extra rations and amenities, others were paid in cash – and unbalanced, since there were substantial differences between different persons’ wages, without any perceptible rationale. According to the authors of the letter, not only was the 70 Mark deduction exorbitant, it lacked legitimacy. DPs were the victims of the Nazis: had they not already paid, with their past suffering, for the care they received in the aftermath of the war? This was the question implied in the denunciation – clearly set out in the document addressed to EUCOM Headquarters – of the better living conditions enjoyed by Germans. Later in the document, the Geislingen DPs proclaimed themselves ‘willing to work’: they did not reject the positive model of the DP-labourer promoted by the Allies and the international organisations. However, their subscription to this model gave them one more reason to ask for the recognition of both their professional skills and their achievements in the self-management of the camps. In the conclusion to their appeal, the Estonian DPs in Geislingen suggested to the army that IRO employees be reduced in number and replaced with DPs qualified for the same duties. The reply to this appeal that EUCOM commissioned from the IRO did not leave space for negotiation. First of all it pointed out that the only alternative to the ‘70 Mark law’ would have been the discharge of some DP personnel, which would have negatively affected the assembly centres’ administration and their inhabitants’ quality of life. Moreover it stated that the 70 Marks covered only a percentage of the expenses sustained for DPs’ maintenance, and – most importantly – it underlined that aid and assistance to DPs [was] not interpreted as recompense for past wrongs done them by German people, but as a method of maintaining them until they [might find] new homes through resettlement. If they had been re-established to such an extent that they

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[could] work and pay for the aid given them, it [was] only normal that they shoulder[ed] this responsibility’. The officer who wrote under the mandate of the military authorities eventually recalled the article of the IRO constitution, according to which ‘[those] who do not [make] a reasonable effort to pay for their board and keep [might be] dismissed from care and maintenance. The moral dimension of working was more generally a basic component of the Allies’ political approach to displacement. Employment was constantly presented as the best remedy against apathy and idleness, deemed to be both typical illnesses and vicious tendencies of uprooted people.16 The functions of the labour programmes were thus spiritual treatment and moral rehabilitation in order to prevent the degeneration of idleness into criminality – whose possible intensification among DPs troubled the military authorities – and the reshaping of people prone to a parasitical life into self-sustaining individuals. Also, restoring ‘selfrespect and social dignity’ to DPs was considered an essential requirement for the ‘final solution of the problem’, since from an early stage of the occupation the Allies realised that a substantial group of DPs would not be repatriated. Their resettlement in a third country required the rebuilding of ‘self-respect and social dignity’ along with the acquisition of professional skills provided by both vocational training and the labour programmes. Vocational training was implemented with effect from autumn 1945 and at the outset its main objective was to ‘keep the people busy’; however it afterwards acquired the role of providing DPs with specific abilities, helpful for both their engagement in camp activities and their future resettlement.17 The rehabilitation process carried out through full employment was considered particularly valuable, since DPs were not only able to learn a profession, ‘more than that, they learned the working methods of the Western countries: they acquired the will to work and the knowledge to prosper’.18 According to their promoters, labour programmes had the facility to provide their beneficiaries with the ethical and professional qualities identified by Western societies. The Allies and international organisations initially considered these qualities helpful for the governance of the assembly centres; they were then deemed necessary for emigration abroad. Westwards migration – which remained the only solution for displacement after repatriation ceased to be an option – was considered affordable for the camp inhabitants only if they had already ceased to be DPs – a label which signified people affected by apathy, prone to parasitism and usually unskilled – and had become women

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and men provided with competences and morality that ‘welcoming countries’ recognised as essential for integration. From this perspective, the Director of the UNRRA Employment Division at the conclusion of his mandate declared that the history of the Division he had administered ‘was the history of men and women who [were] anxious to reestablish themselves as normal human beings. They accepted work and eagerly took vocational training courses in the hope that through the re-establishment of work habits and new skills, they could again face the world as free human beings’.19 The ‘former slaves of Nazism’, also weakened ‘by long waiting periods in camps’, were supposed as a result of their employment to follow an ideal trajectory that would transform them into labourers suitable for Western democracies. The results of this transformation seem to be those described in the letter of recommendation which the Director of the Reinhardt Kaserne Assembly Centre wrote in October 1947 for Natalia Danilenko, a Polish refugee who for two years had loyally served the IRO in the Food Department of the camp. Valerie Paling did not mention any professional skills acquired by this woman, stressing instead the human qualities she had demonstrated that made her a valuable worker, an excellent DP and a desirable citizen. ‘She enjoyed the full confidence of the camp inhabitants and the UNRRA-IRO Officers’ wrote the Director. ‘We are grateful to her for her faithful service. We feel sure that wherever she finds herself she will always make a useful, conscientious contribution to society.’20 The benefits assigned to labour activities were the grounds on which the Allies justified the policies aimed at driving the population of the camps towards applying for the recruitment schemes proposed to them. By the autumn of 1945, the British were already convinced that DP recruitment on a voluntary basis had largely failed, particularly for activities outside the camps, since the DPs considered the salaries inadequate, did not wish to be separated from their families, and were not willing to work for the reconstruction of Germany, even in the service of the military government.21 A few months later, the Americans drew similar conclusions, and in both cases the military authorities decided to promote their labour schemes through different means.22

From inducement to compulsion The first measures aimed at reducing the level of unemployment among DPs introduced a number of incentives which guaranteed better living conditions. In many cases these were part of the single labour

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programmes proposed for the displaced outside the camps; for example the North German Timber Control Scheme provided applicants with more coal in winter, better clothing and extra ‘amenities’ such as razor blades, chocolate and cigarettes (the latter were in particular demand, since they were used for daily commercial transactions inside and outside the camps).23 The programme was promoted by the British, but the Americans agreed to let them recruit DPs in the US Zone as well, on condition that ‘food, clothing, housing and amenities [were] offered on a scale not lower than that provided in the US zone’.24 However, it was difficult to transform the ‘inducements’ offered on paper into concrete goods to be distributed at the end of the week. Military officers deplored the lack of supplies as a serious obstacle to guaranteeing the compensation stated in the labour schemes. At the same time they acknowledged that DPs were also aware that promised ‘amenities’ did not necessarily correspond to those actually distributed, and were therefore not attracted by ‘fake inducements’. The use of rationing as a tool to push DPs towards full employment was not only a matter of amenities, but also of basic needs: increased accommodation space and food were promised to labourers.25 In both zones between spring and summer 1946, calories assigned to refugees employed by the Army or UNRRA were raised in comparison with the standard distribution. Of course the problem still remained of matching the calories officially guaranteed and those actually furnished by the kitchens of assembly centres. However, people who were entitled to increases in rationing had more chances of fulfilling their nourishment needs. This was particularly true in the British zone, where ordinary rationing was gradually reduced; changes in food distribution aimed not just at granting more calories to those people who needed them for working, but also at making work necessary in order to meet the daily individual consumption.26 According to IRO officers this strategy was not successful, since DPs were able to avoid it. In July 1947 – when the IRO replaced UNRRA – they exposed severe irregularities in the assignment of increased food rations, which were also obtained by many unemployed DPs. Especially in the most crowded assembly centres it was very difficult to carry out proper controls, so that it sufficed to be in the position of ‘knowing the right people and getting on the rationing list as workers’.27 At the end of 1946 the evaluation of the employment programmes appeared quite ambiguous. On one side the statistical surveys were considered satisfactory against the objective of massive recruitment of DPs. In the British zone 54 per cent of those employable were employed;

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moreover the data were seen as more encouraging when broken down by gender: in Hanover Region 68 per cent of ‘able bodied males’ were employed, while among women only 30 per cent of those employable had a job.28 The lower female rate of employment was accepted as the ‘natural’ consequence of women’s ‘family ties’, while the fact that ‘in general the most efficient and best types of DPs’ – obviously the writer had the males in mind – ‘[were] already in employment’ was welcomed.29 In the American zone the overall number of DPs at work was around 50 per cent of those employable, and again the rate was much higher among men: the results were appraised as positive.30 Why, then, did a sense of dissatisfaction still remain among the authorities dealing with the ‘DP problem’? They seemed to be mainly troubled by the persistence of ‘enclaves’ which resisted recruitment, thanks to its voluntary basis. Incidents such as the one that occurred near Munich were considered as examples which justified the military authorities’ concerns. According to the report submitted by the Employment Officer to the Director of the Assembly Centre SS Kaserne, the camp’s inhabitants reacted very badly to a new system of food rationing aimed at promoting voluntary enrolment for labour programmes. They did not just protest verbally: only three out of the 120 men selected for employment in local factories run by the US Army showed up at the meeting point on the appointed morning.31 This and similar stories strengthened the common belief that ‘no DP shows the slightest inclination to work whatever the inducement offered’, and reinforced Allied apprehension about full refugee employment.32 ‘Enclaves’ of DPs ‘unwilling to work’ resulted in a burden on the budget of the military governments, and invalidated the rehabilitative aim of the labour programmes: the elimination of displacement as a moral condition which hindered the reconstruction of social order in post-war Europe would have been at risk.33 From this perspective, the removal of a voluntary basis for work appeared to be the way to achieve the expected aims. Among the British the solution of compulsory work was intensively discussed between the Foreign Office and the different branches of the Control Commission; the debate criticised the disappointing results of the recruitment projects for the German economy and stressed the negative consequences, in terms of moral corruption, of DP abstention from work. The resolution in favour of compulsory employment encountered little opposition and was approved in January 1947. According to the new policy, DPs ‘[might] be compulsorily directed to reasonable employment’, which meant ‘work within the physical capacity of the individual and selected with due regard to his or her educational

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status’. Those ‘who refuse[d] to accept reasonable offers [would have been] liable to prosecution’, although they ‘[wouldn’t have been] subjected either to withdrawal of basic rations or loss of DPs status’.34 Also Jews could not refuse a job which was considered adequate for them; the only derogation to the general rule related to the type of employment that could be offered to Jewish DPs. The instruction on compulsory work stated that ‘such persons [would] only [have been] required to take up employment which is available within daily travelling distance of the Camps’.35 Military government regulations did not take into account the role played by forced labour in the project implemented by Nazis and their allies, which was aimed at destroying the Jewish population. Restrictions with respect to the new provisions on DP employment were intended merely as means to implementing the policy – eventually enacted also by the British – of letting Jews live in separate assembly centres.36 UNRRA representatives firmly opposed Britain’s new policy. Mandating DP employment was not rejected in itself, given the rehabilitative role assigned to labour; however, according to the Memorandum of the Central Committee, the compulsory programme failed to provide appropriate limitations and safeguards.37 The tensions about compulsory work offer us one example of the differences between military and UNRRA approaches, which often clashed in the management of the camps. In this case, the tensions did not turn into negotiation. UNRRA stated its disapproval but felt it ‘must continue [its] operations under the agreement’ with the British Control Commission.38 The possible introduction of compulsory work – based on reductions in rations and other losses of privileges – was discussed also in the American zone, particularly between the Headquarters of the European Command (EUCOM) and the OMGUS DPs branch. Hesitation in accepting the policy ‘no work – no eat’ was first of all rooted in the fear of being criticised by public opinion, because of the similarities between compulsory work and Nazi forced labour. However, the advantages of a policy aimed at full employment were appreciated; it was hoped that the development of new factories supported by this compulsory recruitment would result in ‘a rebuilding of morale, ambition and self-respect among the self-supporting displaced persons with an ultimate reduction in displaced persons incidents and disorders’ and in ‘an ultimate reduction in expenditures for displaced persons from U.S. appropriate funds’.39 The ordinance for compulsory work was never issued. However, the debate over it had created the preconditions for a further impulse to full employment, which was eventually brought to bear on the IRO. Although formally IRO and American policy did not make work

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compulsory, DPs seemed to perceive it as if it did. In December 1947 a group of Lithuanians who described themselves as ‘mothers having little children’ protested harshly against the IRO Executive Officer of their camp, who in ‘strange and offended words [said] that [they] must go to work’. The women explained that the suggested work was not compatible with the care of children and concluded: ‘In war time, when we were forced by the Germans for forced labour, the mothers having the children till 3 years old were freed from any work. Therefore we kindly ask [IRO] to defend the rights of mothers having little children from these senseless orders’.40 Through the comparison with the ‘mothers having little children’ in the time of the Nazis, they responded in kind to the offensive remarks that had been aimed at them: they had been deemed idle women instead of thoughtful mothers, and in their letter they disparaged as persecutors those people who were presenting themselves as the rescuers of DPs. Furthermore, the Lithuanian DPs’ appeal highlighted the particular effects that Allied labour policies had on the female population of the camps.

National and gender divides Employment was rehabilitative for everybody, but not everybody was suitable for every job: national and gender divides played a substantial role in defining who the appropriate workers for different jobs were. DPs were in general considered second-class manpower, difficult to administer and invalidated by the recurrent presence of the so-called shy workers (that is, habitual absentees).41 However, the expectations regarding ability to work, cleverness and morality differed between the various nationalities, some of whom were preferred to others. Balts (usually considered as only one nationality) appear as the most esteemed group. The recurrent preference for the Baltic DPs was principally due to their reputation as skilled employees but also because of their discipline and willingness to work. Only Balts were requested for the Timber Scheme implemented by the British mentioned above, as it was believed that many DPs from the Baltic countries would have had experience in forestry. The lumber industry was in fact only developed in Estonia and Latvia; moreover the military authorities admitted that the Timber Scheme required a huge amount of unskilled labour.42 The predilection for Balts was rather due to ‘general agreement the elite of the DP population [were] to be found within this group’: Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were usually judged ‘more highly cultured or educated’ and therefore much easier to manage.43 The preference

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for Balts was complemented by a firm refusal to consider ‘Poles and Yugoslavs [who] have been tried and found unsatisfactory’.44 When the recruitment of Balts proved to be insufficient because of the negative consequences of the resettlement scheme in Great Britain, the Poles were still considered ‘NOT wanted’. 45 Some Yugoslavs were offered a second chance, but only the ‘Chetniks’, deemed to be a specific ethnic group with greater potential.46 The displacement management shaped by distinction between nationalities not only strengthened the identity of the single groups, as the literature has pointed out, it also placed them in a hierarchical classification.47 This hierarchy was constructed according to the suitability shown by each group in removing the constituent elements of displacement (indiscipline, idleness, apathy) and matching the Western model of ‘good labourer’.48 The gender divide was basically traced along the boundaries of the camps: men’s work was mainly directed outside and women’s work inside. This policy was further confirmed by the British instructions relating to DP duties, according to which women with family ties were not subjected to ‘powers of compulsory direction’, even where ‘they [would have been] submitted to employment within daily travelling distance’.49 The gap between female official engagement ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the assembly centres emerged clearly – for example – in the Frankfurt region: according to the survey submitted by the UNRRA team, women were around 40 per cent of the DPs working in the camps, while they were only around 10 per cent of those working in the German economy.50 The ‘containment’ of female employment within the camps was intended to preserve the family care role performed by women, which also filled gaps in the services provided by military governments, international agencies and voluntary associations, since the clothes distributed needed to be altered, food needed to be further processed for children and so on. The pressure for female employment (in addition to their reproductive duties) was encouraged by the fact that many of the ‘inside’ jobs implied the role of care-providers (in the kitchen, in the nursery, cleaning services) and new industries could be developed on the basis of traditional female handicrafts (embroidering, knitting, tapestry and so on). Therefore DP wives, mothers and daughters were engaged in ‘extradomestic’ work that could be interpreted as the mere extension of traditional female duties. Moreover camps were conceived – although their boundaries proved to be far more permeable than the military forces had wished – as spaces separated from the social, political and economical context in which they were physically placed. The opposition between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ somehow followed the opposition between the

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private (female) and the public (male) spheres: female employment in the ‘inside’/private domain could consequently be acceptable. The experience of female DPs who had special competences could be considerably different from that of women included in the more numerous group of the unskilled. Female employment still remained restricted to the inside of the camps, however it could include positions such as clerk, interpreter and teacher, or more general jobs dealing with the management of the assembly centres. The profile of the ‘Countess’ – described by former UNRRA and IRO officer Kathryn Hulme in her memoirs – offers a very good example of the position certain women could gain. The ‘Countess’ – Hulme never called her by name and surname – supervised all the most important in-camp activities (distribution of DP cards, rationing and medical assistance). She was the interpreter, but also – and most importantly – the mediator between DPs and UNRRA representatives: the ‘Countess’ managed to control the degree of protest over the distribution (requested by DPs and refused by the camp authorities) of Red Cross supplies, and she often had the last word in the solution of daily problems. Hulme described her as a lady in her sixties, tall and fascinating, who ‘had the cornflower-blue eyes of the Slav’ and who was able to speak a ‘flawless Warsaw-society French’.51 The knowledge of a language shared with UNRRA officers certainly helped the ‘Countess’ in gaining a prominent position within the local staff; her familiarity with Western culture probably also played a role since it allowed the Polish noble to establish a relationship of trust and confidence with the United Nations personnel. Linguistic abilities, educated manners and easy reciprocal comprehension proved more important than gender: the ‘Countess’ was a woman, while the position she held was most frequently seen as a male preserve. The recruitment of women for the administration of the assembly centres was regarded positively by military authorities not only on the basis of individual abilities, but also in order to free up male manpower for external activities. However, UNRRA officers criticised the massive allocation of male workers to work in the German economy, since in their opinion this choice necessarily entailed the removal of the people concerned from the potential pool of camp administrators. The case of the Hanau Camp offers us one example of the tensions engendered by the policy of female recruitment. The recommendations, listed in the report following the military inspection of the camp in February 1947 by the United States Forces European Theater (USFET), included the ‘enforced replacement of male administrative personnel by female’. The UNRRA Employment Officer replied that more than ‘250 men employed

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in the camp [had] been replaced by women and [had] been sent to work for the Army Units’. The issue became part of a wider debate between the US Army and UNRRA on the strategies to be deployed to match personnel supply with the requirement of the local industries.52 USFET representatives probably agreed with UNRRA officers about the disqualification of men from camp services entailed by the recruitment of women, but considered it an unavoidable negative consequence. From their point of view the availability of male manpower for external programmes was far more important. The controversy between the military authorities and United Nations staff brought to light the lack of recognition of the value of women’s participation in the running of assembly centres. The role played by the ‘Countess’ and by many other women refugees who contributed to camp administration eroded the boundaries of gendered division of labour, at least within the separate domain of the single assembly centres. Nevertheless there was no acknowledgment of the specific value of the female contribution, and the management of displaced labour tended to strengthen the sex-stereotyping of jobs, further deepened through the introduction of the camp boundary as an additional divide. The gender segregation of work was continued in the resettlement schemes, which in many cases combined national and gender identities in their selection processes: Balts emerged again as the most appreciated national groups and women were recruited mainly as domestics and textile workers, both traditionally female occupations.53 The policies enacted by the Allies offer us an excellent perspective on the interplay between the handling of displacement and the sociocultural construction of gender, work roles and ethno-nationality. In this perspective the measures aimed at turning the ‘slaves of the Nazi regime’ into ‘labourers suitable for democracies’ were not only the background for the resettlement schemes implemented in the late 1940s; they more generally served as a kind of laboratory test of the political and cultural meaning of labour in the Western management of displacement and replacement, as it was to be enacted in subsequent decades.

Notes 1. On the definition of a new regime for refugees in the aftermath of the Second World War, see Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War. Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era, Lund: Lund University Press, 1991; Anna Bramwell (ed.), Refugees in the Age of Total War, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988; Liisa Mallki, ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, in Annual Review of Anthropology, n. 24, 1995, pp. 495–523.

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2. In the first pages of her memoirs, UNRRA and IRO officer Kathryn Hulme depicts DPs as former slave labourers for whom the ‘Allies invented a new name, indicating their state of being rather than a generalised place of origin. They were named Displaced Persons’; Kathryn Hulme, The Wild Place, London: Frederick Muller, 1954, pp. 5–6. 3. See the final report of UNRRA Employment Division for the United States zone, p. 17; United Nations Archives, New York (UNA), S-1021-0080-11, UNRRA, Office of the Historian. Monographs, Documents and Publications 1942–1948, History of Employment Division (part II). 4. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, US (NARA), OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 319.1 Reports (UNDP) Colonel Sage’s Report, box 175 RG 260. 5. Guide to the Care of the Displaced Persons in Germany, p. 47; The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, UK (TNA), FO 1052/328 Guide to the Care of DPs 1945. 6. NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260. 7. Guide to the Care of the Displaced Persons in Germany, p. 47, TNA, FO 1052/328 Guide to the Care of DPs 1945. 8. The Guide stated that ‘apart from the obligation set forth in paragraph 1b, no United Nations displaced person shall be obliged to engage in paid employment against his will’, ibid. 9. See for example the recruitment of Germans for health services, Notes for History of UNRRA, 11 June 1947, UNA, S-1021-0082-21, UNRRA, Monographs DP-BR 18, Displaced Persons, British Zone (Germany), Division of Health [by Eric Townsend]. 10. History of Employment and Vocational Training Division of UNRRA, US Zone, UNA, S-1021-0080-10, UNRRA, Office of the Historian. Monographs, Documents and Publications 1942–1948, History of Employment Division (part I). 11. See Wendy Carlin, ‘Economic Reconstruction in Western Germany, 1945–55. The Displacement of “Vegetative Control”’, in Ian Turner (ed.), Reconstruction in Post-War Germany. British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones 1945–55, Oxford: Berg, 1989, pp. 37–65. Quotations from the restricted proposal on Employment Program for Displaced Persons and for Persons Assimilated to them in Status of the United States Forces, European Theater (Usfet) dated July 1946; NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260. 12. Quotations from the restricted proposal on Employment Program for Displaced Persons and for Persons Assimilated to them in Status of the United States Forces, European Theater (Usfet) dated July 1946; NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260. 13. See paragraph 14 of the Zonal Executive Instruction n. 2 issued by CCG(Be) on 30 January 1947; TNA, FO 1052/340 All nationalities: policy 1947. 14. See the correspondence between OMGUS and Eucom in NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment and pay of UNDP 1948–1949, box 155 RG 260. 15. The letter from Geislingen and IRO reply are in NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 DP Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260.

Silvia Salvatici 225 16. The issue is recurrent in military government documents, in particular see NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260 and TNA, FO 1052/20 Civilian Labour: vol. 1, July–November 1945. DP apathy and its consequences on morality are outlined also in Eduard Bakis, ‘D. P. Apathy’, in Flight and Resettlement, by H. B. M. Murphy, Lucerne: UNESCO 1955, pp. 80–91. On the construction of ‘DP-apathy’ as ‘une pathologie de personne déplacée’, see Daniel Cohen, ‘Naissance d’une nation: les personnes déplacées de l’après-guerre 1945–1951’, Genèses, 38, 2000, pp. 56–78. 17. Contribution to the UNRRA History: Vocational Training p. 3, S-1021-0082-20, UNRRA, Office of the Historian, Monographs, Documents and Publications 1942–1948, Vocational Training. See Louise W. Holborn, L’Organisation Internationale pour les Réfugiés. Agence spécialisée des Nations Unies 1946–1952, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955, pp. 364–96. 18. Cumulative Narrative Report 1st July 1947–1st July 1949. Employment and Vocational Training, pp. 10–11, Archive Nationales, Paris (AN), AJ/43/435 History of the US Zone of Germany. 19. History of Employment and Vocational Training Division of UNRRA, US Zone p. 1, UNA, S-1021-0080-10, UNRRA, Office of the Historian. Monographs, Documents and Publications 1942–1948, History of Employment Division (part I). 20. AN, AJ/43/821 Zone américaine d’Allemagne 34/2 Documents concernant les camps de la zone américaine 37 Archives de la Reinhardt Kaserne à Neu Ulm, 1947–1951. 21. Employment of DP Labour, 8th September 1945, TNA, FO 1052/20 Civilian Labour: vol. 1, July–November 1945. 22. For the Control Commission on Germany (BE) and OMGUS, see respectively Ian Turner (ed.), Reconstruction in Post-War Germany. British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones, and Harold Zink, The United States in Germany 1944–1955, Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1957. 23. See for example the vivid description of the ‘cigarette economy’ offered by Mark Wyman in DPs. Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 114–16. 24. From Eucom DP Branch to POW & DP Division of OMGUS for Colonel Boyle, 31 May 1947, NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260. 25. According to the instruction issued on 24 September 1945, the PW & DPs Division of CCG (Be) assigned to the members of Labour Groups 45 square feet instead of 30; TNA, FO 1052/20 Civilian Labour: vol. 1, July–November 1945. 26. Between May 1945 and July 1946 the ration for DPs in the British zone was reduced from 2000 to 1550 calories; Malcom Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939–52. A Study in Forced Population Movement, London: Faber and Faber, 1956, pp. 251–4. 27. A Summary Report on Employment and Vocational Training Activities in US Zone of Germany, p. 1, AN, AJ/43/846 Zone américaine d’Allemagne 36/1 Travail des réfugiés 1948–1951. 28. See the statistics issued by the CCG(Be), PW & DPs Division in TNA, FO 1052/405 Compulsory Employment of DPs I 1946.

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29. PW/DP Technical Instructions to Implement Zonal Executive Instruction n. 2, from UNRRA Administration Headquarters to PW/DP Division, TNA, FO 1052/404 Employment DPs: Policy II 1947. 30. Displaced Persons and the International Refugee Organization. Report of a Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1947, pp. 41–6. 31. Report from Employment Officer Jouzas Vencious to Director Miss D. L. Tibble, 31 July 1947, AN AJ/43/806 Zone américaine d’Allemagne, 31/11 Comportement et délits des réfugiés, 1949–1951. 32. Report from Brigadier Ph. de Havilland to PW & DPs Division, TNA, FO 1052/20 Civilian Labour: vol. 1, July–November 1945. 33. The crucial role played by the solution of the DP problem for the reconstruction of Europe was emphasised in much research published in the aftermath of war; see for example Preliminary Summary of Report on Refugees and Displaced Persons: An Urgent United Nations Problem, by Pierce Williams, Dept. of Social Work Adm., Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 15 October 1946 in which the author wrote ‘in countries so badly undermined by economic collapse and still so spiritually weakened by the nihilistic influences of Nazism and Fascism, failure to deal constructively with the problem of refugees and displaced persons might well prove fatal to the moral, political, and spiritual reconstruction of Europe’, p. 12. For a wider discussion of the construction of refugees as ‘disruptive’ to the political and social order, see Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacement of Statecraft, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 34. See articles 9 and 10 of Zonal Executive Instruction n. 2, TNA, FO 1052/340 All nationalities: policy 1947 35. See article 24 of Zonal Executive Instruction n. 2 in TNA, FO 1052/340 All nationalities: policy 1947. 36. On differences between the Americans and the British over the recognition of Jews as a separate group, and not members of nationalities, see Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001, pp. 31–41. 37. See the correspondence between the Secretary of Foreign Office Roger Makins and the Central Committee of the Council UNRRA in TNA, FO 1052/404 Employment DPs: Policy II 1947. 38. The disagreement between UNRRA and the British military government has been emphasised in Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum Heimatlosen Ausländer. Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland, 1945–1951, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Reprecht, 1985, pp. 159–61. The controversy between the military authorities and UNRRA over the living conditions guaranteed to DPs has been highlighted by Jessica Reinisch, ‘Displaced Persons and Public Health in Occupied Germany, 1944–1947’, in Johannes-Dieter Steinert and Inge Weber-Newth, Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution. 60 Years on, Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, 2008, pp. 43–53. 39. Proposed Cable Re ‘Future Care and Maintenance of Displaced Persons’, US Zone, Germany, Usfet 6 January 1947; NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, NARA Box 171, 430.2 Care and Maintenance for UNDPs RG 260.

Silvia Salvatici 227 40. NARA, Headquarters EUCOM, CAD DPs Section, Correspondence RE International Refugee Organization, box 662 RG 549. 41. This is the reason why from time to time military officers regretted being compelled to give priority to DPs, rather than to Germans; see for example the comments addressed to the Corps District by Major Williams, chief of the British Prisoner of War and Displaced Persons Division: ‘It is felt that more DPs could be employed by the Mil Gov units in place of Germans now employed. It is appreciated fully that administration and discipline of Germans is much more easily accomplished than for DPs, but the DP has the right to expect priority in work’; TNA, FO 1052/21 Civilian Labour: vol. 2, November 1945–January 1946. 42. See the documentation on the North Timber Scheme in TNA, FO 1052/412 Redeployment of DPs forestry 1946–1947 and FO 1052/404 Employment DPs: Policy II 1947. 43. Overseas Reconstruction Committee. Displaced Persons – Germany and Austria. memorandum by the Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, TNA, Prem 8/522 Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria, 1946–1947. Marvin Klemme, The Inside Story of UNRRA. An Experience in Internationalism. A First Hand Report on the Displaced People of Europe, New York: Lifetime Editions, 1949, p. 246. 44. Econ. Division – Forestry 11 January 1947, TNA, FO 1052/21 Civilian Labour: vol. 2, November 1945–January 1946. 45. Timber Production Conference 6 May 1947, TNA, FO 1052/412 Redeployment of DPs forestry 1946–1947. 46. Timber Production Conference 6 May 1947, TNA, FO 1052/412 Redeployment of DPs forestry 1946–1947 and FO 1052/404 Employment DPs: Policy II 1947. 47. The literature devoted to single national groups emphasises the role played by camp life in strengthening their political and cultural identity; see Milda Danys, DP Lithuanian Immigration to Canada after the Second World War, Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1986; Marta Dyczok, The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees, NY: St Martin Press, 2000; Anna D. Jaroszyn´ska-Kirchmann, The Exile Mission. The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans, 1939–1956, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004; Wsevolod W. Isajiw, Yury Boshyk and Roman Senkus (eds), The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1992. As Atina Grossmann has pointed out, historiography has presented the DP experience as part of the history of Zionism and emphasised the role of Holocaust survivors in the founding of Israel; Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies. Close Encounters in Occupied Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 48. An interesting analysis of different perceptions of refugees according to their ethno-national identity is Tony Kushner, Remembering Refugees. Then and Now, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. 49. Article 8 of Zonal Executive Instruction n. 2; TNA, FO 1052/340 All nationalities: policy 1947. 50. See the UNRRA report for August 1947 in NARA, Headquarters EUCOM, CAD DPs Section, Correspondence RE International Refugee Organization, box 662 RG 549. 51. Kathryn Hulme, The Wild Place, p. 18.

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52. DP Labor for CBS Construction at Hanau, 24 February 1947 and UNRRA reply on 28 February in NARA, Headquarters EUCOM, CAD DPs Section, Correspondence RE International Refugee Organization, Hospital & Rest centers 1947, box 660 RG 549. 53. See in particular the resettlement scheme implemented by the UK and Canada; Linda McDowell, Hard Labour. The Forgotten Voices of Latvian Migrant Volunteer Workers, London: UCL Press, 2005; Diana Kay and Robert Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers? European Volunteer Workers in Britain (1946–1951), London: Routledge, 1992; Christiane Harzig, ‘McNamara’s DP Domestics: Immigration Policy Makers Negotiate Class, Race and Gender in the Aftermath of World War II’ in Social Politics, vol. 10 (2003), n. 1, pp. 23–48. National and gender divides played a role in the resettlement programmes promoted by the US and Australia; see Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share. The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945–1952, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993 and Egon F. Kunz, Displaced Persons. Calwell’s New Australians, Sydney: Australian National University Press, 1988.

11 British Post-War Migration Policy and Displaced Persons in Europe Johannes-Dieter Steinert

Britain’s immediate post-war years are often associated with the nationalisation of industry, the growth of the welfare state and the creation of the National Health Service but seldom with an active migration and foreign labour policy. This chapter will focus on the roughly 80,000 socalled European Volunteer Workers (EVWs), former displaced persons (DPs) recruited by British government officials mainly in Germany and Austria under the Balt Cygnet and Westward Ho schemes.1 The employment of foreign labour was the result of a significant demand for labour in the ‘old industries’ such as mining, iron, steel and textiles but also in the public health system and in agriculture, where large numbers of Italian and German prisoners of war had already been set to work on the land. To fill the gap in the labour market more permanently, Ministry of Labour officials eventually went to DP camps on the continent to recruit foreign workers. This chapter will argue that post-war British ‘migration policy’ had been supplemented by a ‘migrant policy’. Therefore the contemporary idea of ‘assimilation’ will be highlighted, and its translation into practice will be analysed.

Demand for labour in Britain The Second World War drained Great Britain’s resources dramatically. When victory finally came, gold and currency reserves had been exhausted, as had the once considerable stock of foreign assets. Foreign debt had risen to a total of £3.355 billion. In 1945, exports totalled £399 million while imports were valued at £1.053 billion.2 The consequences of this deficit and American trade and credit policies created a shortage of hard foreign currency, the so-called dollar gap. Rising national debt, the shortage of dollars, the energy crisis of the winter of 1946–7, and 229

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Britain’s continuing foreign military and humanitarian responsibilities (in occupied Germany for example) all contributed to the development of an economic policy that was characterised by a high degree of centralised control and planning.3 In simplest terms the formula was: reduce imports and expand exports. A concentrated group of traditional industries – such as mining, iron, steel and textiles – were in an ideal position to rapidly increase exports, both directly and indirectly. According to the government and domestic industrialists at the time, by the late 1940s the expansion of these old industries had created a growing labour shortage. It was this that eventually forced the state to recruit foreign workers from the European mainland. The same situation applied to agriculture, which had benefited during the war and immediately after from the large numbers of Italian and German prisoners of war who were sent to work on the land. These workers were later joined by DPs recruited in Europe. The government’s aim was to reduce imports of agricultural produce that were mainly paid for in hard currency, and at the same time to save precious dollars. Agriculture, mining and the textile industries enjoyed their new status acting to redress the balance of trade and payments deficit and the attention they received from state economic and industrial planners. These were undermanned industries, largely because of the unappealing nature of the work and their inability to shake off the negative image they had earned, mainly during the inter-war years, as being prone to crises and unemployment. Furthermore, due to the scarcity of capital investment in the first decade after the war, little had been done to automate these industries, which in turn limited the potential for any meaningful rise in productivity. This deficit could only be dealt with by expanding the workforce – with the help of foreign labour if necessary. Despite massive advertising at home and recruitment abroad though, the appeal and image of agricultural and fishing industries remained low, and the number of people employed in these sectors only rose from 1.041 million in June 1945 to 1.178 million at the end of 1948 (1939: 950,000). In coal mining the figures rose from 738,000 to 788,000 (1939: 773,000). In the textile industry, where production during the war had been severely restricted, the number of employees was estimated to be approximately 500,000 in mid-1945, rising to 971,000 by the end of 1948 (1939: 798,000).4 A further key objective was to readjust the economy from war to peacetime production. The armed forces were to be reduced and exservice personnel re-integrated into working life. In marked contrast

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to events following the First World War, both processes functioned unexpectedly well. Even the high degree of demobilisation failed to produce a particularly noticeable rise in national unemployment figures. Between June 1945 and December 1946 the number of people in the armed forces fell from 5.09 million to 1.46 million, while during the same period numbers employed in the supply services also fell from 3.83 million to 0.46 million.5 At the end of 1948 Britain still retained an army of 810,000 soldiers. Largely posted overseas, they were unavailable to the domestic job market. Furthermore, between July 1945 and July 1946, over one million people actually left the workforce. This group was mainly made up of women who, having made their contribution to the war effort, were redeployed within the framework of redirected labour.6 In 1943 there were 7.75 million women in paid employment, but even at this early stage the government was fearful of a post-war labour shortage and was at pains to keep as many women as possible in the job market – initially with little success. The number of women in paid employment fell to approximately six million, before a turning point was reached in June 1947. Between 1947 and 1950, the number of women at work rose by almost a million, and by 1961 the total was 8.4 million, a figure well ahead of the 1943 total.7 In the late 1940s, getting women to return to work or enter employment for the first time was supported by extensive advertising campaigns. Here the intention was to direct women specifically towards the traditional femaledominated occupations such as the textile industry. Independent of the government’s efforts, at the same time women were being marginalised in other sectors such as the electronics industry.8 In addition the job market lost all those who had reached retiring age or who simply did not need to work. Weekly working hours, increased during the war, were now reduced to pre-war levels, which also increased labour shortages.9 Raising the school leaving age to 15 denied the job market some 370,000 adolescents for an extra year.10 The number of people in civilian employment rose between June 1945 and the end of 1946 from 12.6 million to 17.35 million (at the end of 1948: 19.15 million). Due to the combination of full employment and labour shortages, unemployment figures for the six-year term of the Labour government remained extremely low, at under 3 per cent. Only for a short period in early 1947 did the number rise above two million. This was due to the exceptionally hard winter and the enormous difficulties supplying coal to key industries (the fuel crisis). This harmed those industries reliant on exports, such as iron and steel, as much as those involved in domestic reconstruction.11

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In the early post-war years Britain pursued an active immigration and foreign labour policy. Together with the redistribution of the workforce, this made an important contribution to economic reconstruction. The state recruited foreign workers in particular to fill the less attractive vacancies in the undermanned industries that were so vital to exports. British workers often shunned these jobs because of the low wages, dirty working conditions, physical demands or the health risks associated with them. Men were needed for the mines and women for the textile industry and health services, particularly following the creation of the National Health Service in 1948. In addition there was the traditionally female-dominated domestic service industry, which ever fewer local women were prepared to enter. According to the censuses, the total number of domestic servants in England and Wales fell between 1931 and 1951 from over 1.3 million to some 723,000. Ten years later the figure was only 200,000. Attempts by the state to reverse this trend by such measures as founding the Institute of Houseworkers in 1947 had little effect.12 Foreign workers were also needed in the construction industry and in agriculture, where efforts were being made to reduce imports and improve domestic supply. In this area of the economy, wartime restructuring, the extension of gang labour systems and the creation of regional labour pools (consisting of Irish workers, prisoners of war and the Women’s Land Army among others), had all led to the decline of the farm hand as an occupation.13

British migration policy Although the recruitment of DPs for work in Britain helped to solve the DP problem in Europe, humanitarian considerations were of no importance to the British government.14 The decisive criteria were professional skills, vocational training, the worker’s age, sex and marital status. However, the high demand for workers alone is not enough to explain the political decision taken in London, as there were more than sufficient potential migrants in the dominions and colonies ready to come to Britain, who were already British subjects. Therefore the decision to recruit DPs was also directed against the immigration of non-white Africans and Asians.15 The assumption was that white migrants from Europe ‘would be more skilled, valuable and assimilable […] than non-Europeans’.16 According to the 1949 Royal Commission on Population: immigration on a large scale into a fully established society like ours could only be welcomed without reserve if the immigrants were of

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good human stock and were not prevented by their religion or race from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged in it.17 Such racialisation of migrants was not limited to a purely positive discrimination towards DPs. Ethnic categorisations were also applied within this group. This followed a general tradition in English-speaking countries of creating something of a hierarchy of wanted migrants by which potential settlers were judged. At the top were the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, followed by North Europeans and, at quite a distance, South and finally East Europeans. During the political consideration of the recruitment of DPs, a similar ‘racialization’ occurred, whereby the female workforce of the Baltic States was rated above the ‘peasant stock’ of the Ukraine. DPs from North-East Europe were considered to be ‘superior types’. They were presumed to be easier to assimilate and less prone to psychological disorders and suicide than the southern ‘slave races’.18 The formal decision concerning the recruitment of a foreign workforce was taken by the Cabinet on 14 February 1946, and an inter-ministerial Foreign Labour Committee was set up at the same time. Since September 1945, however, the idea of recruiting 1000 Baltic women from the British zone of occupation in Germany had been under consideration. They were to be employed as care and domestic workers in the public health system, especially in tuberculosis clinics, for a limited period of 12 months. The political debate surrounding the Balt Cygnet scheme led to one of the most important provisions in the later and much broader scheme to recruit DPs, Westward Ho. Before the first of the 2575 women eventually recruited under Balt Cygnet had even arrived in Britain on 19 October 1946, the ministries responsible had reached a common understanding that they were actually dealing with a de facto resettlement. Decisive for this was the acceptance that the British military government in Germany would never allow the return of DPs to Germany en masse following the expiry of any contracts they held.19 At the end of 1946 and beginning of 1947 a number of further political decisions that were to effect the recruitment of DPs proceeded to be taken in rapid succession. In December 1946 the Foreign Labour Committee approved a suggestion from the Ministry of Labour to recruit DPs to work in the cotton mills.20 One month later the Cabinet requested the Ministry to make official preparations for recruitment to begin.21 Also in January 1947 the National Joint Advisory Council, made up of the Ministry of Labour, the British Employers’ Confederation, the

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Trades Union Congress and representatives from the nationalised industries decided to publish a ‘Statement on the Economic Considerations Affecting Relations between Employers and Workers’. The statement raised the point that the shortage of workers in some sectors of the economy presented a constant threat to jobs in other sectors due to the fact that it restricted the supply of raw materials and energy.22 In February 1947 the Economic Survey underlined this consensus of opinion: Foreign Labour can make a useful contribution to our needs. The old arguments against foreign labour are no longer valid. There is no danger for years to come that foreign labour will rob British workers of their jobs. […] The recruitment of displaced persons for industrial employment is obviously limited by their suitability for work of the kind for which British workers are not available, by their ignorance of the English language and above all by the serious difficulty of finding accommodation for them, particularly if they are accompanied by dependants. But foreign labour is the only substantial additional source of man-power which is open to us especially for the undermanned industries – and the government intends and believes that with the full co-operation of British employers and workers these difficulties can be overcome.23 The statement left untouched any humanitarian considerations. The employment of foreign labour was purely dependent upon demand for workers and the ability to house them. The Ministry of Labour’s task was now to assess the demand for workers in each individual economic sector and to reach agreement with the trade unions to allow for recruitment to begin in April 1947.24 This required both time and patience as the Trade Union Congress (TUC) was not prepared to agree to a broad, comprehensive strategy, insisting instead upon negotiations with each of the individual unions concerned.25 The compromise agreement reached between the employers and the unions, under the mediation of the Ministry of Labour, was laid down in over 30 industrial agreements, the core elements of which were all very similar: foreign workers were only to be employed where there were no British workers available and the EVWs should work for the same pay and conditions as their British counterparts. Additionally, ‘if redundancy of workers occurs’ the EVWs were to be first out. In April 1947 recruitment under Westward Ho began in camps within the British zones of occupation in Germany and Austria. Later

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it was extended to the other Western zones, to Denmark and finally to the Lebanon, East Africa and Rhodesia, where female Polish DPs were recruited.26 The largest group of DPs to be recruited were Ukrainians, who numbered 20,930, followed by 14,018 Poles, 11,832 Latvians, 10,192 Yugoslavians, 5732 Lithuanians and 4114 Estonians.27 Due to the serious shortage of housing in Britain, the plan was to recruit mainly unmarried persons who could then be accommodated in hostels, factory lodgings and camps, or become lodgers in private households or on farms.28 Although this plan was realised, and of the 74,412 people arriving in Britain only 268 men, 1696 women and 1860 children arrived as accompanying family members, within the first weeks and months it became clear that male DPs were far more prepared to emigrate than females.29 The Ministry of Labour was, therefore, commissioned to raise the number of women being recruited, but opportunities to do this were limited. In July 1947 regulations concerning accompanying dependants were relaxed a little and the recruitment of men was adjourned, but this failed to produce any noticeable effect and the only option left appeared to be further recruitment from other demographic groups.30 This led to an intense discussion about the possible recruitment of Germans and ethnic Germans, something that had been categorically ruled out in some of the ‘industrial agreements’.31 Eventually, after negotiations with employers and unions from June 1948 onwards, 744 male and 634 female Volksdeutsche arrived in Britain under Westward Ho, mainly for work in the textile industry, followed by 1304 German female refugees from the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), recruited under Westward Ho for the cotton industry in Lancashire.32 In this context it is also important to note that Jews were explicitly excluded from Westward Ho.33

British migrant policy After recruitment and transport the British government’s responsibility for the migrants was not to end with their arrival. In clear contrast to the laissez-faire attitude of earlier years where, if necessary, various charitable organisations, churches, or communities would look after migrants, in the case of the European Volunteer Workers the government, and more particularly the Ministry of Labour, now felt duty bound to continue giving support. In this way, British ‘migration policy’ was supplemented by a ‘migrant policy’. It should be noted, however, that no detailed accounts of the thoughts of those involved in this policy are available. Their respective levels of

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British Migration Policy and Displaced Persons Table 11.1 The placing of European Volunteer Workers in industry (First placings to 27 January 1951. Westward Ho and Balt Cygnet)

Agriculture Army and Air Force Depots and Installations Brick and allied industries Cement Coal-mining Cotton Domestic Service: Hospitals and similar institutions Domestic Service: National Service Hostels Corp. Domestic Service: Others Hosiery Hydro-electric Scheme (Scotland) Iron and Steel Jute Laundries Nursing Pottery Quarrying Rayon Timber production Wool Miscellaneous Total

Men

Women

29,554 1,603

–

65

2,729 262 10,968 1,083 109

2 – – 7,564 3,782

1,458

919

3,589 24 250 1,355 18 2 169 137 708 554 107 1,113 1,238 57,030

2,058 265 – 1 175 389 425 31 – 1,000 – 3,173 217 20,066

Source: Tannahill, Workers, p. 133.

background experience, knowledge, and qualifications remain equally uncertain, but what is conspicuous is that many of those that took part in the discussions – regardless of their role in the ministerial bureaucracy, communities, or organisation – used similar arguments, which suggests a common contemporary view on the process of assimilation. Interestingly, some parallels can be found in scientifically researched points of view, such as those of the representatives of the Chicago School of Sociology (a school that became famous by integrating theory and empirical fieldwork), who wrote in 1921: The process of assimilation involves the development in the immigrant and the native of similar apperception masses. To this end it is desirable that the immigrants should not only speak the language of the

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country, but also know something of the history of the people among whom they have chosen to dwell. For the same reason it is important that native Americans should know the history and social life of the countries from which the immigrants come. […] Assimilation is thus as inevitable as it is desirable; it is impossible for the immigrants we receive to remain permanently in separate groups. Through point after point of contact, as they find situations in America intelligible to them in the light of old knowledge and experience, they identify themselves with us. We can delay or hasten this development. We cannot stop it. If we give the immigrants a favourable milieu, if we tolerate their strangeness during their period of adjustment, if we give them freedom to make their own connections between old and new experience, if we help them to find points of contact, then we hasten their assimilation. This is a process of growth as against the ‘ordering and forbidding’ policy and the demand that the assimilation of the immigrant shall be ‘sudden, complete, and bitter’.34 If one were to adopt such a view at an actual political level, the scope of expectation and areas of responsibility would be clearly definable. The migrants would have to learn the language spoken in the host country along with knowledge of its history, while the host society learnt something of the migrants’ homeland. In this way assimilation appeared inevitable and segregation merely a transitory phase. Contact, a favourable social environment, tolerance and patience would be crucial. The following examination will illustrate that British politics generally followed these ideas. The records of a conference on 5 November 1948 to which the Ministry of Labour invited bodies representing the individual nationalities (mainly refugee organisations founded before 1945), British NGOs and representatives from other ministries and authorities offer an initial indication of the aims of the government.35 The object of the meeting was to gain an insight into the views of these bodies in order to consider the direction of future policy. Both sides agreed that the process of assimilation would be lengthy, ‘and should not be enforced in a heavyhanded manner, which would only arouse an instinctive and insuperable opposition in their [EVWs’] minds’. With this, the representatives of the national bodies made it clear that assimilation was primarily dependent upon the inner attitude of the migrant, who could react negatively to external pressures. This did not mean that state and community assistance should be withdrawn but they did warn against the possible counter-productive effects of activism and over-enthusiasm.

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Of further interest are the comments made by representatives of the national bodies concerning ‘inter-racial friction’ between the various groups and their hopes of a future return to their home countries. The latter would lead many not to bother seeking contact with Britons or even other foreigners; it would also limit their desire to learn English. It is possible that the organisations exaggerated the problems of segregation a little in an effort to underline their own importance in dismantling such a thing. In view of the tensions indicated, the government promised that in exceptional cases ‘for removing immediate and unavoidable racial tension foreign workers should be grouped in hostels according to their nationality’. This compromise touched upon one of the basic elements of government thinking on this issue; that the creation of ‘separate foreign enclaves’ should be prevented. It was widely agreed that the process of assimilation could be speeded up if the foreign workers were to live in accommodation of their own, as this would bring them into greater contact with the British public. Thereby the three main tenets of government thinking were named: the prevention of separate foreign enclaves, the clearing of the hostels in order to bring the workers nearer to the British population and finally the importance of learning the English language. Naturalisation was seen as another good way to further aid assimilation and as such was greatly desired. Furthermore, inner changes were expected, a process often referred to as the adoption of the British way of life, or as Lady Reading put it at a meeting between the Women’s Voluntary Services and government representatives in March 1949: ‘What we wanted was to help foreigners to see with our eyes’.36 Already a year before, she had expressed the expectation that national homogeneity could be restored through assimilation. We had many advantages in that we were a homogenous nation and we must make every effort to assimilate the Poles and E. V. W.s. The British way of life was not found in Hansard nor in the newspapers – it was found in our homes and we needed individual initiative and courage in helping these people to settle.37 According to this understanding, assimilation was not possible without individual or organised help. At the same time, this demanded of British society a change in attitude and behaviour in order to create the conditions for intensive social contact. The foreign workers should be accepted into clubs and associations, for example, to allow them the opportunity to get to know ‘British people in an informal way’. They were also encouraged to learn more English than was just necessary for

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work or shopping, in order that they might make friends with their British neighbours. This again called for openness on both sides.38 To avoid tensions, the British government also pursued an information policy aimed at the recruited workers and local population alike. With both groups the government sought to increase their knowledge and understanding of each other and encouraged a change of attitudes and behaviour. In the immediate post-war years it was relatively easy for the British public to inform themselves in detail about political, social and economic conditions in continental Europe and about the plight of the various sections of the population there such as DPs. The press also reported on the recruitment, arrival and experiences of the EVWs in Britain. The articles were based partly on independent research and partly on government press releases. In April 1947, for example, the Ministry of Labour gave detailed information to the press about the recruitment, reception and workplaces of the DPs. They also saw to it that the term ‘European Volunteer Worker’ was used to describe the recruits. ‘Since then’, commented an employee at the Ministry in August 1947, ‘the press has worked the E.V.W.s “to death” as a news subject and they have been featured and photographed on every possible pretext’.39 A Committee on the Education of Popular Opinion on Foreign Workers was formed in summer 1947 with representatives from several Ministries and NGOs.40 Its most important work was the publication of a brochure entitled Workers from Abroad. The 10,000 copies of the first print run were distributed to newspapers, unions, NGOs, Labour Exchanges and other official bodies with a view to disseminating the information further. A few months later a second print run of 10,000 copies followed. The brochure was made up of 11 pages of text and showed its demands clearly on the title side: ‘The purpose of this pamphlet is to foster a fuller understanding of the employment of foreign workers in this country’.41 It provided information on the reasons for employing foreigners and on the recruits themselves and their particular historical backgrounds. Furthermore, it explained political security precautions, economic and humanitarian aspects and the general terms of the recruitment. Besides purely providing information the brochure was primarily intended to counter prevailing prejudices. Members of the committee were also in contact with charitable organisations. They visited hostels, camps and labour exchanges; they took part in meetings and conferences and they advised the BBC over the radio programme Operation Westward Ho in January 1948, concerts given by EVWs or special programmes aimed at the migrants.42

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Finally, migrants were issued with the 50-page brochure ‘To Help You Settle in Britain’ produced by the Ministry of Labour, which provided extensive information on the migrant’s rights and duties, opportunities to learn English, radio programmes, rationing, the education system, currency and imperial weights and measures, leisure activities and the possibility of travel.43

British migrant policy in the field During their first few years in Britain the EVWs received a great deal of assistance from sources such as individual ministries and local authorities, companies and trade unions, churches and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In accordance with government thinking, activities such as explaining British living habits and bringing locals and foreigners together helped in the ‘assimilation’ of the migrants. The Ministry of Labour took responsibility for conditions at the initial stage of the process; it made preparations for the Women’s Voluntary Services or English-speaking EVWs to accompany newly arrived migrants from ports to the camps and hostels. Together with the National Service Hostels Corporation, it was responsible for the holding camps and state-run hostels. It organised food and clothing, ration books and clothing coupons as well as pocket money and medical assistance.44 In line with a strict execution of its plans, the Ministry used the ‘usual welfare machinery’, thus signalling that the foreign workforce was considered equal to the British one and that no distinctions would be made on the basis of national origin. This meant that the Ministry utilised the Regional Welfare Officers, the District Welfare Officers and the Nominated Welfare Officers in the local Labour Exchanges. It was their duty to advise the workforce, investigate complaints, visit workplaces and hostels and introduce the EVWs to local clubs, associations, churches and other institutions.45 The equality between locals and foreigners was also evident in the educational sphere. The government considered it necessary that the newly recruited workforce learn English as soon as possible, so that they would be capable of interacting with the local community. To achieve this, the Ministry of Labour came to an agreement with the Ministry of Education about introducing language courses organised by the local authorities in the Holding Camps. This special measure only applied to the camps; after taking up employment the EVWs were expected to attend courses within the usual further education framework. Local authorities were to provide additional evening classes if

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necessary.46 In practice the system functioned rather less than perfectly, prompting the Ministry of Education to set up an official inquiry in the first quarter of 1949. The results were sobering: having been in the country for 18 months, thousands of EVWs spoke little or no English and thousands more only spoke enough to enable them to do a little shopping. According to the report, it had been difficult to organise language courses for foreigners who clearly differed from each other in terms of intelligence, level of education, age and previous experience. Furthermore, interest on the part of most EVWs had been extremely low, only 5 per cent had responded. Those attending the lessons were usually the people with the least need of them. After returning from work, the others were apparently too tired to attend. Many felt that there was no need to learn English as they were hoping to return home soon. A consequence of all this was segregation into different national groups. 47 The mining industry was an exception, as for reasons of safety underground language courses and tests were made compulsory prior to working the first shift.48 The state also wished to convey a sense of the ‘British way of life’ and there was close cooperation in this between government departments, NGOs and companies. In addition a real sense of community commitment emerged, leading to the opening of Citizen’s Advice Bureaus in many towns, after being first established in Birmingham in 1948 by the Council of Social Services.49 In January 1948 a community centre for EVWs was officially opened in Oldham; the town mayor, the head of the local labour exchange as well as representatives of local organisations and associations attended the opening ceremony. Speeches were translated into the Baltic languages, Polish, Russian and German.50 EVWs also had access to support within their workplaces. The extent to which these could offer organised assistance varied according to the individual occupations. In larger firms the Welfare Officer’s work began before the foreign workforce had even arrived. The first problem to overcome was the search for accommodation, as not all employers operated their own hostels. Advertisements had to be placed, properties viewed and contracts signed before accommodation could be reserved. Many dwellings and privately run hostels had to be equipped with furniture, bedding and household goods from ex-camp stocks. The Welfare Officers organised the transport of EVWs from the camps to their workplaces and accommodation. Occasionally a welcome party was also organised with food, a film and dancing.51 Welfare Officers were available to give all sorts of advice and information, they distributed brochures, provided the EVWs with bed linen or household

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utensils and tried to defuse any tensions within companies and resolve any arguments.52 In the cotton mills Welfare Officers were assisted in their work by the Cotton Board. An example of this was a clothes collection it promoted in aid of needy workers, whose outward appearance often provoked feelings of great pity: Most of the refugees had lost nearly all their possessions in their enforced flight from home, and it was pitiful to see them arrive with their few belongings wrapped up in a blanket. These were often a miscellaneous collection of rubbish, hoarded with the miserly care of the homeless, but sometimes included what was obviously loot, such as the two sewing-machines brought by one girl. Clothing, however, was always scarce. Many girls arrived at the textile mills with no underclothes and few outer garments. One good-looking young woman wore a skirt which she had made herself from the trousers of a German soldier and a blouse made from old socks which she had unpicked and re-knitted.53 Furthermore, the Cotton Board provided interpreters, who helped minimise misunderstandings both in and outside the various cotton mills.54 British NGOs were assigned a special place within the Ministry of Labour plans for assimilation; they were to bring the migrants and locals together. This involved large national organisations such as the Rotary Club, but other well-known and little known clubs and associations also got involved: The Globe Trotters’ Association organised an international Christmas party in Bolton, the Birmingham Association of Girls and Mixed Clubs made space available for EVWs in need of a rest, in a holiday home – ‘if necessary without charge’ – and the International Friendship League in Hastings put on concerts for the EVWs and also invited them into their premises once a week.55Attitudes and activities offered were similar, irrespective of the region, the objectives or the size of the organisations. In an effort to make contact with the EVWs, members visited the hostels, hung up posters and notices, and invited people to evening or weekend events. These could include a dance or a social evening, a film show, a club meeting or a trip somewhere. An invitation into a British household was considered a particularly effective method of demonstrating the British way of life. Rooms were also made available for EVWs who wanted to form their own clubs or groups. It was not unusual for local NGOs to work

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together, coordinating their efforts. Prior to the already mentioned conference of 5 November 1948, the Ministry of Labour asked its regional offices to compile reports on the charitable activities being undertaken in each individual district.56 This resulted in an abundance of reports arriving from all parts of the country that, despite the geographical diversity, all spoke of the same aims and objectives and, according to the reports’ authors, were all successful in achieving these: There can be no doubt that the work of voluntary bodies has done much to help the EVWs to feel at home, to introduce them to local activities and English families, help with their problems and, which is equally important, help to break down local prejudice against their employment and absorption into the British community.57 Almost all the reports emphasised the work being done by the Women’s Voluntary Services. This organisation was virtually predestined to care for the foreign workforce. They already enjoyed the confidence of the Ministry of Labour, in whose plans they occupied an important place, and they could also draw upon a wide range of experience gained during the war. Members of the WVS awaited the arrival of the EVWs at their ports of entry and accompanied them on buses or trains to their camps. They undertook clothing collections to fill their own stores in the camps, from which needy new arrivals could clothe themselves. They provided unpaid English teachers and translators, translated the most useful English phrases into eleven different languages, organised excursions, put on tea parties and other events at their meeting places, and invited EVWs into their own homes.58 They looked after the interests of pregnant women in particular and also those of unmarried mothers with children. In the camps they checked levels of hygiene and successfully campaigned for female Welfare Officers to be employed there.59 The work of the WVS was characterised by a ‘personal touch’ that dealt with the EVWs, many of whom had experienced years of forced labour camps, as individuals.60 Only rarely did the media cover their activities, such as when the first of the women recruited under the Balt Cygnet scheme arrived and each received a new overcoat (a present from Canada) and a second-hand pair of shoes.61 Despite this lack of media attention, the green uniforms of the WVS were an everyday sight on the streets of wartime and post-war Britain. Local social clubs tended to provide a centre for all further activities; here the EVWs could meet up alone or with British women to spend their leisure time. As well as entertainment, dancing, music and sport

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there were also language courses on offer and discussion evenings; a selection of books and magazines were available and advice on all problems imaginable.62

Conclusion In 1947, British government officials started to recruit roughly 80,000 male and female DPs for work in Britain. The recruitment was motivated by a serious shortage of labour in certain sectors of industry and agriculture rather than by humanitarian concerns. British migration policy racialised potential migrants by introducing ethno-political criteria, based on the premise that migrants from Europe would be better skilled and easier to assimilate than non-Europeans. To support the assimilation of the so-called EVWs, British migration policy was accompanied by a migrant policy. Part of this was an information campaign directed at the migrants and the British population, as well as a government programme: ‘Education of Popular Opinion on Foreign Workers’. The government was keen to enlist the support of local authorities, employers, trade unions, churches and voluntary organisations. The aim was to reduce friction between locals and foreigners at work and in the community by providing personal support and to make the migrants familiar with the British way of life. Both the British migration and migrant policy fulfilled their aims with success. While migration policy played a crucial role for the labour market and the process of economic reconstruction, migrant policy reduced the potential for conflict and assisted migrants as they became part of a new society.

Notes 1. For an overview, see Diana Kay and Robert Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers? European Volunteer Workers in Britain 1946–1951, London: Routledge, 1992. John Allen Tannahill, European Volunteer Workers in Britain, Manchester: University Press, 1958, p. 133. See also Johannes-Dieter Steinert and Inge Weber-Newth (eds), European Immigrants in Britain 1933–1950, Munich: Saur, 2003; Labour & Love. Deutsche in Großbritannien nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Osnabrück: Secolo, 2000; German Migrants in Post-War Britain. An Enemy Embrace, London: Routledge, 2006. 2. Johannes Paulmann, Staat und Arbeitsmarkt in Großbritannien. Krise, Weltkrieg, Wiederaufbau, Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, p. 334. 3. Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Nach Holocaust und Zweangsarbeit. Britische Humanitäre Hilfe in Deutschland. Die Helfer, die Befreiten und die Deutschen, Osnabrück: Secolo, 2007. 4. Alec Cairncross, Years of Recovery. British Economic Policy 1945–51, London: Meuthen, 1985, p. 394.

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5. Cairncross, Years of Recovery, p. 388. 6. Paulmann, Staat und Arbeitsmarkt in Großbritannien, p. 337. 7. Pat Thane, ‘Women since 1945’, in Paul Johnson (ed.), Twentieth-Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change, London: Longman, 1994, pp. 394–5. 8. Ibid. 9. Paulmann, Staat und Arbeitsmarkt in Großbritannien, pp. 337–78. 10. ‘The Need for Foreign Labour. Problems not Insoluble’, Financial Times, 6.2.1947. 11. Cairncross, Years of Recovery, pp. 20–1, 36–7. 12. Elizabeth Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise. Women in Postwar Britain 1945–1968, London: Tavistock, 1980, p. 23. 13. Robert Miles and Diana Kay, ‘The TUC, Foreign Labour and the Labour Government 1945–1951’, Immigrants and Minorities, 1990, pp. 100–1. 14. For the British DP policy in Europe, see Johannes-Dieter Steinert and Inge Weber-Newth, ‘Introduction’, in Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution. Proceedings of the first international multidisciplinary conference, held at the Imperial War Museum London, 29–31 January 2003, Osnabrück: Secolo, 2005, pp. 3–8 (CD). Jacques Vernant, The Refugee in the Post-War World, London: Allen & Unwin, 1953, p. 343. 15. Population Policy in Great Britain, London: P.E.P., 1948, p. 114. 16. Zig Layton-Henry, The Politics of Immigration. Immigration, ‘Race’ and ‘Race’ Relations in Post-war Britain, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p. 27. 17. Royal Commission on Population. Report, London: H.M.S.O, 1949, p. 124. 18. Robert Miles, Racism after ‘Race Relations’, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 140. 19. Tannahill, Workers, p. 21. Kay and Miles, Refugees, 1992, pp. 48–9. 20. Tannahill, Workers, p. 23. 21. PRO FO 371/66709, Cabinet Conclusion (47) 9th Meeting. 22. Tannahill, Workers, p. 23. 23. The Battle for Output: Full Text of the White Paper, Cmd 7046, Economic Survey for 1947, London: H.M.S.O., 1947, p 40. 24. PRO FO 371/66709, Cabinet, Foreign Labour Committee, 12.2.1947. 25. Johannes Paulmann, Staat und Arbeitsmarkt in Großbritannien, p. 425. ‘More D. P.s for Industry. Problem of Union’, in Manchester Guardian, 20.2.1947. 26. Tannahill, Workers, p. 27. 27. Ibid., p. 30. 28. PRO FO 371/66711, Britisches Arbeitsministerium. Plan zur Anwerbung von Freiwilligen unter den verschleppten Personen zwecks Arbeitseinsatz in Groß-Britannien, 1947. 29. Julius Isaac, British Post-War Migration, Cambridge: University Press, 1954, p. 180. Of 17,600 DPs who had arrived in Britain by 28 July 1947, only 3900 were women. PRO FO 371/66713, Cabinet, Foreign Labour Committee, 31.7.1947. 30. PRO FO 371/66713, Cabinet, Foreign Labour Committee, 14.5., 31.7.1947. 31. Tannahill, Workers, p. 135. Bradford District Archives (BDA) 5D82/1/2 (National Union of Dyers, Bleachers & Textile Workers), Executive Committee, Minutes, 3.5.1947. 32. PRO HO 213/596, Operation Westward Ho. European Volunteer Workers and Dependants in the United Kingdom. See Steinert and Weber-Newth, Labour & Love.

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33. PRO FO 371/66709, COGA to ACA(BE) Vienna, 1.3.1947. David Cesarani, Justice Delayed. How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals, London: Heinemann, 1992, pp. 4–5. 34. William I. Thomas, Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted, Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1971 [1921], pp. 271, 308. See also Leo Lucassen, ‘The Gulf Between Long Term and Short Term Approaches in Immigration Studies. A Reassessment of the Chicago School’s Assimilation Concept’, in IMIS-Beiträge vol. 5 (1997), pp. 523, here: p. 9. 35. PRO LAB 26/236, LAB: Welfare of European Volunteer Workers. Notes on a Conference of representatives of National Organisations and of members of certain Government Departments, 5.11.1948. 36. PRO LAB 26/235, W.V.S.: Minutes of the Conference on the Welfare of Poles and E.V.Ws, 4.3.1949. 37. PRO LAB 26/235, W.V.S.: Minutes of the Conference on Welfare of Poles and E.V.Ws, 20.4.1948. 38. PRO LAB 26/247, J.G. Stewart, LAB, to H. H. Sellar, LAB, 31.5.1949. 39. PRO LAB 12/513, Minutes LAB, 26.8.1947. 40. PRO LAB 12/513, Minutes LAB, 31.7.1947; Committee for the Education of Public Opinion on Foreign Workers, 12.5.1948. 41. Workers from Abroad, London: Ministry of Labour and National Service, 1948. 42. PRO LAB 12/513, LAB, Committee for the Education of Public Opinion on Foreign Workers, 12.5.1948. 43. To Help You Settle in Britain, London: Central Office of Information for the Ministry of Labour and National Service, 1948. 44. See, for example, Report for the Year 1947, London: Ministry of Labour, 1948, pp. 103–5. 45. House of Commons, 29.4.1947, pp. 1706–7. 46. London Metropolitan University. Trades Union Congress Library Collections, HD 8388, Ministry of Education, Circular 150: To Local Education Authorities. Instruction of Displaced Persons, 15.7.1947. Kay and Miles, Refugees, p. 131. 47. PRO LAB 26/241, English for Foreign Workers. Report of an enquiry made by one of H. M. Inspectors of Schools during January, February and April, 1949, 20.7.1949. 48. Report for the Year 1948, London: Ministry of Labour, 1949, p. 90. 49. PRO LAB 26/83, LAB, Midland Region: Monthly Report on Welfare Work, Period Ended 14th April 1948, 14.4.1948. 50. ‘Oldham and Foreign Workers. A Hospitable Gesture’, Manchester Guardian, 5.1.1948. ‘Oldham’s Goodwill to Foreigners. Centre Thrown Open to European Workers’, Oldham Evening Chronicle, 5.1.1948. 51. ‘Workers for Lancashire’, in Manchester Guardian, 3.6.1947. 52. PRO LAB 26/80, LAB: Welfare Work – South Western Region, Month Ended 10th February 1948, 10.2.1948. 53. Tannahill, Workers, p. 66. 54. G. W. Killick, The History and Work of the Cotton Board, Guildford: Empire Cotton Growing Review, 1954, p. 8. 55. ‘For Foreign Workers’, in Bolton Evening News, 8.12.1950; PRO LAB 26/83, LAB, Midland Region: Monthly Report on Welfare Work, Period Ended 14th March

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1948, 14.3.1948; PRO LAB 26/71, LAB, London and South Eastern Regional Office: Monthly Report on Welfare Work – Period Ended 12th April, 1948. PRO LAB 23/236. PRO LAB 23/236, LAB Regional Office, Parklands, Bristol, to LAB, 28.10.1948. Report on 25 Years Work 1938–1963, London: Women’s Voluntary Services, 1963, p. 30. Kay and Miles, Refugees, p. 133. Report on 25 Years Work, p. 30. PRO FO 371/72040, Jean Hodgson, American Information Department, FO, The Personal Touch, 1948. ‘Baltic Girls New Life in Britain’, in Manchester Guardian, 21.10.1946. PRO LAB 26/235, W.V.S.: Minutes of the Conference on the Welfare of Poles and E.V.Ws., 4.3.1949.

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Part V Children

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12 The Return of Evacuated Children to Leningrad, 1944–6 Elizabeth White

During the Second World War around seven million Soviet children were evacuated from frontline areas.1 Approximately 500,000 were evacuated in groups from Leningrad. These went mainly to Siberia and the Urals, where they formed children’s homes for the duration of the war, usually on collective farms. This chapter looks at what happened to these children at the end of the war, how and under what conditions they returned to Leningrad, and the attempts by the state to reunite families separated by war. Some of the measures taken to deal with children back in the city and the limited public discussions on the impact of the war and evacuation on children are outlined. As elsewhere in Europe at the time, children were both pitied and feared, viewed as innocent victims of war but also as ‘outlaws’ and potential producers of present and future social disorder and crime. In the Soviet case such fears were heightened because of the earlier experience of mass child vagrancy. In the 1920s millions of abandoned children, the bezprizornie, had resulted from the sequence of violent catastrophes in Russia between 1914 and 1921, and had been one of the state’s most urgent social problems.2 In 1944, Leningrad’s authorities therefore did all they could to control the return of children to the city, help the reformation of families and manage children’s re-absorption into the education system as well as their public and private behaviour.

The evacuation and return of Leningrad civilians The evacuation of civilians, to say nothing of their return, has received very little attention from historians. Soviet and non-Soviet studies on the evacuation focused on the transfer of industry to the East, regarded 251

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as crucial to the eventual victory. Historical accounts of war childhood tended to be about young partisans or, in the case of Leningrad, children who stayed in the city during the Blockade.3 Recently, however, historians have begun looking at the civilian evacuation, although there are as yet no studies of the evacuation of children. In the case of Leningrad, several memoirs and oral histories have been published, as well as a collection of letters and diaries of child evacuees.4 This chapter draws on these as well as material from Leningrad government archives regarding the re-evacuation, which also include material by children themselves. From the moment of the German invasion in June 1941, the Leningrad City Soviet launched an increasingly intensive campaign to persuade non-essential civilians, particularly women and children, to leave. Despite some resistance, hundreds of thousands of Leningrad children were evacuated in 1941 and 1942. Around 220,000 were evacuated in groups before the Blockade was put into place in early September.5 From January 1942, more children left in groups across Lake Ladoga. These included those who had been taken into state care because relatives inside Leningrad had died or were unable to look after them. The blockaded city did not have the resources to look after the growing number of such children.6 Before the war in Leningrad there had been around a million children and young people below the age of 19, including 443,000 school children (aged 8–14).7 A few months prior to the end of the Blockade there were only 88,000 under-16-year-olds registered in the city.8 After the Blockade was lifted in January 1944, the Leningrad city authorities were inundated with requests from evacuees to return to the city. Among those desperate to get back were the evacuated children’s homes, and this concern was matched by children’s relatives in Leningrad, themselves in evacuation or in the army. There was a concerted effort by the state to strictly control civilian movements while the Soviet Union was still at war, and returning to Leningrad, as with all Soviet cities, required an official summons from the City Soviet.9 Despite the many pleas, children’s homes were only re-evacuated in the summer of 1945. The response to all requests was that the evacuated homes had to stay where they were. Relatives were forbidden from collecting children on their own. The authorities wanted to avoid an outflow of women workers taking weeks off to collect their children, as well as large numbers of children in the city whom it was feared would have minimal supervision. Nor did they want the burden of caring for those who had become orphaned

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while away, or whose parents or guardians were outside the city in the army or as evacuees. The decision not to allow the children’s homes to return in 1944 caused heartache for many. Some chose to ignore prohibitions on movement despite the risk. Vera Inber’s diary in March 1944 records how friends had smuggled their child back hidden in the bedding on their overnight train.10 Members of staff from the homes began returning without permission. Sent from the Soviet Union’s model socialist city, they had put up with extraordinary hardships and showed strength and resourcefulness in taking groups of children to remote villages and keeping them fed and clothed for years with very little support. By 1944 and 1945 such self-discipline was crumbling. Angry local authorities in the rear, left to cope, wrote to Leningrad demanding that these ‘labour deserters’ be tracked down and sent back to face charges.11 A 1944 request to return from the Director of the Leningrad Children’s Tuberculosis Sanatorium, which had been evacuated to Siberia, encapsulates the general mood. He wrote that: the longing to return to Leningrad grows continuously. This is both on the part of the patients, whose relatives and loved ones live and work in Leningrad, and also on the part of medical and administrative personnel, who have lived all their lives in Leningrad and have vital and unbreakable bonds there, as that is where their families are. These workers’ children have been away from their parents for two years now and judging by the mass of letters, the parents and loved ones of these sick children feel their absence and distance terribly and are ready to overcome any obstacles to return their children to Leningrad. The majority of the letters are full of the question: when will the Sanatorium be re-evacuated and if not soon, how can we come ourselves and take back our children? A considerable number, having received no definite reply, are coming from Leningrad and taking their children away.12 The City Soviet’s reply was uncompromising; neither the sanatorium nor individual children were to be returned in 1944. Staff were accused of irresponsibility, and the Soviet demanded details of all children who had been taken back to Leningrad illegally.13 In the summer of 1944, the Leningrad official responsible for Leningrad Children’s Homes in the Kirov region of the Urals complained that ‘the suitcase-moods of certain Leningraders are lowering the educational and economic work of the institutions’.14 He went on

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to write that members of staff were leaving without permission, while those who had permission to return: bombard the educational authorities and my office with requests to be allowed to go, and live only with the thought of returning to Leningrad. The very fact of having a summons totally knocks them off course, and they become no use at all.15 During the war the evacuation of children from frontline areas had been presented as a triumph for the Soviet state. Leningrad’s press frequently published letters from parents thanking the Party and Stalin for protecting their children. Life in evacuation for children sent out in groups was presented as within Soviet traditions of collective upbringing, and therefore positive and representing a kind of continuity. In reality, however, many parents knew that conditions were dreadful. Once the Blockade was lifted and the Red Army was pushing the front westwards, they were desperate to get their children out of the countryside and back to Leningrad. It has been calculated that almost 2.5 million Soviet children died in the rear during the war.16 Rumours of the poor conditions the children were being kept in regularly swept Leningrad. Investigations into the condition of children’s homes in the rear painted a bleak and devastating picture in many homes (although not all) of hunger, deprivation, disease and sometimes deliberate neglect.17 Telegrams and letters from children’s homes asking for help if they could not be re-evacuated arrived back in Leningrad in 1944 and 1945. The most common complaints were about insufficient food, lack of shoes and makeshift accommodation which afforded no protection from the harsh climate of the Urals and Siberia: children were still dying in evacuation as the war was ending, and many homes were desperate to re-evacuate in 1944 to avoid spending another winter in those conditions.18 There was also the danger of epidemics; that year urgent messages were sent to Leningrad that 80 per cent of the children in one of their homes in Tatarstan had succumbed to a malaria epidemic. The home had no doctor and was hardly receiving any food. They begged for a rescue operation to be mounted while the Volga was still navigable.19 Due to the Blockade and the superior (in relative terms) medical facilities, Leningrad was largely spared the epidemics which affected the Soviet rear. A recent study of a group of people who had been evacuated from Leningrad as children revealed that although their current memories of the war differed in certain ways to those who had stayed in Leningrad,

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hunger and death were practically equally strong memories in both groups.20 Unknown numbers of Leningrad children died in evacuation from disease and poor nutrition exacerbated by the harsh climates and the long, dangerous journeys undertaken to get to the rear. Many of those evacuated in the spring of 1942 were already dying. It must have been particularly hard for the surviving parents of these children to deal with their loss in the post-war era, without a body or grave and often without even knowing the cause or place of death. Even if conditions in some homes were better than others (typically groups which had existed before the war, for example, evacuated nurseries or crèches where the staff and children already knew each other), the evacuees, adults and children alike, worked for their own survival; as noted, the majority of homes were on collective farms. A report on Leningrad children’s homes in the Kemerovo region of Siberia in the summer of 1944 is representative. The staff worked 14 to 16 hours a day on the land. The homes had no textbooks, teaching aids or even rooms to teach in. The children instead worked: ‘from the age of eight the children […] play an active role in the self-management of the home. They are on duty in the bedrooms, dining room and kitchen, they keep the communal areas clean and tidy, they mend clothes, do the laundry, chop and saw wood etc’.21 The report’s author noted that the children were also ‘very involved in agricultural work’.22 For the majority of Leningrad evacuees, there was virtually no chance of getting an education. The desire to get children back into school in Leningrad was the reason most frequently cited by parents in their pleas to the City Soviet to return their children, possibly reflecting their own appraisal of grounds most likely to be supported by the state. The poor conditions in the homes led to children running away, exactly the problem the Soviet government wished to avoid. Due to the disruption and extreme poverty caused by the war, child vagrancy again became a mass phenomenon. There were regular police campaigns to pick up vagrant children in the rear, among which were found to be evacuee children who were trying to get back home.23 In the chaotic conditions towards the end of the war, when there were mass population movements west, many children were prepared to strike out on their own. Groups of adolescents were illegally entering Leningrad in the summer of 1943; these must have included runaway evacuees.24 These children, particularly orphans, risked becoming part of a vagrant underclass which would meet with little sympathy in the harsh postwar period. During 1945, Leningrad police processed an astonishing 76,787 children who had been picked up for various reasons, of which

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8752 were categorised as homeless.25 Although those not committing serious crimes should have been sent to children’s homes, in reality many would have ended up in the penal system.

Family reunions and children left behind Unknown comrades! Distant friends! Please keep my son healthy. He is all I have left in the world and he catches cold easily […] In the event of my death, I beg you to help set Pavlik up the best you can.26 The evacuated children’s homes were given permission to return in the summer of 1945, a year-and-a-half after the Blockade ended. The Leningrad City Soviet’s Representatives in the regions helped to organise the return journeys. In July and August 1945, 36 Leningrad children’s homes returned from the Omsk region, a total of 2700 people. The children returned on festively decorated trains and were greeted with official receptions at Leningrad’s Moscow Station. The children were given a general sanitation check (in common with all returnees to the city) and then taken to collection points before being released to family members or guardians. These returns were widely reported on and were constructed as a joyful and momentous occasion for the whole city. Leningrad newspapers carried photographs of smiling children in front of famous city landmarks almost daily. Children were deployed as symbols of the city’s survival, evidence of the paternalism of the state and emblems of a hopeful future. Not all children evacuated from Leningrad came back. Those who had died in evacuation were never publicly mentioned. Additionally, according to Sovnarkom Order No. 927 from 6 April 1945, On the Reevacuation of Children to Leningrad, if a child had no parent or guardian actually in Leningrad, they could not return with the group.27 This was challenged by representatives for children’s homes, the staff and family members. Red Army officers also wrote to the Leningrad Soviet on behalf of servicemen and women to request that their children be exempted and be allowed to return and cared for by the state in Leningrad. Although service personnel were usually entitled to special treatment, all such requests were turned down. This government decision was an incredibly painful one for those it affected, and also for some of those involved in enforcing it. However, from 1944 until long after the war ended, the Leningrad Soviet was involved in a diligent and exhaustive attempt to trace and reunite missing family members, scattered all over the Soviet Union. It also supported and promoted a

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number of schemes to adopt or foster evacuated orphans and allow them to return to Leningrad. In May 1945 the Leningrad Representative for children’s homes in Tatarstan wrote a bitter letter to the Education Department and the Leningrad Soviet asking for clarification over whether the following categories of children were forbidden to return with the group. The list he compiled, based on the children he knew, reveals the difficult fates of Leningrad’s children in evacuation as the war drew to an end: 1. Orphans under 14, who have lost their parents during the war (father died at front, mother died in Leningrad. No-one found to replace parents and seemingly no sign of any property or accommodation left for the children) 2. Children who do not know where their parents are (father gone to the front, but no news and not known whether alive or not) 3. Children whose parents are in the Red Army and in touch with them but who have no guardians in Leningrad at the moment 4. Children with parents outside Leningrad who don’t want to take them to their own place of evacuation 5. Children whose parents are living in Tatarstan but refuse to take their children out of the home because they cannot support them 6. Sibling orphans, one over 14 and therefore can be taken back to Leningrad on work placement, but the other under 14. Keep them together as the older wishes to go back to Leningrad? 7. Children of former employees of the home who were made redundant but could not take their children away as they could not support them 8. Children on work placement here who wish to go back to their parents in Leningrad.28 He requested that any children left behind be grouped together, ‘which will at least give some possibility of reducing the trauma of having to part with their Leningrad friends and give them the hope of returning to their beloved city, a hope for which they have now been living for four years’.29 A Leningrad children’s home in Yerevan similarly pleaded that all the children be allowed to return together to avoid psychological damage, although only half had any contact with their parents.30 A quarter of the 1704 Leningrad children in the Kemerovo region of Siberia had lost both parents by 1944.31 The Soviet remained resolute and orphans, or those with no-one to look after them in Leningrad, were not allowed to return. For example 370 Leningrad children were

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left behind in Omsk in 1945 and were placed in five special children’s homes.32 There were attempts to circumvent this law by members of staff who tried to trace a living relative or someone willing to foster them, or even offered to look after the children back in Leningrad.33 Fourteen-year olds could be selected to return to Leningrad as apprentices at the Trade or Factory Schools. In May 1945, for example, the government ordered the Leningrad Soviet to recruit 1400 young people for Ministry of Textiles Trade Schools in the city from Leningrad’s evacuated orphans.34 Trade School 28 in Leningrad was specifically for orphans, some of whom may have been returning evacuees.35 Leningraders were encouraged to adopt or foster Leningrad orphans. Adoption, fostering and guardianship schemes were widely promoted during and after the war, involving hundreds and thousands of children. An article in Leningradskaya Pravda in March 1946 told the exemplary story of a woman who had adopted three Leningrad orphans from the evacuated home her children had been in.36 Stories and articles extolling adoption usually portrayed postmenopausal women as the ideal adopter; younger women were clearly meant to be contributing to the birth rate. Factory collectives ‘adopted’ the children of colleagues who had died in the war. Workplaces organised children’s homes for them and arranged for orphans to return from the rear. Like all socialist initiatives in Leningrad, this was meant to have originated in the Kirov Plant. In July 1945 the Director of the Kirov Plant’s Children’s Home announced that 20 children whose parents had died had returned with the others and pledged that ‘the factory will adopt and raise all its orphans’.37 In May 1945 the Proletarian Victory Shoe Factory requested permission from the Leningrad Soviet ‘to bring back along with the children’s home from Kirov region 12 orphans, the children of our workers who were killed at the front or who perished during the Blockade […] The factory pledges that it will find somewhere for the children to live, guarantees that it will clothe the children and provide carers for them and will partially feed them from its own allotments’.38 This form of fostering after the war must surely have been unique to the Soviet Union and it would be interesting to discover how widespread it was and the results. What mixture of exploitation, kindness, formalism or bonds of social solidarity determined these children’s subsequent fates? The Leningrad Soviet received thousands of enquiries from relatives trying to trace missing children whom they believed (or hoped) had been evacuated. Because of the Blockade, Leningraders mobilised in the summer of 1941 had often had no news of their families since

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then. They wrote to the Soviet (or, more usually, commanding officers wrote on their behalf) trying to find out whether their children were alive, and if so, where they were. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, cousins, wider kin and family friends also wrote trying to track down missing children. Workplaces wrote on employees’ behalf. It usually took between three and four months for the Soviet to find out where a child was, or had been, if the child had died. There was a corresponding flood of enquiries from children’s homes trying to find out what had happened to the children’s relatives, if contact had been broken. Senior army officers intervened on behalf of children they came across. In April 1944 the Commander of the Siberian Military Region wrote to the Leningrad Soviet regarding an 11-year old evacuee whom he had met in a home in Novosibirsk. According to this boy, his mother had gone to buy food in Leningrad in 1941 and never returned. The boy had an amputated right hand and the Commander hoped this might make him easier to identify, asking the Soviet to try to find the boy’s relatives on his behalf.39 While various bodies were assigned responsibility for tracing lost Soviet citizens, including the NKVD and the Union of Societies of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, most of the work in Leningrad was done by the City Soviet. Low-level state employees spent many thousands of hours in the mid-1940s traversing Leningrad’s streets and knocking on thousands of apartment doors trying to locate family members, to say nothing of the millions of telegrams they sent and received.40 The state’s bureaucratic apparatus came into its own and most of the records in Leningrad fortunately survived the war. Searchers consulted birth registries, the records of local soviets, call-up registers of district military committees, local education departments and records of children’s homes, house registers, the police and the City Address Bureau. One of the reasons that so many children had become ‘lost’ in evacuation was that they had been rescued alone from flats where their immediate carers had died. During the Blockade, the authorities had prioritised finding such children and Komsomol members, teachers and House Managers did regular trawls through apartments for them. These children ended up in homes, most of which were subsequently evacuated. One of these children was nine-year-old Tanya Savicheva, whose diary recording the consecutive deaths from starvation of members of her family over the winter of 1941 was used at the Nuremburg Trials. She was found alone, and was evacuated, but died shortly after. Another child of that time though who now features alongside Tanya Savicheva in the permanent exhibition on the Blockade at

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the St Petersburg City Museum was Ida Bogacheva.41 In early 1942 a Komsomol girl found her alone, aged eight, in a flat with the dead bodies of her mother and grandmother. She was put into a children’s home which was then evacuated. As an orphan (there is no mention of a father), Ida would not have been allowed to return after the war ended. However, in 1945 a staff member in her children’s home helped her trace two elderly sisters, friends of her grandmother, who lived in a village near Leningrad where Ida had spent her summer holidays before the war. The staff member contacted them on Ida’s behalf and pleaded with them to foster her so that she could come back to Leningrad. ‘We live only with the dream of returning to our beloved city’, she wrote, using the most common phrase employed by Leningraders in all their letters.42 The women agreed and went through the necessary procedures with the authorities, accepting legal responsibility and guaranteeing material support. Thus Ida came back to Leningrad, where she was still living in 2005. Many children though would not have been so fortunate, and the war and the state response to it dealt them a terrible blow – the loss of their parents and then permanent resettlement thousands of miles from a familiar environment. It is probably impossible to calculate how many children this could have affected, as family reunions continued for years after the war’s end. The figure must run into at least tens, if not hundreds, of thousands though, as the rule applied to Moscow as well as Leningrad and probably therefore other large Soviet cities, where residency was traditionally tightly controlled.43 Not all Leningrad children who had left reached or remained in the rear. In 1941, some children had been mistakenly evacuated towards the German advance and ended up behind enemy lines. Other evacuees were sent to the Don and Kuban regions in spring 1942, which were later occupied by the Germans. As the invasion happened in summer, children were also on holiday with relatives or in Pioneer camps in areas that were occupied. There were cases of Red Army soldiers from Leningrad discovering their own children in Byelorussian villages they liberated in 1944.44 The Red Army attracted children as it moved westwards.45 A letter from a division in Lithuania in December 1944 informed the Leningrad Soviet that a 12-year-old from Leningrad was being looked after by them. They wanted help tracing his family. At the beginning of the war the boy had been sent to stay with his grandmother in the Kalinin region. This region was then occupied and the boy and his grandmother taken to Lithuania, possibly to work, where the Red Army found him. This particular child was extremely fortunate – the Soviet established that his father was still alive despite

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having been in the Red Army since June 1941, and his mother had survived the Blockade. In a rare break with protocol, the Soviet employees, who normally kept a neutral tone in all correspondence, wrote to the Army Commander that the boy’s mother ‘asks us to pass on to you her deepest gratitude. She is beside herself with joy at the unexpected news that her son has been saved’.46 In another case the Commander of a Red Army division fighting in Hungary in 1944 wrote to the Leningrad Soviet that he had a mortally wounded 14-year-old with him from Leningrad. The boy had said his parents had died in the Blockade but he believed his sister was still alive there. The Commander hoped to trace her so that the boy could have a letter from someone before he died.47 It is possible that this boy had joined the army in evacuation, as many underage boys did, or had been one of the groups of early evacuees who were sent out from Leningrad and caught up in the German advance, ending up in occupied territory.

Children back in the city: Reconstructing education and reinforcing Kulturnost’ The majority of Leningrad’s children spent the war years separated from their families. Mothers, having taken their little ones to the station in the first months of the war, greeted adolescents four years later. During the period responsible for forming a child’s character, these children lived outside the influence of their fathers and mothers. This fact alone is the cause of a whole series of difficulties that have arisen in many families. School kollektivy have had to be reestablished from children assembling from all corners of the country, which has not been easy either. Everything seen, heard and experienced during the war could not help but affect a child’s psyche and their nervous system. Our children now need increased attention and special care – this is the basic thought of the letters we have received in the editorial offices.48 Between 1945 and 1947, hundreds of thousands of people returned to Leningrad, including many children. In October 1945 the head of the NKVD in Leningrad identified the return of evacuees, including children, as a policing problem.49 Where children were concerned, the task for the authorities was to reconstruct education and reimpose Soviet behavioural norms for children of self-discipline, cultured behaviour and loyalty and obedience. Returning child evacuees were referred

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to as ‘our little voyagers’, but the impact of the evacuation gave the authorities concern.50 An article in Leningradskaya Pravda in February 1946 described one Trade School of 300 adolescents, among which were not only orphans but also ‘those who have roamed all over the Soviet Union’.51 It was stressed that this particular group needed ‘special attention’. The city authorities also worried about the perceived danger to public order of a general lack of supervision over children. ‘The conditions of life are such that they are presented with far too much independence’, noted an editorial on Leningrad’s returning children.52 As noted, the Soviet authorities wanted to forestall social problems resulting from child vagrancy. Soviet official discourse was usually positive, unambiguous and forward looking, particularly where it concerned favoured categories of children, such as ‘workers’ children’ from Leningrad, as all Leningrad children were usually described. Most articles, stories and reports on Leningrad children at this time emphasised their resilience, mental robustness, optimism and their bright futures in the Soviet system. Unlike in the West, there was little mention of theories of psychological trauma and certainly no emphasis on the longterm effects of the separation of children from their mothers as a result of the war.53 Women had always been expected to work in the Soviet Union, and state childcare had been presented as a positive good. There was open concern about juvenile delinquency and general ‘bad’ behaviour on the part of children, particularly boys as the war drew to a close.54 Yet state rhetoric insisted, even during the war and difficult post-war years, that the Soviet Union had been and still was the best place for a child to grow up. This approach was heightened by the victory over Germany, which was presented as the Soviet system’s irrefutable vindication. In the immediate post-war period there was a continuation of the approach of the 1930s, where the Soviet state was presented as so caring for children that any ‘bad’ children must be really ‘bad’, and where parents were also held responsible for the failings of such children. The fact that many children had lost one or both parents, or suffered terribly in other ways, was never mentioned. However, while parents were urged to take more responsibility for their children, the basic message endlessly reinforced through the state media was that looking after children was a task for all society. In July 1945 the Leningrad Soviet resolved that one of the most essential tasks for the next quarter was ‘getting schools ready for the upcoming year, the supply of the necessary teaching staff and the complete registration of all children of school age in school’.55 By 1944 only 88 of Leningrad’s pre-war 446 schools were in working order.56

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School repair was a top priority for the authorities, with 69 schools restored during summer 1944.57 By September 1945 there were 317 schools with 254,825 pupils, the following school year there were 365 schools with 307,109 pupils and by September 1947 there were 388 schools with 324,000 children.58 When the Leningrad Soviet discussed organising reconstruction, they emphasised the importance of rebuilding schools, children’s summer camps, cultural centres and sanatoria.59 Dissatisfaction was constantly expressed with the speed of school reconstruction and pressure kept up through the Leningrad press. The authorities strove to get all schools back to their intended usage and despite the urgent nature of the housing crisis, requests by workplaces to temporarily rehouse workers in school buildings were turned down.60 They tried to overcome material problems through the ubiquitous system of patronage (sheftsvo), whereby workplaces ‘adopted’ schools and helped rebuild and equip them.61 Komsomol units in factories were to help adopted schools and school-age Komsomol members were to collect 300 bricks to rebuild their own schools.62 The re-evacuation and housing of primary and secondary school teachers was prioritised in 1944–5.63 Over the summer of 1945 the Soviet requested the re-evacuation of a further 4312 teachers, at a time when a summons back to Leningrad was highly prized.64 The message about getting back into education was strongly pushed by the Soviet government. In August 1945 the Soviet government published a resolution demanding that House Managers draw up lists of all school-age children in their apartment blocks and pass them to the authorities within three days.65 Parents were urged not to consider the years spent in evacuation as a waste of time educationally, and attempts were made to praise the time as a positive experience of a collective upbringing, but in reality the Leningrad Soviet was extremely concerned about these ‘pedagogically abandoned children’.66 Extra school lessons were put on for evacuees, who the Leningrad Soviet’s Education Department acknowledged had lost the habit of disciplined study, lacked basic academic skills and needed ‘special attention’.67 Some were held back a year. The high education standards expected of Leningrad children are revealed by an article in which a teacher expressed shock that few evacuated children had read any Dickens, most only knew Shakespeare by hearsay, and none had even heard of Schiller.68 In May 1944 the Director of a Leningrad girls school wrote that the evacuated children ‘have gained many practical skills and have become more serious and highly motivated in their studies. However, nearly all have gaps in their education’.69 He complained

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that most only went to bed at one or two in the morning having worked after school. Education continued to be displaced for older children in favour of work. In the 1945/6 school year the overwhelming majority, 68.9 per cent, of those studying were in the junior classes (7–10 year olds), 22.3 per cent were aged 11–13, but only 6.1 per cent were in the senior classes (ages 14–15).70 Other aspects of a proper Soviet childhood had to be reconstructed out of the chaos and trauma of war. At the beginning of the 1944 school year, editorials in Leningradskaya Pravda were concerned with the problems of re-absorbing children into the education system and emphasising the importance of discipline, politeness, obedience and propriety from the returning children.71 Their concerns show the importance in Soviet culture of appropriate civilised behaviour (kul’turnost). In 1944 the Director of the State Hermitage Museum’s Children’s Home had collected some of the diaries, drawings and letters of the children and staff from the various Leningrad homes in the Urals. For many years afterwards she could not find a publisher, due to ‘over-cautious editors’.72 Her diary records her loss of control over some of the boys in the group who formed a gang and began stealing food, lying and swearing. She writes that these formerly well-behaved boys (the children of employees of Leningrad’s most prestigious museum) reminded her of the bezprizornie child vagrants portrayed in popular Soviet films.73 Possibly one of the reasons why no publisher was found until the 1990s was that it showed problematic rather than heroic behaviour on the part of the children. As the war drew to a close, there was increasing public concern about its negative impact on children’s behaviour and Teachers’ Congresses demanded the application of severe measures to reimpose discipline. In February 1944 the General Secretary of the Komsomol complained to the Soviet government that some teachers were taking discipline too seriously and inflicting unsuitable punishments on children for infractions of school discipline, such as placing them in isolation cells, escorting them with armed guards and even having them actually arrested.74 This fear of children’s behaviour was not limited to the teaching profession. As stated above, the authorities did not want children back who would be unsupervised and could potentially become a threat to public order. The authorities tried to restart the state childcare network. In December 1944 all enterprises were ordered to provide childcare facilities and return all requisitioned kindergartens and crèches to their original usage.75 It is hardly likely in the extremely difficult conditions of Leningrad’s reconstruction that this happened. Possibly pre-war

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patterns of childcare continued, when ‘extended mothering’ by female kin or older non-working females in the communal apartments provided what support there was for working women, although this must have been seriously affected by the destruction of pre-war kinship and social networks by death, mobilisation and evacuation, as well as the chaotic housing situation. Older children probably were largely left alone and lack of childcare partly accounts for the high labour turnover in this period. Memoirs from those who were children in the early postwar years emphasise the freedom from supervision and the street ‘gang’ culture which developed in the bombed-out and chaotic city.76 Most women in the Soviet Union of course had worked before the war and a mother working was never identified as a problem. It was that they had sole responsibility for childcare as men were absent or dead and wider kinship networks had been disrupted by the war, although this was often left unsaid. Letters from ‘concerned citizens’ about children misbehaving were ubiquitous in this period. Juvenile misbehaviour was presented as something new and unprecedented and there were calls for the ‘good old Leningrad traditions’ to return. Concerns about truancy and a perceived growth in juvenile crime were discussed openly, particularly street trade by children, fighting and general ‘mischief’. The behaviour of boys was a particular problem. They were criticised for smoking, drinking and fighting on the street, in cinemas and in spaces assigned for ‘proper’ behaviour such as the Houses of Culture and Workers’ Clubs. Good citizens were encouraged to keep an eye out for unsupervised children and intervene in any bad behaviour. In general a kind of ‘emotional’ adoption of children was encouraged alongside formal adoption. Stories and articles encouraged people to take a paternal or maternal attitude towards all children and young people, particularly those at risk of falling into criminal activity, mainly adolescent boys. More structured measures were also introduced. In August 1945, Social Commissions for Assisting the Reconstruction and Maintenance of Housing in Leningrad were set up in large apartment blocks. Their main function was nominally repairs and sanitation; however, a large part of their work was keeping the apartments’ children away from the much-feared ‘lure of the street’. ‘What is most pivotal in our work with children?’ asked one Commission member. ‘It is keeping them within the yard, distracting them from the lure of the street, offering a more interesting life in the yard than in the streets. The importance of this scarcely needs stressing’.77 The Komsomol, whose traditional role in looking after children and adolescents was heightened by the war and its

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aftermath, was also meant to organise ‘children’s corners’ in apartments. Ironically what many who were children at the time remember with pleasure is precisely the opportunities for unregulated play in the yards of the communal apartments. The authorities passed many regulations on children’s time and movements; a night-time curfew was imposed on under-16-year-olds and schoolchildren were forbidden to visit cinemas during the week other than in organised groups. It was also illegal to buy anything from a child, apart from specific collections for schools. Fears about juvenile delinquency in the aftermath of war were common to all European countries. In Leningrad, however, along with the returning children, the Soviet project of ‘acculturation’ (kulturnost) had to be reinstated. This was particularly the case for Leningrad’s children, who occupied a special place in the image of Soviet children. They were constructed as ‘workers’ children’ from the most advanced city of the Soviet Union and the cradle of the Revolution. Much had been made of this during the evacuation, when it was reported that Leningrad’s children were carrying out ‘cultural-enlightenment’ work on collective farms and introducing elements of progressive working-class urban culture into Russia’s remote villages. In reality most children’s homes were involved in a struggle for bare survival and the children adapted to the village, rather than the other way round. The war had tipped the urban into the rural, yet urbanisation and the ‘civilised standards’ associated with it had been at the heart of the Soviet project during the 1930s. A 1980s study of war childhoods, written when it was permissible to express nostalgia for the Russian peasant world and regret at the destructive costs of collectivisation, expressed approval that Leningrad child evacuees ended up wearing lapti, traditional Russian peasant footwear.78 In the 1940s such cultural exchange was meant to go the other way and the children had to be re-urbanised. One Leningrad woman who had not been evacuated remembered being struck by the ‘external appearance and the abruptness of the movements’ of the returning children.79 There were complaints about the problems of teaching reevacuated children the ‘cultural traditions of the Leningrad flat’, as they did not know how to use a toilet.80 The papers regularly carried cautionary tales of young boys, unused to city transport, losing their legs jumping on and off trams.81

Conclusion The majority of children in groups returned in the summer of 1945, although some children’s homes only returned in 1946. Some of the

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children initially left behind would have also come back in 1946–7, as relatives finally emerged from the wartime chaos. The children came back to a city with little for them. In October 1945 the Leningrad Soviet noted a particular shortage of children’s clothes, shoes, toys, linen and furniture.82 In January 1947 a woman was sentenced to five years in prison for snatching children and forcibly taking their clothes, all the same size and gender, leading one to speculate that she was stealing them for her own child.83 Those who were children then remember the extreme, almost ‘fantastical’ poverty of the post-war years.84 The state had tried to support Leningrad children in evacuation, ensured that the majority returned, did what it could to reunite families and pushed for the reconstruction of primary and secondary education. The authorities were overwhelmed by the elemental desire to return home and were forced to make harsh decisions based on their perception of the resources at their disposal. Yet the decision not to re-evacuate orphans reinforces the critique of the Soviet state’s impact; that while it did not attempt to determine each citizen’s life at every moment, when it did it was decisive for a person’s fate.85 Thus orphans joined other groups of Leningraders blocked from returning to the city after the war, such as ethnic Germans and Finns and skilled workers whose plants remained in the East. For these groups, displacement in wartime became resettlement. There was enormous sympathy for children who had been orphaned during the war, and many people who had lost their own children were willing to adopt, foster or care for them. This was particularly true in Leningrad with such a high number of civilian losses. There was also sympathy for children in general who had suffered in evacuation and probably returned to an incomplete family, at the very least. Yet the harsh post-war conditions and the triumphant reaffirmation of the Stalinist system meant that officially there was little tolerance for children who did not conform to the image of the child grateful for what was still presented even under these conditions as a ‘happy childhood’ surrounded by the paternalistic love of the state.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

John Dunstan, Soviet Schooling in the Second World War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, p. 82. See Alan Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened. Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. For the changing representations of children and the Second World War, see Catriona Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991,

268

4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

The Return of Evacuated Children to Leningrad, 1944–6 New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007; for Leningrad, see Lisa Kirschenbaum, ‘Innocent Victims and Heroic Defenders. Children and the Siege of Leningrad’ in James Marten (ed), Children and War, New York: NYU Press, 2002, pp. 279–90. E. Maksimova (ed.), Deti voennoi poroi, Moscow: Polizdat, 1984; Elena Kozhina, Through the Burning Steppe: A Memoir of Wartime Russia, 1942–1943, New York: Riverhead Books, 2000; Mikhail German, Slozhnoe proshedshee, St Petersburg: Iskusstvo, 2000; L. V. Antonova, O. R. Orlova and D. G. Shprintsyn, Deti Leningrada na Urale. Vospominaniya, dnevniki, pis’ma, dokumenty o zhizni na Urale detei, evakuirov iz Leningrada vo vremya VOV 1941–1945, Perm, 2000. Leningrad v osade. Sbornik dokumentov o geroicheskoi oborone Leningrada v gody velikoi otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1944, St Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1995, p. 301. Leningrad v osade, p. 301. This article looks specifically at children evacuated in groups; others went with families in workplace evacuations. John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–1944, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 14; Leningradskaya Pravda (LP), 6 November 1944, p. 2. Leningrad v osade, p. 348. Before the war one had to have state permission to live in Leningrad. Urban residence, particularly of major cities, had been strictly controlled in the Soviet Union via the passport system and registration requirements introduced in 1932. These formed the basis of many of the wartime and post-war restrictions. Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary, London: Hutchinson, 1971, p. 190. TsGASPb (Tsentralnnyi Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga: Central State Archive of St Petersburg), f 7384, op 17, d 1522, ll 6, 13; f 7384, op 17, d 1523, l 90; f 7384, op 17, d 1524, l 46. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1246, l 46. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1246, l 32. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1246, l 97. Ibid. V. Zima, Mentalitet narodov Rossii v voine 1941–1945 godov, Moscow: RAN, 2000, p. 49. See files in RGASPI (Russkii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsialnoi i Politicheskoi Istorii), f 17, op 126, d 19. TsGASPb, f 7384, d 17, op 1246, l 12; 14; 37. TsGASPb, f 7384, d 17, op 1246, l 70. Julie Borossa and Marina Gulina, ‘Child Survivors of the Siege of Leningrad: Notes from a Study on War Trauma and its Long Term Effects on Individuals’, in Children in War: The International Journal of Evacuee and War Child Studies, November 2005, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 51–2. TsGASPb, f 7384, d 17, op 1246, ll 43–6. TsGASPb, f 7384, d 17, op 1246, l 46. RGASPI, f 17, op 126, d 19, ll 20–38. Leningrad v osade, p. 346. Aleksander Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi: 1945–1982, St Petersburg: Ostrov, 2005, p. 90.

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26. Excerpt from a letter by a Leningrad soldier to the children’s home where his son lived, telling them that the child’s mother and grandmother had died. Antonova, Orlova and Shprintsyn, Deti Leningrada na Urale, p. 54. 27. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1514, l 54. 28. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1514, ll 44–5. 29. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1514, l 45. 30. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1514, l 55. 31. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1246, l 43. 32. RGASPI, f 17, op 126, d 19, l 21. 33. E Maksimova (ed.), Deti voennoi poroi, Moscow: Polizdat, 1984, p. 91. 34. TsGASPb, f 327, op 1, d 31, l 54. 35. Vozrozhdenie: vospominaniya, ocherki i dokumenty o vosstanovlenie Leningrada, Leningrad, 1977, p. 151. 36. LP, 8 March 1946, p. 3. 37. LP, 28 July 1945, p. 3. 38. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1514, l 36. 39. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1249, l 11. 40. LP, 8 February 1945, p. 4. 41. GMISPb (Gosudarstvennyi Muzei Istorii Sankta-Peterburga: State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg), fdf kp. 426566. 42. GMISPb, fdf kp. 426566. 43. Catriona Kelly, Children’s World, p. 246. 44. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1249, l 284. 45. Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War. The Red Army 1939–45, London: Faber and Faber, 2005, pp. 214–16. 46. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1523, l 28. 47. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1249, l 286. 48. LP, 11 July 1946, p. 3. 49. LP, 23 October 1945, pp. 2–3. 50. LP, 14 November 1944, p. 3. 51. LP, 21 February 1946, p. 3. 52. LP, 20 October 1945, p. 3. 53. See Denise Riley, War in the Nursery. Theories of the Child and Mother, London: Virago, 1983. 54. Catriona Kelly, Children’s World, pp. 221–57 and Dunstan, Soviet Schooling. 55. TsGASPb, f 324, op 1, d 32, l 220. 56. LP, 6 November 1944, p. 2. 57. KP, 5 October 1944, p. 3. 58. Leningrad v pervom gody novoi stalinskoi pyatietki, Lenizdat, 1947, p. 45. 59. TsGASPb, f 324, op 1, d 33, l 53–9; TsGASPb, f 324, op 1, d 32, l 238. 60. TsGASPb, f 7384, op 17, d 1510, l 137. 61. LP, 11 July 1946, p. 3. 62. LP, 16 May 1944, p. 3. 63. LP, 9 August 1944, p. 1. 64. TsGASPb, f 327, op 1, d 31, l 45. 65. LP, 10 August 1944, p. 3. 66. TsGASPb, f 324, op 1, d 32, l 134. 67. LP, 25 May 1944, p. 3. 68. LP, 12 January 1945, p. 3.

270 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

The Return of Evacuated Children to Leningrad, 1944–6 LP, 3 December 1944, p. 3. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 34. LP, 3 October 1944, p. 1. Antonova, Orlova and Shprintsyn, Deti Leningrada, p. 4. Antonova, Orlova and Shprintsyn, Deti Leningrada, p. 27. RGASPI, f 17, op 126, d 19, ll 8–9. LP, 17 December 1944, p. 3. See Kozhina, Through the Burning Steppe and German, Slozhnoe proshedshee. Vosstanovim nashi zhilishcha. Opyt raboty obshchestv komissii sodeistviya vosstanovleniyu i eksploatatsii domokhozyistv. g. Leningrada, Lenizdat, 1948, p.60 Maksimova (ed.), Deti voennoi poroi, p. 89. Vozrozhdenie, p. 112. VL, 7 January 1946, p. 2. LP, 17 July 1945, p. 3; LP, 27 July 1946, pp. 3–4. Lenizdat, 1946, p. 145. LP, 31 January 1947, p. 4. Vakser, Poslevoennyi Leningrad, p. 90. Gijs Kessler, ‘The Passport System and State Control over Population Flows in the Soviet Union’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 42, 2–4, April–December 2001, pp. 477–504.

13 Relocating Children During the Greek Civil War, 1946–9: State Strategies and Propaganda Loukianos Hassiotis

Introduction The experience of total war in Greece during the 1940s had enormous implications for almost all groups in society, including children. Children participated in various ways both in the Second World War and the ensuing Civil War: as active members of the leftist guerrillas; as orphans or minors without a guardian, moving from place to place in search of food and shelter; as political prisoners either of the occupying armies or, afterwards, of the national Greek authorities; as evacuees either of the Athens government or of the communist guerrillas to encampments, far away from their families and their homes; and as a special recipient group of propaganda by both sides of the civil strife. This chapter focuses on the state strategy and propaganda regarding the relocation of children from the countryside to the so-called childtowns (paidopoleis) during the Civil War. Contemporary historiography, which otherwise is experiencing an unprecedented boom in the study of the Greek Civil War, has few examples to present on the subject. Most of the relevant studies refer mainly to the relocation policy of the communist side or/and its international dimension at the beginning of the Cold War.1 The work by Vervenioti represents the major exception to this rule; hopefully it will be joined by others in the near future.2

‘The children’s issue’ in the Civil War Children had been victims as well as participants in national conflicts prior to the 1940s.3 The most recent example had been the Spanish Civil War in which the evacuation of children from the war zones and their 271

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‘protection’ from the enemy (or indeed their relief from its dangerous influences) became a political issue for both camps of the conflict. Supporters of the Republican government organized the evacuation of thousands of children abroad, mainly to France, Britain, Belgium, the Soviet Union and Mexico, whereas Franco’s followers launched a tremendous enterprise for the relief as well as the indoctrination of children who were considered victims of the war.4 In the aftermath of the Second World War, however, political and scientific interest in children acquired a new significance. A new term emerged in international fora to describe a problem, quite unfamiliar in its scope, that societies seemed now eager to face: ‘war-handicapped children’. It was estimated that over 13 million children in Europe had been displaced, deserted or left as orphans. These children were regarded as personally and socially handicapped as a result of the atrocities of war, and were thus considered to represent a future threat to peace and democracy. Governments, international relief organisations and the United Nations were quick to realise the magnitude of the task they had to deal with in order to confront this humanitarian disaster, but also in order to protect the social order within their respective countries and Europe as a whole. In this international context, governments throughout Europe designed their post-war policies towards children in general and war-handicapped children in particular.5 Greece was facing a particularly difficult problem: around 12 per cent of the country’s children (380,000 out of 2.75 million) had lost one or both parents.6 The situation worsened by the continuing fighting between the royalist government and the Communist Party that followed the end of the Second World War. More than 100,000 children were displaced because of the hostilities and were eking out an existence in different ways.7 Given the inability of the state to face the needs of its citizens, relief aid came from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), although it remained relatively limited and was unequally distributed, largely to families who could prove they were loyal to the regime.8 This gap in the relief policy of the state was meant to be filled by the initiative of Queen Frederica and her ‘Fund Relief for the Northern Provinces of Greece’ (Pronoia Voreion Eparcheion tis Ellados), commonly known as the Queen’s Fund. The Queen and King Paul were by no means neutral factors in the Civil War. They represented and were the supreme exponents of the ‘old regime’, that is the inter-war political establishment which had been scorned by the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas (1936–41) and the collapse of the state apparatus after the German invasion. During

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the Axis occupation (1941–4) the National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleutherotiko Metopo, EAM) had made the abolition of the monarchy the cornerstone of its policy. The restoration of the monarchy after a debatable plebiscite in September 1946 symbolised the return to the old political order, a fact that accelerated the decision of the Communist leadership to finally resort to arms. In this respect, the creation of the Fund can be seen not only as a humanitarian or charitable initiative, but also as a way to strengthen the Palace’s position and influence in politics and society. In particular, it provided Queen Frederica (who was accused by her enemies of having been a member of the Nazi Youth) with a powerful machinery that exercised influence on hundreds of employees, statesmen and local notables, who participated in one way or another in her charitable activities, and, of course, on thousands of ordinary citizens who were treated by its services.9 The Fund was established by Royal Order on 10 July 1947. Its first trustees, placed under the ‘protection’ of the Queen, were representatives of the political and social élites of Athens, including the Prime Minister, Dimitrios Maximos, Archbishop of Athens Damaskinos, government ministers, senior judges, academics and deans, representatives of shipowners and industrialists and so on. A five-member executive committee was established, although the so-called Commissioned Ladies, women of the Athenian upper class, devoted to the Palace and the Queen herself, exercised the main influence. Regional committees, composed of local bishops, directors of state services, members of the Greek Red Cross, representatives of Christian, charitable, scouting and other organisations, were founded to conduct the Fund’s work on the ground, creating a network that soon covered the whole of the country. Initially the aim of the Queen’s Fund was to cooperate with the state for the welfare of civil war refugees; however, it soon turned its focus towards children. Queen Frederica proposed to the government the children’s ‘salvation’ enterprise, claiming for herself the title of ‘the first mother of Greece’: to gather children into child-towns with the support of the National Army, provide them with shelter and food, and educate them. By 1950, 54 child-towns had been established in Athens and other urban centres. During this period 18,000–23,000 children were sheltered in the child-towns. According to the Fund’s estimates, it had looked after around 65,000 children in total.10 The first child-town was established in July 1947 and over the next few months another six followed. In the initial stages, the justification for this policy lay mainly on relief grounds: civilians had to be removed

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from areas of military operations; children had to be fed and given shelter. However, the enterprise gained new momentum in the first months of 1948. In March, the Communist Provisional Democratic Government declared its decision to evacuate children from northern Greece, where the main battlefields of the civil war lay, and transfer them out of Greece to the Eastern Bloc People’s Republics, claiming to be protecting them from the operations of the National Army. Initially the children were gathered in camps in neighbouring Albania, Bulgaria and southern Yugoslavia. A significant part of these children were Slav-Macedonians from Greek Macedonia and were to be placed – most of them permanently – in the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia. But the majority was transported to other countries of the Eastern Bloc (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany and the Soviet Union) in the aftermath of the Tito–Stalin split. It is difficult to estimate the precise number of children who were evacuated by the communist Democratic Army. According to most estimates, the total number of children that were relocated to Eastern Europe during the Civil War did not exceed 25,000–28,000.11 The Greek government and the Queen were quick to grasp what they saw as an outstanding opportunity to discredit their opponents: the Communist Party could be accused of kidnapping the children to use them as hostages and force their parents to collaborate with the guerrillas; for trying to ‘de-hellenise’ the children by placing them in alien environments; for trying to indoctrinate them and later use them as recruits against their own nation.12 Additionally, the communist ‘evacuation’ policy could justify their own relocation policy for children, which the government and the Queen’s Fund were following. Indeed, the question of relocating children by the authorities took on a new meaning and became a matter of ‘salvation from the enemies of the nation’. The Queen’s Fund hurriedly attempted to take care of 10,000 children at new child-towns, while the National Army was assigned with the task of gathering them from so-called risky areas of the northern provinces. In the process of the campaign, the number of gathered children was doubled as fears over their abduction were escalated.13 The regime’s arguments over the issue of the children’s ‘relocation’ followed the ideology of ethnikofrosyni (‘national-mindedness’ or ‘nationalist ethos’), which was to be of fundamental importance in post-war Greek nationalist propaganda. This was a conservative ideology based on anti-communism, nationalism, adherence to the Greek Orthodox Church and the traditional social order. Accordingly, the struggle against communism was a struggle for the defence of the

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‘Hellenic-Christian civilisation’. Greek communists were expelled and excluded from the national community because of their felonious nature and their traitorous behaviour towards the fatherland. The communist threat was also identified with enduring Slavophobia, especially towards the Bulgarians, the ‘perennial enemies’ of Hellenism who belonged now to the opposing Soviet bloc. Greek communists were contemptuously called ‘Slav-communists’ or Eamovoulgari (supporters of EAM and Bulgaria) and were accused of attempting to surrender Greek Macedonia to the Slavs. In short, the fight against communism was conceived as a struggle for national survival, and, of course, the children’s question was exalted as one of its first priorities.14 The idea of saving the children was not reduced to only protecting them from communist ‘abduction’ or sheltering and feeding them in special camps. Children had also to be protected from ‘social’ viruses, and, according to the ideology of ethnikofrosyni, communism was perceived as such a virus that threatened the younger generation. Children also had to be re-educated in order to grow up in accordance with the ‘national doctrines’, that is, Christian ideals and loyalty to the King, the Queen and the political regime, doctrines that were on the wane following the turbulent events of the war. Similar arguments were used to justify the treatment of the non-Greek-speaking population of the northern provinces, especially the Slav-speaking inhabitants of Greek Macedonia.15 Indeed, the terms employed by the authorities to describe the policies of the two conflicting camps on the children’s issue are very indicative of the regime’s wider spirit. The ‘evacuation’ or ‘abduction’ of the children by the communist Democratic Army was called paidomazoma (child-abduction). This was an historically anachronistic term, but highly sensitive in the collective memory of the Greek nation because it evoked the Ottoman ‘devshirme’ system (paidomazoma in Greek), that is the forced gathering by the Turks of mostly Greek Orthodox children, their Islamisation and their final conversion into janissaries to fight against their ex-coreligionists. However, the term used for the children’s relocation by the National Army was paidofylagma (child-guardianship). The Communists attempted – albeit with minimum success – to reverse the labels, claiming that the Democratic Army’s actual concern was the salvation of the children from the Queen’s relocation. Their argument was weaker since they were transferring the children abroad and indeed into Slav states, including Bulgaria, whereas the Queen and the national government were moving them inside the country. After 1947 the Communist Party lacked the propaganda means of their opponents, since it was outlawed

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and its views were totally banished from the Greek media. Thus, the terms remained more or less unchanged; undoubtedly we have here a case of a war of words, which the post-war regime in Greece seemed to have won.16 Inside Greece, the children’s issue remained central to the right-wing political vocabulary for many years, well after the end of the Civil War. It was based on an extended ideological programme that covered many aspects of the country’s political and social life. The aims of the Queen’s Fund in particular were very ambitious: It called for a nationwide propaganda campaign on the radio, the press, schools and Sunday schools, scout camps, churches, cinemas, theatres, music halls, even restaurants and hotels; for the publication of pamphlets and bulletins both in Greek and in foreign languages; for the circulation of stamps with reference to the ‘abduction’ of the Greek children, the creation of relevant works of art and so on.17 Many of these schemes were realised: state services, local authorities, the Church, relief organisations, trade unions, cultural and economic societies and other institutions, as well as individuals were mobilised in order to declare their support for the Queen’s relocation policy and to condemn that of the communists. In many cases this was not limited to verbal support since businessmen, state employees and workers made, sometimes willingly and sometimes under coercion, donations to the Queen’s Fund and special taxes were introduced to cover its needs.18 Also of great importance was the organisation of meetings and lectures and public statements against the paidomazoma, which were supposedly addressed to an international audience, but in reality were a demonstration of loyalty inside the country.19 In general foreign observers and diplomats in Greece, even supporters of the regime, rarely attended these or were uncooperative, considering them superfluous.20 Inside Greece, though, they received much publicity. The right-wing as well as centrist press covered such initiatives widely and contributed much to the propaganda on the domestic front. Newspapers and journals reproduced the official vocabulary on the ‘ignoble paidomazoma’ organised by ‘bandits’ and ‘Slav-communists’ in order to indoctrinate children with ‘communist viruses.’21 In an article entitled ‘Paidomazoma and Paidofylagma’ in the Salonica daily Ellinikos Voras, the columnist noted: The ignoble paidomazoma, which was conceived by the criminal soul of the Slav-communist, threatens the very foundations of our

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race […] Thus, we all have to oppose paidofylagma to paidomazoma, protecting and nursing our endangered angels, who are tomorrow’s Greek militants and the future Greek mothers.22 Books and various publications circulated, often encouraged or sponsored by the National Army’s General Staff or the Queen’s Fund, offering detailed and in-depth descriptions of the struggle against communism; among their most common themes were the ‘exposure’ of communist unpatriotic plots against national sovereignty over Greek Macedonia, and the issue of the ‘abduction’ and ‘salvation’ of children.23 Occasionally, primary and high schools were obliged to obtain such books by order of the Minister of Education and Religion. This was the case with the book Mana mou. Ethniko Paidofylagma (National ChildGuardianship), which was written by a Greek army officer. In reference to paidomazoma, the writer argued that: During last winter, when the breaking-up of banditry began […] its instigators and mentors thought that they should adopt the gangster plan of the abduction of the Greek children […] These atrocious murderers could not be Greeks […] the instigators were Slavs and the executers and hirelings were Greek-speaking neo-Slavs, beasts, which do not even have feelings for the elementary humanistic principles. And these are the communists!24 This kind of anti-communist literature flourished well after the Civil War ended in late summer 1949. In a collective publication on the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of Salonica in Greece, Eleni Tari was commissioned to contribute an article about the Queen’s Fund, wherein she employed the same discourse as that of 13 years earlier: What the Slavs had never managed to accomplish with their agelong struggles and with their satanic propaganda, they could realise now, with the help of our own traitors: the dissolution of Greece. The detachment of Macedonia […] When they realised that the task was not an easy one, then they most satanically organised the childabduction seeking to prepare hordes of comitadjees with our own children and resume the game once more under favourable conditions […] The Queen’s Fund was prepared to deal with the childabduction due to the Queen’s decisiveness, and, thus, 23,000 Greek waifs and strays could be rescued.25

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The fact that the publication was under the auspices of the Society of Macedonian Studies, the most important institute of the cultural élite in Greek Macedonia since the inter-war period, is indicative of the strength and effect of such arguments. A few youth magazines also participated in the propaganda. One of them was I Zoë tou Paidiou (The Child’s Life) published by the influential Christian Orthodox brotherhood of ‘Zoë’ (Life). The magazine included articles referring to the ‘national struggle’ against the ‘communist bandits’, the ‘abduction’ of the Greek children as well as the Queen’s Fund work.26 Another one was published by the Queen’s Fund itself under the title Paidopolis (Child-town). It was distributed in schools and Sunday schools and – needless to say – to the inmates of the child-towns, following a special directive of the Ministry of Education. In the pages of Paidopolis the communist guerrillas, portrayed as monsters, were connected historically with the struggle against the Bulgarians over the control of Macedonia since the Middle Ages; Queen Frederica was praised for her campaign to ‘save our children’; letters from their young readers were also published, full of love and gratitude for their ‘Mother’ and full of contempt for the ‘communist-bandits’.27 The magazine’s ‘anti-communism for kids’ is colourfully illustrated in a fairy-tale signed by the ‘Commissioned Ladies’: One upon a time a terrible dragon appeared in the northern borders of our homeland […] This dark threat, this red curse was humiliated and our flag brought him to his knees […] The defeated beast with the black heart and the red look[…] stretched his bloody hand and seized a handful of young children from their mother’s arms […] The country groaned and shuddered, and all mothers cried like one. And in her palace, a mother Queen grieved more than anybody else […] And She promptly built her castles – the child-towns.28 The inmates represented a particular target group for this kind of propaganda. After all, they were the ones that had been saved both from famine and orphanage as well as from abduction and transfer to a foreign, alien place. They were expected to become respectable citizens, and share the values of the dominant ideology: fatherland, religion and family; to speak only in Greek; to love the King and the Queen and to be grateful to them.29 Furthermore, the Queen’s ‘protégés’ were not supposed to be passive recipients of the propaganda but to participate in it, for example in the parades and demonstrations in

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public spaces, or in the special broadcasts of the state-run radio station concerning the work done in the Fund’s institutions.30 Their indoctrination continued at least until their repatriation, after the end of the Civil War. In his valedictory speech to the inmates of the ‘St Olga’ child-town, its president reminded the children of the reason for their relocation: Next month it will be two years since the communists first came to your villages, to slaughter your fathers and mothers […] to seize many young children and to take them far away from their beloved Fatherland, in foreign places, in order to make them enemies of our Greece […] In those times, apart from your mothers, there was another Great Woman that thought of you […] And this woman was the Great Mother of all, our Beloved Queen, [who] gave the order for the establishment of our child-town, to save you from being abducted by these wild men […] During all this time that you have been living insouciantly inside the child-town, the care and protection of our Good Queen, our heroic Army with our Great King in chief, weeded the bandits from our Greece […] Now that you are leaving, you have to remember, firstly that your life has been saved and that you were not seized by the communists like other children […] you have to remember that all this is due to our Great Queen […] you have to pray to our good Christ to protect our Great Mother, the Queen, and to give her long years for the welfare of our Fatherland.31 Although most of the inmates of the child-towns must have been influenced more or less by this kind of propaganda, its long-lasting effects are under dispute. After all, the maintenance of the country’s internal political divisions and of the discrimination of the defeated, especially in the countryside, where the experience of the civil war was much more bitter than in the urban centres, obstructed the incorporation of leftist families in the political milieu of ethikofrosyni. Members of the Queen’s Fund itself underlined the danger of nullifying the influence of the child-towns over the children who were returning to their villages in northern Greece after the end of the war: Many of the children’s parents remain in the [town of] Servia, either because they were guerrillas or because they were forced to leave [their villages]. The children are in a bad psychological state […] The absence of teaching (plus the danger of stopping speaking Greek, because in a family with only a mother and a grandmother they speak only the

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Macedonian dialect), the influence of the environment, the contempt and the (indeed justified) animosity of the nationalist neighbours, as well as the misery, could lead these children in different directions than those that we led them through the child-towns.32 It is still difficult to draw definitive conclusions on this issue, because of the absence of works drawing on oral testimonies of ex-inmates. A relevant preliminary inquiry shows that today most of the informants feel grateful to the child-towns for what they had offered them.33 Inmates whose parents had sided with the government camp during the war say that they never felt neglected thanks to the efforts of the Queen, who ‘loved the children excessively’, and hardly mention any kind of ideological indoctrination. Naturally, those whose parents were executed or imprisoned by the authorities were uncomfortable with the anticommunist propaganda inside the child-towns. One of them says today that I was feeling confused with what I heard about them [the guerrillas], sometimes I didn’t believe it, sometimes I did, often I fumed at it […] But we didn’t pay much attention to those things, we didn’t understand them, we were so young.

The internationalisation of ‘the children’s issue’ Attracting the Greek public to the anti-communist cause was one thing; convincing international public opinion was another. In February 1948 the Greek government accused the Democratic Army before the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans (UNSCOB) of forcibly gathering children and transferring them to East European countries. It characterised the operation as a ‘crime against humanity’, and asked for the children’s immediate repatriation. It also accused Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria of participating in the enterprise of the ‘abduction’. Athens expected that internationalising the case of the ‘abducted’ children could prove the interference of the Balkan ‘People’s Republics’ in the Greek Civil War. However, the case never gained much popularity in the diplomatic circles of the US and Britain, which considered the children’s issue as the ‘weakest link’ of Greek arguments against their northern neighbours.34 Although at the beginning the American Embassy in Athens agreed that ‘the abduction of Greek children […] is a huge psychological blunder […] which we should exploit by the widest

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possible publicity in the United States and abroad’, Washington soon concluded that the majority of the ‘abducted children’ had departed ‘with the more or less willing consent of the Slavic minority or [their] communist parents’ and that the government’s own evacuation of thousands of children, sometimes forcibly, from rebel-held territory might tarnish its cause.35 According to one British diplomat’s report: Unless one can carry out a personal investigation or a very reliable source is available, one may easily be misled by exaggeration, e.g. the abduction of children, which, tragic as it undoubtedly is, is now being made the subject of anti-bandit propaganda.36 The first UNSCOB report on the issue in June 1948 was similarly reserved. After careful examination of the evidence collected by its observation groups in northern Greece, it concluded that some children were apparently taken without the consent of their parents, but that in many other cases the parents had agreed to their evacuation. Furthermore, many Western European governments were reluctant to support their repatriation since they too sheltered foreign refugees, and among them thousands of children from Eastern European countries, particularly from Poland, who did not want to return home.37 Before the case reached the Security Council in November 1948, the Queen’s Fund had organized campaigns inside Greece and abroad to support the repatriation of the ‘abducted’ children. The Queen herself made relevant public appeals in the US and Western Europe. Brochures were published in English, French and other languages, usually under the motto ‘Save the children of Greece from abduction’.38 Prominent right-wing and conservative women in the US and Western Europe, and wives of British and American diplomats in Greece (like Oliver M. Marcy, or Lady Norton, the British Ambassador’s spouse) contributed significantly to the Fund’s activities inside Greece and became its vigorous advocates abroad.39 The Commissioned Ladies supported the children’s repatriation in international women’s or relief organisations, and they used their acquaintances to lobby their case. Obviously, the issue of repatriation was combined with the promotion of the policy of relocation. Images of the work of the Fund and of the child-towns were circulated in the American and Western European press. Representatives of the Anglican Church (among them the Archbishop of Canterbury) and other denominations endorsed the Queen’s view on the subject, while conservative women’s organisations such as the Society of American Mothers proclaimed Frederica the ‘First Mother’ for the year 1950.40

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Finally, the Security Council of the United Nations with its resolution of November 1948 asked for the repatriation of Greek children who had been transferred to other countries, mentioning though that their repatriation should have the consent of their parents or in the case of orphans of their closest relatives. Over the next three years, new resolutions of the Security Council again demanded – albeit with minimal success – the children’s repatriation. By 1952 about 500 children had been repatriated, all from Yugoslavia. The Greek government soon dropped the issue completely, realising that it had little to win in the propaganda field and because it feared that the return of refugees from Eastern Europe could potentially create security problems in the northern provinces of the country.41 How did the Greek Left react to Athens’s propaganda on the children’s issue? Communist political vocabulary at that time called their opponents ‘monarcho-fascists’, characterising them as ‘Quislings’ of the British and then the American occupation of the country; Queen Frederica (Frideriki, in Greek) was nicknamed Queen Friki (HorrorQueen), and her child-towns were supposedly creating a ‘Hitler Youth’ to fight against the Greek people – an accusation that attempted to exploit Frederica’s Nazi past. The evacuation of children by the Democratic Army was explained in the official paper of the organisation as an attempt to ‘save the small children from the monarcho-fascists’ rage’: Because of the criminal abandonment of 150,000 children, dozens of whom are dying daily. Because of Frederica’s latest order for the gathering of all the children into the centres, without exception, in order to turn them into janissaries and put them by force into the Hitlerite youth organisations […] as well as because of the cowardly bombardment of defenceless women and children […] [the Democratic Army] decided to respond to the appeals of popular organisations and parents and approve the children’s assignment and stay [in the People’s Republics] until conditions at home allow their return.42 The relocation policy of the Greek state, instead, was considered as the true abduction of Greek children: In enslaved Greece, the monarcho-fascist government of Athens has declared a ferocious war against Greek children and their mothers. The Army and the gendarmerie undertake incursions into villages and seize the young children from their mothers’ arms, who fight desperately to save them from death.43

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In general, articles in the underground, communist press turned on their heads most of the government arguments on the issue, speaking about the use of violence by the National Army in the gathering of the children and circulating stories about the suffering that the latter had to endure in the Queen’s child-towns. Yet, as I have already mentioned, the propaganda of the outlawed Communist Party could not successfully confront the government’s ideological campaign inside the country, and in this respect the communists took a rather defensive role. Their views had much more chance of being welcomed outside Greece. Indeed, in the People’s Republics, these were the only ones ever heard. Furthermore, their governments assisted the Party’s efforts to make its point clear to the rest of the world, providing the means for the circulation of booklets, pamphlets and even films that were presenting the ‘Truth about the Children of Greece’ – to quote the title of a documentary made by a young communist film director, Manos Zaharias. In Western Europe, too, leftist groups, whether associated or not with communist parties, disputed the official Greek propaganda. The most active of them was the British League for Democracy in Greece. The League organised regular lectures on the Greek Civil War, the situation of political prisoners in the country and the issue of the children; it screened Yugoslav and Czechoslovak films about the hospitality offered to Greek children; it published a bulletin and brought out albums like The True Story of the Greek Children (1948) and The Case of the Greek Children (1951); and it sent letters to the British and American press as well as to the BBC supporting the Party’s case.44 One of its main tasks, of course, was to explain to the British public the reason for the ‘evacuation’ of the children by the guerrillas: A great humanitarian task was undertaken by the Provisional Democratic Government. This was the evacuation of children to the countries to the north of Greece which offered their hospitality to save these children from starvation and bombing […] This great evacuation scheme, corresponding in its aims to the evacuation of Spanish Republican children after 1936 and the evacuation of British children to Canada and USA during WWII was met with a torrent of abuse in Athens, where State and Church united to denounce the alleged ‘abduction’ of children to other countries to ‘indoctrinate them with Communism’. When UNSCOB investigated these allegations, they did not find a single substantial case of a parent whose child had been forcibly seized and sent abroad.45

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The League also sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to persuade the Foreign Office to accept the transfer of some Greek children to Britain for humanitarian reasons – a proposal that British diplomats were quick to reject as an attempt by the League to neutralise the accusations against the Democratic Army’s evacuation policy.46

Conclusion In post-war Europe the welfare of children was one of the priorities of governments and the UN, both for humanitarian and for political reasons. In Greece, political and national factors played a particularly significant role, since the post-war political situation remained unclear as a result of the continuing civil conflict. Thus the relocation of children became a leading element in the policy of both sides, both in the military and the ideological fields. As a matter of fact, the relocated boys and girls were but a minority of the country’s war-handicapped children, yet their symbolic role was far more significant than their actual numbers. The political vocabulary of both belligerents was built largely on the children’s case. Moreover, the issue of their relocation became one of the more successful initiatives in reconstructing the image of the monarchy in post-war Greece. The Queen’s own undertaking to care for the fate of the nation’s younger generation implied a type of monarchic paternalism familiar to Greek society, which, nevertheless, could not have long-lasting results in the post-war era. During the 1960s the Palace’s prestige would decline rapidly, as the younger generation challenged once more its place and role in Greek politics. Twenty-five years after the end of the Civil War, the political choices of the royal family accelerated the process of the final collapse of the monarchy in Greece.

Notes 1. For a brief analysis of the ‘children’s issue’, see Lars Baerentzen, ‘The “Paidomazoma” and the Queen’s camps’, in Lars Baerentzen, John Iatrides and Ole Smith (eds), Studies of the Greek Civil War, 1945–1949, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1987, pp. 127–57. See also Amikam Nachmani, International Intervention in the Greek Civil War: The United Nations Special Committee on the the Balkans, 1947–1952, New York, Westport Connecticut – London: Praeger, 1990; Eirini Lagani, To ‘paidomazoma’ kai I ellino-yugoslavikes shesis, 1949–1953, Athens: Sideris, 1996; Milan Ristovic´, A Long Journey Home. Greek Refugee Children in Yugoslavia, 1948–1960, Thessaloniki: IMXA, 2000; Yorgos Margaritis, Istoria tou ellinikou emfyliou polemou, vol. II, Athens: Vivliorama, 2001, pp. 605–14; Stefan Troebst, ‘Evacuation to a Cold Country: Child

Loukianos Hassiotis 285

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

Refugees from [the] Greek Civil War in the German Democratic Republic’, Nationality Papers, 32/3 (September 2004), pp. 675–91. Tassoula Vervenioti, ‘Peri “paidomazomatos” kai “paidofylagmatos” o logos i ta paidia sti dini tis emfylias diamahis’, in Eutychia Voutira and Maria Bontila (eds), To oplo para poda. Oi politikoi prosfyges tou emfyliou polemou stin Anatoliki Evropi, Thessaloniki: University of Macedonia Press, 2005, pp. 101–24; ‘Charity and Nationalism: The Greek Civil War and the Entrance of Right-Wing Women into Politics’, in Paola Bacchetta and Margeret Power (eds), Right-Wing Women. From Conservatives to Extremists around the World, New York and London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 115–26. For the issue of children’s participation in modern wars, see James Marten (ed.), Children and War: A Historical Anthology, New York and London: New York University Press, 2002. See Mo´nica Orduña Prada, Al Auxilio Social (1936–1940). La etapa fundacional y los primeros años, Madrid: Escuela Libre Editorial, 1996; Alicia Vigil Alted, Encarna Marín Nicolás and Roger Martell González (eds), Los niños de la guerra de España en la Unio´n Soviética. De la evacuacio´n al retorno, 1937–1999, Madrid: Fundacio´n F. Largo Caballero, 1999; Eduardo Pons Prades, Los niños republicanos en la guerra de España, Madrid: Oberon, 2004; Michael Richards, ‘Ideology and the Psychology of War Children in Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945’, in Kjersti Ericsson and Eva Simonsen (eds), Children of World War II. The Hidden Enemy Legacy, Oxford: Berg, 2005, pp. 115–37; Ángela Cenarro, La sonrisa de Falange. Auxilio Social en la guerra civil y en la posguerra, Barcelona: Critica, 2006. Dr Thérèse Brosse, War-Handicapped Children. Report on the European Situation, Paris: UNESCO, 1950. See also Eva Simonsen, ‘Children in Danger: Dangerous Children’, in Children of World War II, pp. 269–76. Brosse, War-Handicapped Children, pp. 25–6, 31–2. Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/78370 Refugees from bandit controlled territory in Greece 1949/R 213: British consulate in Thessaloniki to FO, Thessaloniki, 29-12-1948; and FO 371/78370: Refugees from bandit controlled territory in Greece 1949/R 5460: UNSCOB to British Embassy in Athens: ‘Memorandum of the Greek Red Cross on the situation of the refuges’. See also Aggeliki Laiou, ‘Population Movements in the Greek Countryside during the Civil War’, in Studies of the Greek Civil War, pp. 55–103, and David Close and Thanos Veremis, ‘The Military Struggle, 1945–49’, in David Close (ed.), The Greek Civil War, 1943–1950. Studies of Polarization, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 118–19. FO 371/78370 Refugees from bandit controlled territory in Greece 1949/R 2753: Miss J. Murray of Foreign office to Colonel K. M. Agnew, London, 7-3-1949. For UNRRA relief efforts, see Flora Tsilaga, ‘The UNRRA Mission to Greece. The Politics of International Relief, October 1944–June 1947’, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, King’s College, London 2006, pp. 169–234. On the political role of the Palace during and after the Second World War, see Jean Meynaud, Les forces politiques en Grèce, Lausanne: Etudes de science politique, 1965, pp. 330–6, and Tassoula Vervenioti, ‘Charity and Nationalism’, p. 118. Greek General State Archives (hereafter GSA)/Central Office/389: Queen’s Lord Chamberlain/d. 29, Child-Towns: Report under the title ‘The Queen’s Fund: The Organization erected by Her Majesty the Queen of the Hellenes in order

286

11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

Relocating Children During the Greek Civil War, 1946–9 to save the children of Greece from abduction and starvation in the bandit stricken areas’, Athens, 6-4-1949; Greek Literary and Historical Archive (hereafter ELIA)/Kalligas Archive/Royal Relief Institute: Alexandra Mela, To Chronikon, n.d., 13–14, and in the same: Royal Relief Institute, Apologismos Dekaetias 1947–1957, n.d., 38–41. See also Queen Frederica of the Hellenes, A Measure of Understanding, London: Macmillan, 1971, pp. 134–9. For the Commissioned Ladies, see Vervenioti, ‘Charity and Nationalism’, pp. 115–26. Lagani, To ‘paidomazoma’, pp. 23–31. Ristovic´, A Long Journey Home, pp. 11–12. See Queen Frederica, A Measure of Understanding, pp. 98–9, and Vervenioti, ‘Peri paidofylagmatos’, pp. 113–7. Lawrence Witner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 162. The National Army was also assigned to guard the child-towns from possible raids by the guerrillas. See Historical Archive of Benaki Museum (hereafter IAMM)/458/Elli Zalokosta’s Archive/d. 2, Fund’s Committee, 1948–1963: Members of the Fund’s Executive Committee K. Arliotis and M. Pesmdjoglou to all child-towns, Athens, pp. 9-11-1948. Constantine Tsoucalas, ‘The Ideological Impact of the Civil War’, in John Iatrides (ed.), Greece in the 1940’s: A Nation in Crisis, Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1981, pp. 329–36, and Close, ‘The Reconstruction of a Right-Wing State’, in The Greek Civil War, pp. 157–9; Despoina I. Papadimitriou, Apo ton lao ton nomimofronon sto ethnos ton ethnikofronon. I syntiritiki skepsi stin Ellada, 1922–1967, Athens: Savalas, 2006, pp. 177–211. IAMM/458.Elli Zalokosta’s Archive/d. 1, History and Activities of Royal Relief Institute, 1969: Report by Mrs E. Lelouda: Child-Towns, 3, n.d.; ELIA/ Kalliga’s Archive/Royal Relief Institute: Apologismos Dekaetias 1947–1957, p. 39. See also Vervenioti, ‘Peri Paidomazomatos’, p. 114. Baerentzen, ‘The “Paidomazoma”’, pp. 127–32; Vervenioti, ‘Peri paidomazomatos’, pp. 120–2. GSA/Central Office/Palace Archives/61: Office for the Protest against Paidomazoma (1950), n.d. FO 371/78361/R1789: Abduction of Greek children by the rebels, 1949: Mrs Oliver M. Marcy to FO, Athens, 21-12-1948; ELIA/Kalliga’s Archive/ Royal Relief Institute: Alexandra Mela, To Hronikon, 19–21. See also Lilika Papanicolaou, Frederica. Queen of the Hellenes. Mission of a Modern Queen, Malta: PEG, 1994, p. 149. FO 371/72343, 78362, 78363: Abduction of Greek children by the rebels, 1948–1949: Several resolutions by Greek societies, municipalities and communities against ‘paidomazoma’ addressed to foreign governments and the UN. Among them declarations of support to the queen’s campaign, see FO 371/72344: Foreign aid to Greek rebels, 1948: Resolution of 40 parent-teacher’s associations in Athens against ‘paidomazoma’, Athens, 17-3-1948. See also IAMM/458.Elli Zalokosta’s Archive/d. 2, Executive Committee, 1948–1963: Executive Committee of the Fund to all child-towns, Athens, 28-2-1949. FO 371/72343: Foreign aid to Greek rebels, 1948: British Embassy to FO, Athens, 27-4-1948. See also Kenneth Matthews, Memories of a Mountain War. Greece: 1944–1949, London: Longman, 1972, p. 180. For example, see Kathimerini, Athens, 13-3-1948; Vima, Athens, 1-5-1948; Tharros, Volos 29-12-1949.

Loukianos Hassiotis 287 22. Ellinikos Voras, 30-3-1948. 23. Ellinika Dikaia. Ethniki Epitheorisis tou Ellinismou, per. III, n. 1, May 1948; Dimitrios Zafiropoulos (Infantry Colonel), To KKE kai i Macedonia, Athens, 1948; III Army Corps. Department of Press and Instruction, Makedonikon provlima kai Kommunismos, Thessaloniki 1949; Mrs Zanandris, Anamesa sta thymata tou symoritismou, Athens, 1952. 24. David Antoniou, Ethniko Paidofylagma, Athens, 1949, pp. 22–3. 25. Eleni Tari, ‘Vassiliki Pronoia’ (Queen’s Relief Fund), in A Letsas (ed.), Thessaloniki, 1912–1962 Thessaloniki, 1962, pp. 109–10. Comitadjees refers to pro-Bulgarian fighters from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation who were active at the turn of the century and sought Macedonian autonomy. 26. For the participation of ‘Zoë’ in the anticommunist activities during the Civil War, see Vasilios N Makrides, ‘Orthodoxy in the Service of Anticommunism: The Religious Organization Zoë during the Greek Civil War’, in Philip Carabott and Thanasis D. Sfikas (eds), The Greek Civil War. Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism and Silences, London: Aldershot, 2004, pp. 164–70. See also I Zoë tou Paidiou, bimonthly magazine, 54/1-1-1949, 57/15-2-1949, 65/11-61949, and 87/6-5-1950. 27. See for example Paidopolis, ‘To minima tis vasilissas mas’, 1/1-1-1950; ‘Ta pedia grafoun’, 7/1-4-1950; ‘O Thanos ke to elliniko syntagma’, 14/16-71950; ‘To dikeon panta thriamvevei’, 19/1-10-1950; ‘Ta ipourgia Paedias kai Esoterikon sinistoun to periodiko Paidopolis’, Paidopolis, 11/1-6-1950. 28. ‘San paramythi’, Paidopolis, 1/1-1-1950. 29. IAMM/458.Elli Zalokosta’s Archive/d. 1: History and activities of the Royal Relief Institute: Activities of the Institute (1969): Report on the child-towns by the Commissioned Lady E. Lelouda, Athens, 25-2-1969; GSA/Central Office/ Palace Archives/1779: Paidofylagma (1948–50): Supervisionary Committee for refugee children in Psyhiko (D. Economou) to Relief for the Northern Provinces, Psyhiko, 25-4-1948. See also Mark Mazower and Mando Dalianis, ‘Children in Turmoil during the Civil War: Today’s Adults’, in Mazower (ed.), After the War was Over. Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960, Princeton: Princeton University Press: 2000, pp. 98–9. 30. GSA/Central Office/389: Queen’s lord chamberlain/d. 29 Child-Towns: P. Liappis to Queen Frederica, Patra, 9-7-1950; ibid., The Queen’s message to the inmates of the child-towns, Athens, 1-1-1949; IAMM/458.Elli Zalokosta’s Archive/d. 2: Fund’s Committee, 1948–63: K. Arliotis, M. Pesmazoglou to all child-towns, Athens, 28-2-1949; ibid., Arliotis, Pesmazoglou to all childtowns, Athens, 14-5-1949. 31. GSA/Central Office/389: Queen’s Lord Chamberlain/d. 29 Child-Towns: K. Tousiades to Queen’s lord chamberlain P. Leloudas, Corinth, 20-12-1949. 32. Ibid.: Report of the deputy-leader of ‘St. Charalmpos’ paidopolis to the Executive Committee of the Queen’s Fund, Athens, 26-4-1950. 33. These assessments are deduced from interviews with ex-inmates of the childtown of Apostolos Pavlos in Larissa. 34. For the activities of UNSCOB in this issue, see Baerentzen, ‘The “Paidomazoma”’, pp. 132–8; Basil Kondis, I agglloamerikaniki politiki gia to elliniko politico provlima, 1945–1949, Thessaloniki: Paratiritis, 1984, pp. 360, 386; Howard Jones, ‘The Diplomacy of Restraint: The U.S. Efforts to Repatriate Greek Children

288

35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

Relocating Children During the Greek Civil War, 1946–9 Evacuated during the Civil War of 1946–1949’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 3 (May 1985), pp. 65–85; Nachmani, International Intervention in the Greek Civil War, pp. 23–4, 49, 138. Baerentzen, ‘The “Paidomazoma”’, pp. 141–3. FO/371/72343: Foreign aid to Greek rebels, 1948: British consulate in Volos to British consulate in Thessaloniki, Volos, 12-3-1948. United Nations, Yearbook of the United Nations 1946–1947, UN Publications, II General, New York 1948, pp. 336–8, 351–75; ibid., Yearbook of the United Nations 1947–1948, UN Publications, I General, New York 1949, pp. 63–75, 298–302, 337–52; GSA/Central Office/Palace Archives/1779: Paidofylagma (1948–50) Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs (G. Christopoulos) to Leloudas, Athens, 11-11-1948. See ‘Save the Children of Greece from Abduction’, London, 1949. 371/78361/R1789: Abduction of Greek children by the rebels, 1949: Mrs Oliver M. Marcy to FO, Athens, 21-12-1948; FO 371/87776/Records of discussions on relief work in Greece held in British Embassy in Athens 1950: RG 1411/9: British Embassy to FO, Athens, 16-12-1949; ibid, Lady Norton to British Embassy in Athens, Athens, 31-3-1950. On the initiatives of Lady Norton, see also the Athenian newspaper, Vima, 31-5-1949. FO 371/78363: Abduction of Greek children by the rebels, 1949: Several resolutions against the ‘abduction’ of the Greek, London, 7-7-1949. See also Nikos Roditsas, To deutero paidomazoma, 1948, Athens: Sideris, 1977, pp. 95–107. ‘I proti Mitera gia to etos 1950’, Paidopolis, 11/1-6-1950. FO 371/78363: Abduction of Greek children by the rebels, 1949: C. J. Norton to C. H. Bateman, Athens, 22-9-1949. GSA/Central Office/Palace Archives/1779: Paidofylagma (1948–50): Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs to Queen Frederica, Athens, 10-5-1950. Dimokratikos Stratos tis Elladas-Deltio Typou, 8-3-1948. Exormisi, 20/15-3-1948. King’s College, London, Modern Greece Archives (hereafter MGA)/CHRON I: Evacuated Greek children, 1948–55: ‘Abduction of Greek children’, Newsletter [of the League], London, 14-2-1949; ibid., ‘Evacuation of Greek Children’, London, 19-4-1949; MGA/PM 66/7: Comité central d’aide aux enfants grecs, Si vraiment vous nous aimez faites la Paix en Grèce, 1949; MGA/PM 66/8: If you really love us bring peace to Greece, 1950. For the League’s activities, see John Sakkas, ‘The League for Democracy in Greece and the Greek Civil War, 1946–49’, Thetis (1996), pp. 243–54. MGA/CIR 20: Leaflets and Pamphlets ‘Greece and Britain’, 1946–78: Greece Needs Peace, n.d., possibly 1949. FO 371/78361/Abduction of Greek children by the rebels 1949: R 2600: J. Bailey to Mr. Peck, London, 3-3-1949; ibid., Peck to Bailey, London, 313-1949. MGA/CHRON I: Letter without signature to the League, London, 7-5-1948; FO/371/72344: Foreign aid to Greek rebels, 1948: Marion Pascoe (League for Democracy in Greece) to Ernst Bevin, London, 7-5-1948; ibid., FO to League for Democracy in Greece, London, 14-5-1948.

Epilogue

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14 A Disorder of Peoples: The Uncertain Ground of Reconstruction in 1945 Geoff Eley

We are currently experiencing a major efflorescence of scholarship on the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This is evident from a variety of major conferences and related activity, from the appearance of a new generation of post-1945 general histories, and from the rapid accumulation of dissertations and monographic research.1 To a great extent this can be explained by the usual rhythms of academic history, which require not only the passage of time and lengthening of perspective, but also the opening of the archives. The symbolic closure registered by the end of the century also played its part. But the onset of this degree of intensity presupposes some additional impetus. Historians were already integrating the inter-war years into both their teaching and research by the 1960s, after all, at only a quarter century’s distance from the time itself, whereas for comparable attention the post-war years have waited almost twice as long. In fact, for many years ‘1945’ functioned as a remarkably durable barrier or baseline, at which historians ceded ground to their colleagues in sociology and political science. Until quite recently, in contrast to the long assured place of contemporary US history in the curriculum, ‘Europe since 1945’ was rarely taught in US history departments, for example. Likewise, before the 1990s there were virtually no serviceable textbooks treating the period as a whole.2 It is really the long-running impact of the events of 1989–91 that allows the post-war period properly to be claimed for history. If the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War had not so decisively dislodged the stability of Europe’s socio-political arrangements, above all the division of the continent into East and West, then the established frameworks for understanding post-1945 developments would surely have remained intact. By overturning that distinctive geopolitical topography 291

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of Europe’s post-war history, while scrambling our earlier assumptions about the possible futures, the 1989 revolutions and the dissolution of the Soviet Union opened the way for reappraisal. In bringing that history to an end, one might say, 1989/91 also brought its beginning into question. The available narratives of post-1945 history, which emphasised the depth of the rupture of the end of the war, no longer worked in the same way. Robert Moeller puts this extremely well: The year 1945 was understood as the beginning of a future that would head either in a liberal democratic or communist direction. The story of the post-Second World War period was the story of the world the Cold War made. The experiences of Europeans were eclipsed by the confrontation of the superpowers and the division of Europe between East and West.3 Freed from the confinements of the history of the Cold War and its inevitabilities – from that ‘story of the parallel processes of integration into competing models of liberal-democratic Americanised consumer society in the West and a Stalinist dictatorship in the East’, as Moeller calls it – historiography can now take other directions: different periodisations, different patterns of development, other commonalities and distinctions, unexpected connections, new ways of understanding the relationship of the war to its aftermaths, new ways of relating the second half of the century to the first, new ways of relating Europe to the rest of the world.4 In these respects the loosening and reconfiguring of collective memory, the inevitable shifting of the ground from which the war and its aftermaths can be remembered, also become important. By now several generations have come to maturity for whom those experiences have necessarily lost their immediacy. Of course, the end of the Cold War has also allowed other pasts to be memorialised and reclaimed, with all the complicated re-imagining and contestation such processes entail. But the relentless dying-away of the older generations makes the process of mediation more volatile and unfixed, less anchored in experiential histories with a claim to biographical or institutional continuity. For these reasons, too, as the reach of the Second World War into the present diminishes, European historians are beginning to revisit the distinctiveness and coherence of the post-1945 era that followed. Yet certain countervailing logics are proving equally strong, constraining our ability to see the events of the war’s ending differently rather than opening it up. One response to the ending of the Cold War has

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not been to upset the bifurcated interpretive framework described by Moeller but rather to entrench it, thereby subsuming the continent’s history into the ultimately prevailing dynamism of its western half and making the socialist East still more of an artificial interlude than before. As the histories of the post-war period get recomposed, accordingly, the drama and distinctiveness of 1945 itself, its full and unprecedented exceptionality, can easily become lost. The undecidedness of the political outcomes of the time – the emerging possibilities for imagining a different kind of social and political world once the encompassing wartime endangerment was gone – becomes harder to explore. The ability to place ourselves inside the opaquely unmanageable disorder of the immediate post-war moment is now immensely impeded by that retroactive erasure of alternative trajectories. Here the pervasiveness of the transformed political values of the present works to reify rather than realign our perceptions of the past. By privileging some strands of postwar development, the new political common sense naturalises one set of outcomes, while others become screened out. This shift of contemporary perspectives repositions those histories we are likely to see as generative. It reshapes the questions we are now able or inclined to ask. Thus the comprehensive delegitimising of the Left’s older histories and the continuing disarray of any dissenting critique of the ascendantly neoliberal grand narrative of the origins of the present have impaired any interest in reconstructing the wider repertoire of what Europe’s populations may have wanted to imagine in 1945. The historiography of suppressed or unrealised alternatives materialising amidst Europe’s ruined landscapes has never been very plentiful, but any earlier credence given to the various ‘national Communisms’ or other regenerative visions emerging so optimistically from the European resistance movements has now become even harder to evoke. The much broader openness of European citizenries to more radical scenarios of peacetime reconstruction – the willingness to envisage further-reaching horizons of change – has also become obscured. Similarly, the heaping of evidence for the oppressiveness of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe exacerbates the difficulty of arguing a different account of the origins of the Cold War. In all of these ways the actually realised forms of the post-war settlement and the political coalitions that sustained them seem ever more deeply inscribed in the available starting-points of 1945. The lasting framework of policy, reforms, and dominant ideas that eventually solidified in the various parts of the continent from the intense and contested politics of 1945–7 have now retroactively acquired a much stronger logic of inevitability. In that way

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Europe’s Cold War political alignment and the new patterns lastingly institutionalised during 1947–8 become projected backwards onto the preceding moment of the Liberation. Fewer historians are interested in making a case any more for the viability of what used to be called a ‘third way’. There seems little interest in exploring any possible vision of social and political change that might have been found somewhere between or beyond the starkly polarised options of Stalinism and the anti-Communist consensus of ‘the West’. There are two further influences issuing from our new contemporary twenty-first-century perceptions. One concerns the insistent desire to find genealogies for European integration – in effect, to produce the kinds of history that the slow solidifying of the European Community (EC) and subsequent institutionalising of the European Union (EU) are thought to have presupposed. Inside the political imaginary through which pioneers such as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman began elaborating their European project, the particular exigencies of economic reconstruction within a divided continent certainly had powerful effect. The generational experience of two world wars and the intervening disasters of the Depression, configured via Monnet’s emblematic biography into a plausible strategy of remediation, proved vital in making the case for a new framework of economically based cross-national cooperation. The destructive consequences of the national rivalries of 1914–45 became the constant negative reference point for that advocacy.5 Yet at the same time these essentially technocratic schemes of post-war reorganisation, which ironically mirrored much of the economically oriented planning behind the Nazi ‘New Order’, were only one form of the wartime and post-war impetus towards possible schemes of federation. At the grassroots of the European resistance such hopes were focused far more around an ethical projection of what ‘Europe’ might become, the inchoate ideal of ‘a cultural and moral community which must be transformed by the war into a political and social one’. Of course, under wartime circumstances of living underground, such aspirations became perforce highly utopian, disconnected from the pragmatics of opinion forming and negotiations inside a conventional party-political process. Precisely this space of exception enabled the resistance sensibility to become European in scope, however, ranging rhetorically ‘from the French maquis to the Polish plains, from the factories of Milan to the German forced labor camps, from Norwegian universities to the mountains of Bosnia’.6 Merely to point to the nascent existence of such ideas is neither to exaggerate their influence nor to argue their efficacies for the post-war

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conjuncture in one way or another. It is rather to describe one site of complex fermentation of thought and practice, which the experience of wartime and the prospect of liberation enabled, and which any subsequent process of normalising would not be able so easy to efface. In that respect, moreover, the coercive transnationalising of European societal space under the Nazi occupation itself helped assemble the structural conditions that might enable European resisters in one part of the continent to identify with those in another – including the sheer extent and logistics of warfare and military occupation, the associated coordination of rail and other communications, the rapaciously exploitative integration of national economies, the coerced mobilisation of massive numbers of workers across vast distances, the massed refugee movements and deportations, and the general management on the largest of scales of entire populations. By approaching Europe transnationally in these ways, less as a systemic aggregation of discretely territorialised nationstates than as a single, complexly interconnected arena for ‘entangled histories’, contemporary perspectives can bring older questions into very revealing focus. In the camps, on the railways, in factories and other workplaces, in armies, on farmlands, or in the cities, the Nazi war machine forced masses of people into unaccustomed interactions across ethnicities, regions, and religions in a polyglot confusion of peoples, whether through myriad personal encounters or via the unchosen and brutally imposed structural relations. In this disorderly and violent quotidian sense, ‘Europe’ became for huge numbers of people a lived experience long before the regulative process of institutional integration into the European Community ever began.7 A second transmission from the present bears most directly of all on the immediate thematics of this volume: namely, the contemporary politics of migration. The gathering impact inside Europe of the new globalised labour markets, now further magnified by the consequences of the EU’s Enlargement towards Eastern Europe, continues to be sharpened by the spectacular pressure of asylum-seekers and refugees. The startingpoint for these contemporary population movements is most commonly dated from the concerted labour recruitments undertaken by European states between the later 1950s and early 1970s, when large numbers of workers migrated to West Germany, Austria, the Low Countries, and France from the Iberian, Mediterranean, Turkish, and North African South, and to Britain and France from the Caribbean and South Asian former colonies.8 With the attendant processes of family formation, these migrations rapidly coalesced into the permanently settled residential minorities whose marked presence has focused so much of political

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conflict in Europe during the past three decades. The rise of neo-fascist and other right-wing populisms around hostility to immigration during the 1970s and 1980s became rapidly complemented in that regard by a related growth of identitarian politics and cultural self-assertiveness among minority populations themselves. ‘Anti-foreigner’ violence then underwent further escalation in Central and Eastern Europe during the transition from Communism and the wars of Yugoslav succession. By the end of the 1990s the continuous traffic of illegal and semi-legal itinerant workers and their dependants had become indistinguishable in many popular political rhetorics from the associated movements of refugees and asylum-seekers, displaced partly by the same consequences of global deregulation, partly by ecological disasters, partly by politically imposed catastrophe. Underlying these processes and partly driving them, finally, were the long-running effects of decolonisation and the smouldering slow burn of the legacies of colonialism.9 Given the unsettling political force field produced by these histories and the present urgency of understanding how Europe’s ethnically, religiously, and culturally divided populations might be able to live successfully together, it is hardly surprising that historians should turn to an earlier context of such problems. As the essays in this volume make so abundantly clear, the immediate post-war years provide an obvious laboratory for this purpose. Here it is less the gargantuan scale of the population movements surrounding 1945 that promises illumination – the roughly 23 million Europeans left un-homed by the final stages of warfare and the post-war repatriations, territorial changes, and population transfers – than the longer-term histories through which more particular populations may have been integrated by their new host societies or not: the many categories of refugees, camp inmates, and displaced persons who ended up staying where they were stranded; migrant workers recruited after 1945; prisoners of war and other categories of returnees; repatriated populations of various kinds; German, Italian, Polish, and Ukrainian expellees; and the special case of orphaned and evacuated children. These post-war circumstances (‘violent peacetime’, as Peter Gatrell calls them) clearly possessed their exceptional quality, for which a range of coercive state practices, whether deployed by the reconstituted national governments or the inter-Allied occupying regimes, became decisive. But the wider repertoire of administrative and relief arrangements deployed by those authorities, including their use of charitable, semi-official, and voluntary organisations, drawing on an extensive range of professional expertise, delivers some extremely fruitful grounds for comparison.10

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In addressing the wider issues implicated by the essays collected in this volume, two markedly distinct perspectives will be called for, each of which if left unchecked might easily diminish or undermine the other. On the one hand, the big structural facts of European society considered by the authors – those concerning the mobility, uprootedness, and instabilities of populations and their management during 1944–8 – can be referred usefully to similar histories both earlier and since. Demographically speaking, the dislocating of peoples during the 1940s can be placed easily enough in a much deeper history of economic transformation, population politics, geopolitical empire-making, and pan-European social engineering that extends both back to the 1880s or even the 1860s and forward to the end of the twentieth century. Whether during the First World War and its aftermaths or under the impact of the transnational and transregional labour migrations required by the preceding decades of European industrialisation, for example, earlier settings can be found in which heterogeneous populations were amassed or dumped together on something like a comparable scale, posing equivalent challenges of social improvement and social order, while eliciting familiar logics of governmentality. Choosing to emphasise these deep structures and larger patterns will bring certain insights to the fore. By highlighting the exceptional qualities of the immediate conjuncture of 1945 as mentioned earlier above, however, we can emphasise the dramatic and concentrated eventfulness of a collectively experienced historical transition, a palpable moment of remaking, when Europeans were living the actualities of change inside a moving political horizon. For this second purpose, aside from the densely specific social and cultural histories, local analyses, and other detailed studies required, we would want to examine the discursive intensities of the time, the calculations of governments, parties, and other political actors, and the particular policy-making dynamics of the Liberation, with much fine-grained attentiveness to the complexities and messiness in the immediate experiences of those composing the populations concerned. We gain different insights depending on which of these broad perspectives we deploy.11 The demographics of labour markets offer a particular instance of the first of these approaches. Thus from the 1880s the industrialising German economy was to become voraciously dependent on migrants for its labour needs, many of whom had to be imported, both seasonally in the eastern agricultural sector and continuously in the western construction, mining, and heavy metalworking industries. Structurally apparent well before 1914, these needs became re-emphasised under

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two recurring sets of circumstances: in subsequent periods of economic expansion when industry exhausted its reserves of indigenous labour (as in the late 1930s and the longer period since the mid-1950s); and during wartime, when in response to labour shortages of a different order the German state applied its coercive powers to mobilise foreign workers from countries under its military occupation (as in both world wars). In these terms, for varying reasons, the Weimar and early Nazi years of 1919–36 become the exception: at all other times since industrialisation the German economy has required an international labour market structured to German advantage – either by force of the developmental process, which sucked labour from the less industrialised, pre-capitalist European and extra-European peripheries into the dynamically growing German core (the 1880s to 1914, and again from the mid-1950s to early 1970s); by imperialist expansion and militarisation of foreign labour (1914–18, 1939–45); by the windfall of massive German refugee populations from Eastern Europe (1945–55); or by bilateral arrangements with other states (1955–73). The strengthening of the EU’s transnational labour market via the single Europe measures of 1992–4 and subsequent opening towards the East now adds yet a further means to this list.12 At the same time, these economic processes have always been overdetermined by ideology, not least when presented in their specifically demographic dimension – that is, as the movement into and around Germany of ethnically different and culturally foreign peoples. This was clear from the very outset in the case of the Polish migrants before 1914, as the chronic labour needs of the big eastern estates contended with the radical-nationalist pressure for a racially defined population and settlement policy capable of ‘Germanising’ the East. The temper of debate around such questions became radicalised during 1917–18, when Germany’s massive territorial gains on the eastern front opened the vista of lasting control over the Russian Empire’s western borderlands. Simultaneously, the large-scale deployment of prisoners of war in the German economy hardened attitudes toward the substantial Polish population already employed in the coalfield of the Ruhr. With a racialised conception of German great-power interest already inscribed at the centre of the foreign labour question, accordingly, the intoxicating foretaste of a greater-German eastward imperium gave ominous indications of how this might translate into racially driven population policies for Poles and other Slav peoples falling under German government sway.13 This developing syndrome could partially prefigure but not remotely anticipate the terrible specificity of its Nazi version. The antisemitic

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priorities of the latter, its appalling genocidal ambitions, its finely ramified apparatus of research and rationale, and the sheer magnitude and brutality of the exploitation, deportations, and killings involved in the Nazi population policies all marked the difference from anything that came before. Such a programme had also presumed the concerted destruction of the constitutional freedoms, organised civil society, and constraints of law that necessarily bounded the reach of such ambitions before, even under the earlier authoritarian circumstances of the First World War. In its insidiously prolonged cultural and ideological effects, the coercively regulated labour market and biopolitical regime at the centre of the Third Reich’s racialised social order then reached far into the post-1945 era. While it would be foolish to efface the differences in the circumstances of, say, a forced ‘eastern worker’, a Jewish concentration camp worker, or Ukrainian slave labourer in 1943 and, say, a Turkish construction worker or Italian pizza baker 40 years later, the deep structure of popular prejudice and disregard linking the consequences of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft to more recent hostilities against ‘guest workers’ and ‘foreigners’ is also impossible to ignore. As a discursive formation cohering around the successive transnational labour markets of the twentieth century, no less than its deep-historical demographic and other structural continuities, Germany’s ‘foreigner question’ acquired enormous, persisting, longer-term power.14 The point of this slight excursus is to suggest how an overarching comparative approach to the population histories of 1944–8, one that highlights some of the structural precedents and legacies, can bring definite longer-range patterns into focus. Given that the West German Federal Republic began importing foreign labour from the South only ten years after the Nazi forced labour system from the East had come to an end, the immediate post-war years can clearly be seen as the crucible where already-existing patterns and new needs came to be refashioned. For answering certain kinds of questions concerning the organisation of labour markets, the social management of migration, and all the complex socio-cultural and political negotiations that occur when polyglot populations are thrown unexpectedly together, these larger comparative frames may be more important than the intensively situational or event-focused analyses of a particular moment. But of course there are also costs to that too – certain other types of questions inevitably recede. An approach that allows certain sorts of relations to come into focus can lead others to be obscured. A further longer-term context is that of state-making and national unification. It is worth remembering that in Europe all the defeated

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fascist powers in the Second World War had only relatively recently been unified into national states. Emerging from the pan-European constitution-making upheavals of 1859–71, the German and Italian states had then embarked on several decades of unevenly successful consolidation, through which the disparate national lands and their populations became only partially assimilated into the new territorial entity with all of its institutional machineries, emergent cultural imaginary, and still-forming political horizon. While the respective outcomes of the First World War then diverged (Germany was defeated, Italy was formally a victor), national integrity became in each case profoundly unsettled. If after 1922 the Italian state faced the challenge of fully incorporating new national territories, including Libya, South Tyrol, and Venezia Giulia (principally the Istrian Peninsular), Germany incurred the opposite problem of the loss of previous national lands to Poland and France, before subsequently expanding militarily under the Third Reich to absorb the incremental annexations of Austria, the so-called Sudetenland, and Poland. What stands out in these longer histories, whether in relation to the two states’ territorial boundaries or their inhabitants’ affiliations, is the non-fixity, instability, and general contingency of the national categories concerned. By means of the political settlements after the First World War, national identifications certainly became hardened along juridical, institutional, and ideological continuities of many kinds. But until that stiffening of definitions both ‘Germany’ and ‘Italy’ had remained abstract, mobile, contingent, and highly contested political terms. Before 1914–15 each country still only approximated the trumpeted unity of territory, language, institutions, high-cultural traditions, and customary heritage which nationalists wished to presume. As the basis for state-political organisation the full-blown ideal of the nation-people-citizenry was still only in process of being proposed.15 Even despite the post-1918 hardening, much mobility and indeterminacy of national identifications still remained, and in that regard 1945 turned out to be far more of a decisive terminus. As a result of the territorial adjustments of 1918–19, for example, neither Germany nor Italy had seen large-scale transfers of population. In particular, there were no expulsions or mass refugee movements from the newly established states of Poland or Czechoslovakia on the pattern that was to come after 1945. On the contrary, evincing a quotidian pragmatics of identification, large numbers of the German-speaking inhabitants of those new republics had revealed an evident capacity for adjusting their national affiliations to the now-prevailing legal-political and cultural frameworks

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of citizenship, welfare entitlements, schooling, and language use. Throughout the inter-war years, recent work suggests, the indifference of many inhabitants of the Czechoslovak Republic against the efforts of Czech and German nationalists to entice or compel them into a fixed national identity showed a resilience that belied the pervasiveness which historians commonly attribute to national belonging. Parents of school-age children and welfare claimants were as prone to keep their best options open as they were to declare a hard and fast identity. By the end of the Second World War, certainly for the inhabitants of Germanspeaking Europe and the future People’s Democracies, the proliferating machinery of registration, certification, recording, and documentation was becoming harder and harder to escape. The policing of populations by successive occupation regimes provided one dimension of this; the administrative entailments of such massive population displacements provided another. In some visceral or interior sense, national subjectivity may have remained still unformed or mobile for many of the people now liable to such intrusions or caught inside the webs of registration, but their opportunities for self-protection had become much diminished. The forced expulsions of population were only the most brutal of the ways in which an earlier latitude had now disappeared.16 There are many other ways in which a deeper perspective can deliver fruitful grounds of comparability. One of the most obvious would be the violently disruptive population movements in the Balkans, Near East, Eastern Europe, and Russia surrounding the close of the First World War, which in the case of South-Eastern Europe claimed still deeper precedents in the late nineteenth-century contraction of Ottoman rule.17 The mass expulsions entailed by the 1923 Greco-Turkish ‘population exchange’ afford particular opportunities in this respect, given the larger regional arena of the Balkans and even certain direct lineages to the later wreckage of the Greek Civil War.18 Shifting focus to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we can situate the violent population politics of the wartime and its aftermaths – Nazi genocides and other systematic killing, multiform ethnic cleansings, collective deportations, managed mass starvation, resettlements and expulsions, registration and surveillance, conscriptions and coerced mobilisations – in the complex historical geography of the relations between dominant and smaller nationalities in the region. It was no accident that the worst records of collaborationist antisemitism during the Nazi occupation years belonged to precisely the nationalities with a strong ‘historic’ sense of their own right to a greater territorial nationhood: Poland, Hungary, Romania. The casualties of such claims had always been the

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smaller peoples with a history of social and political subordination and the least viable claim to such ‘historic’ territorial sovereignty, real or imagined: Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbs, Byelorussians, and so forth. Other nationalities with a recent sense of frustrated statehood (Croatians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians) generated a radical nationalist cadre with a virulently antisemitic and racialist strain. As the region’s universal minority, geographically dispersed but urban-concentrated, readily conflatable with the dominant cultures by a succession of largely peasant peoples, the Jews found themselves peculiarly vulnerable. The last of the ‘history-less peoples’ and lacking the protections a claim to statehood conferred, their endangerment persisted into the post-war world.19 The particular topics likely to benefit from this deeper historical frame, whether the immediately preceding wartime years or the longer twentieth-century span, may be easily extended. The experience of children; the ready recourse during reconstruction to productivist ideologies of social improvement, social discipline, and social restoration; the resumption during post-war normalisation of the ordinary repetitions of social life in areas such as consumption, recreation, entertainment, or tourism – all these might be pursued and more.20 What, finally, of that alternative perspective I distinguished above, the one emphasising the big eventfulness of the ending of the war, the undecidedness of the situation opened by the Liberation, and the more general open-endedness of 1945? Here we might remember an older interpretive paradigm that in the German field went by the formula of Stunde Null (‘Zero Hour’) and more widely insisted on the decisiveness of the historical rupture marked in Europe by the close of the war. Possessing an evident common-sense persuasiveness, this view had reflected the progressivist conviction that the completeness of the Third Reich’s demise had created the precondition for [West] Germany’s accession to the political community of the West. May 1945 had in that sense seen an entirely new beginning. In Ralf Dahrendorf’s words, the ‘National Socialist revolution of modernity’ had levelled the ‘traditional basis of German society in family and religion and all other spheres’. By undermining the societal power bases of Germany’s old élites (bureaucracy, military, agrarian aristocracy), the ruthless destructiveness of Nazi rule had effectively enabled Germany’s passage into a ‘normal’ future once the Third Reich had itself been cleared out of the way. Indeed, ‘it was the unintended consequences of Hitler’s war – the leveling of German cities and the postwar dismemberment and division of the Reich – that even more dramatically wiped clean the slate on which West Germans could write economic modernization and democratic values’.21

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However, since the turn of the 1980s the consensus of German historians became increasingly sceptical of that argument, all the more so as new social and cultural histories of the Federal Republic got intensively under way. By the end of that decade the ascendant cohorts were far more likely to be stressing the continuities that linked German society in the 1950s to logics of development already established earlier in the twentieth century, arguing ‘that a complete understanding of the foundations of West German social institutions, economic trends, political attitudes, and social stratification required locating West Germany in the continuum of German history, stretching back all the way to the Kaiserreich’. New research on ‘demographic patterns, class structure, the development of the welfare state, the intersection of politics and religion’ all worked with the grain of that view.22 Moreover, two hugely influential large-scale projects focusing wholly or in large part on the 1940s cast still further doubt on 1945 as twentieth-century Germany’s great divide. A study of the life histories of working people between the 1930s and 1960s in the Ruhr found that neither the conventional political chronology of 1933/1939/1945 nor the modernising social-structural and economic narrative mentioned above could adequately capture the everyday experiences of ordinary Germans. For such a ‘people’s history’ of Germany, rather, a very different sequence of temporalities would be required: the hard times of the Depression up until 1935–6, followed by the good times of economic recovery and national aggrandisement (1936 to 1942–3); the new and extreme privations imposed from 1943 by the bombing war and the catastrophe of Stalingrad, which continued unrelentingly through the end of the war into the Allied occupation, only to be replaced after 1945 by the different but no less oppressive deprivations of shortages and hunger; good times finally resuming with the West German currency reform of 1948.23 Convergently, a second major project based at the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte also emphasised the coherence and integrity of the years 1943–8 for German popular experience: not only did this severely diminish the decisiveness of May 1945; it also stressed the growing self-reliance of Germans as they disengaged from Nazism after Stalingrad, thereby assembling many of the psychic resources for post-war reconstruction quite independently of any actions or impact of the Allies.24 In these ways the problem of 1945 presents the historian with a familiar conundrum: how to negotiate the complexities of the relationship between continuities and breaks? How far may the close of the truly catastrophic violence of the wartime years be regarded as marking the most decisive breach or rupture in the continuum of history for Europe in the

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twentieth century? Clearly the ending of a world war can never be seen as anything other than a major passage. But as I argued at the start of this essay, the changes of the post-Communist era since 1989–91 have allowed this question to be approached differently in complicated ways, bringing the immediate transition to peacetime and reconstruction in the mid-1940s under exciting new review, yet without much equivalent interest in the eventful fecundity of 1945 itself. As collective memory of the drama of the war has receded, moreover, while the logics of historiographical sophistication gained weight, historians have grown used to seeing the continuities more confidently and more comfortably than the breaks. Or rather, an interest in the optimisms of the Liberation and all of the paths not taken – in the transitory dynamics of possible openings towards radically different futures – has become far less pressing than tracing the origins of our own increasingly naturalised present to find the threads for the post-Cold War future that eventually was able to happen. The framework of ‘good times, bad times’ constructed around the coherence of the period from Stalingrad to the currency reform in German popular experience (and the equivalent arguments available for other European societies) is one instance of this effect.25 Another is the still-proliferating trans-European interest in the history of popular memory: all those longer perspectives on the post-war period that emphasise the degree to which the dominating psychic, intellectual, social, and political consequences of the wartime experiences remained long unresolved and not worked through.26 Here it becomes vital to find ways of re-entering the psychic territories of European society as the war finally came to a close. More shockingly and more pervasively than any prior experiences of a comparable duration or scale, the Second World War brought a ‘complete disruption of the ethical order’. As the European citizenries emerged into the possibilities of the Liberation, they faced a challenge which was repeatedly voiced but only fitfully and attenuatedly understood at the time. Indeed, the difficulties of formulating it, of returning to it openly, consistently, and in principled political ways, by means of practically realisable programmes, remained to haunt Europe’s post-war political imaginary, country by country, for many years to come. How should one set about rebuilding a workable political ethics of democracy in societies where not just the built environment of the cities lay in ruins but also the ‘psyches, relationships, self-confidence, and hope’ of the majority of the people?27 I would like to make the case for approaching the inception of the postwar period, or the advent of the aftermath, as an existential disordering

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of the already available beliefs and assumptions through which people imagined their place in the continuum of past and future social and political relations of their particular societies. The year ‘1945’ provided one of those rare moments in which history’s continuum became shattered in the most spectacular fashion, partly because of the ferocious scale of the violence, partly because of the genuinely European context of the experience, partly because of the extremes of hope which the extremes of despair and despond brought forth. One aspect of this disordering of available standpoints, which in many ways was an erasure of the pre-war period as an accessible reservoir of rules and practices from which to begin, was the disqualifying of History as a source of legitimating discourse. That was certainly the case in post-Nazi Germany. Of course, even in Germany in 1945 the past was actually being appropriated and invoked as the ground from which an ethical basis for post-war life might be reconstructed in all sorts of subtle and not so subtle ways – whether it was the past of Goethe or the past of an intact Christianity or other images of the German past that were being reached for after the Nazis were gone.28 But given the catastrophe of the most recent past and its stated relations to the larger histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this discursive appeal to the power of the past had become immensely more complicated and hazardous than before. People might react to this existential disordering in a variety of ways. Of course large numbers of people were overwhelmed by the exigencies of an unmanageably difficult everydayness, with little practical space in their lives at all for thinking very coherently or ambitiously about the future. Politics, as a formal profession of commitments and beliefs, as a practical domain of activism, or as a modality of being in the world, commands in any case only a limited and uneven resonance during ordinary times. For most people most of the time, politics in the conventional understanding of the term is an occasional presence, an occurrence of the exceptional moment. But in 1945, as the most egregious mass violence became suspended and the bombs ceased to fall, as a different kind of emotional, imaginative, and practical space started to clear, political meanings acquired unusually broad appeal. Those meanings embraced a variety of more optimistic or more pessimistic ways through which the possible future became thought. Somewhat against the grain of recent historiography, which these days recurs more commonly to a ‘post-traumatic’ reading of the longrunning consequences of the disruptions, assaultiveness, and big violence of the war, I want to argue for recuperating some of the space of

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optimism.29 Thus at the very end of the 1983 Fred Schepisi film Plenty, itself adapted from the 1978 David Hare play, the protagonist Susan Traherne, an SOE (Special Operations Executive) courier in occupied France, emerges into the sunlight of a French village hillside in 1944, looks out over the beautiful countryside, and exults in the promise of the Liberation. She says: ‘But things will quickly change. We’ve grown up. We will improve our world. There will be days and days and days like this’.30 The moment captures beautifully the release from tension and privations into a rush of freedom and longing. Yet it does so only in a register of irony, which re-inscribes the optimism with loss. The film’s flashback comes at the end of a not very likeable personal narrative that has taken us through Traherne’s actual post-war experiences between 1945 and 1962, where the themes have been restlessness, failed intimacy, emotional containment, mental instability, privatised withdrawal, social privilege, and lack of purposeful direction, all of which aggregate to and allegorise an argument about the renormalising of British life during the 1950s. What remains at the end of the story is the dissipation and loss of the previously imagined future with all of its unrealised and unrequited hopes. The key to a fully rounded discussion of the post-war conjuncture will be to sort through the complicated balance between the optimistic and pessimistic readings of the possibilities of Europe’s reconstruction. In the course of that historiography, the generative dynamics of the war’s immediate ending, whether conceived as the drama of the Liberation per se or as the more extended conjuncture of 1943–8, will need to be revisited. What that transition may have permitted or eventually disallowed requires careful and creative attention, not just in the registers of guilt, trauma, and shame to which cultural historians have increasingly recurred, but also in the languages of hope, excitement, nostalgia, disappointment, utopia, and regret.

Notes This chapter revisits arguments made earlier in Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 278–328; ‘Europe after 1945’, History Workshop Journal, 65 (Spring 2008), 195–212; and ‘When Europe was New: Liberation and the Making of the Postwar’, in Monica Riera and Gavin Schaffer (eds), The Lasting War: Society and Identity in Britain, France, and Germany after 1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 17–43. For my thinking here I am especially indebted to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Frank Biess, Atina Grossmann, Bob Moeller, Jessica Reinisch and Tara Zahra.

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In addition to the Birkbeck Balzan Project and its conferences during 2005–8, major conferences also convened in Vienna in May 2005 (‘After Fascism: Re-Democratization of Western European Society and Political Culture since 1945’), Portsmouth in June 2005 (‘The End of World War Two in Comparative Perspective: Britain, France, and Germany’), and San Diego in February 2007 (‘Histories of the Aftermath: The European “Postwar in Comparative Perspective”’). See also Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (eds), Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). This is not an exhaustive survey obviously. The upsurge of post-1945 interest has also embraced a wider variety of emphases, including the interest in collective memory which heavily dominated during the 1990s and beyond. Among general histories of the twentieth century, two in particular have helped shape the emerging perceptions of the post-1945 era: Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon, 1994); Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998). By far the most important post-1945 general history is now Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005). The post-war era was subsumed into more general surveys of the twentieth century, usually receiving more perfunctory treatment than the years 1914–45. The available post-1945 texts authored by political scientists covered only one half of the continent, East or West: for example, Derek W. Urwin, Western Europe since 1945: A Short Political History (London: Longman), originally published in 1968 and entering its fifth edition in 1997; Joseph Rothschild, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War Two (New York: Oxford University Press), originally published in 1989 and now in its fourth revised edition (2007), co-authored by Nancy M. Wingfield. Robert Moeller, ‘Histories of the Aftermath: The European “Postwar” in Comparative Perspective’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 41 (Fall 2007), 90. My thinking about these questions is greatly indebted to the discussions occurring at the conference in San Diego (16–17 February 2007), on which Moeller reports. See also James E. Cronin, The World the Cold War Made: Order, Chaos, and the Return of History (New York: Routledge, 1996). Moeller, ‘Histories of the Aftermath’, 90. There was much discussion in the San Diego conference of the need to re-situate Europe’s experience of the war and its aftermaths in the larger global histories of colonialism and decolonisation. This long remained a staple of EU rhetorical advocacy. In what was in effect a valedictory address in January 1995, the French President François Mitterand reminded the European Parliament of the ‘grief, pain of separation, the presence of death’ inflicted by the nationalist rivalries reaching their brutal climax in 1939–45, to which the intervening history of ‘peace and conciliation’ could now be counterposed. See Tom Buchanan, Europe’s Troubled Peace 1945–2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 1. Both quotations are taken from Mazower, Dark Continent, 205. The first comes from a 1943 manifesto for ‘a new European order’ issued by a group of Parisian high school students; the second from an article in Le FrancTireur, the clandestine newspaper started in December 1941 by one of the earliest groups of French Resistance, a network of former Radicals, former Communists, and liberal Catholics based in Lyon. The wider European

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A Disorder of Peoples setting of this resistance-based Europeanism still requires sustained investigation. In the meantime, see the following: Walter Lipgens, Documents on the History of European Integration. Vol. I: Continental Plans on European Union, 1939–1945 (New York: de Gruyter, 1985); Michael L. Smith and Peter M. R. Stirk (eds), Making the New Europe: European Unity and the Second World War (London: Pinter Publishers, 1990); Bob Moore (ed.), Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000); James D. Wilkinson, The Intellectual Resistance in Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). Increasingly talismanic invocations notwithstanding, the buzzwords of the ‘transnational’ and ‘histoire croisée’ (entangled histories) have stimulated an enormous amount of fruitful new discussion and research. The former term was originally proposed some time ago in the US field, but in the meantime has been taken up by others with alacrity, particularly among German historians. See Ian Tyrrell, ‘American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History’, American Historical Review, 96 (1991), 1031–55; Akira Iriye, ‘The Internationalization of History’, American Historical Review, 94 (1989), 1–10; Thomas Bender (ed.), Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, and Oliver Janz (eds), Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 2006); C. A. Bayley, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed, ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, American Historical Review, 111, 5 (December 2006), 1441–64. The second term, ‘histoire croisée’, originates with Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory, 45 (2006), 30–50, mooted originally in ‘Penser l’histoire croisée: entre empirie et reflexivité’, Annales HSS, 58 (2003), 7–36. For helpful commentary, see Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor, ‘Introduction: Comparative History, Cross-National History, Transnational History – Definitions’, in Cohen and O’Connor (eds), Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2004), ix–xxiv. This is a broad-stroke summary of far more complex patterns of labour migration in the period. In the British case, for example, migrants not only arrived from South Asia and the Caribbean, but also included large numbers of Cypriots, Asians from East Africa, Chinese from Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore, and smaller numbers from most other parts of the decolonising empire. Throughout the post-war era substantial immigrations also continued from the so-called white Commonwealth. Similar complexities can be elaborated for each of the other host countries of Western and Northern Europe. Scandinavia displayed a particular regional pattern, with the most dynamic economy, Sweden, drawing labour from the others (especially Finland) under the terms of the Nordic labour convention of July 1954. I have explored these questions more extensively in Geoff Eley, ‘The Trouble with “Race”: Migrancy, Cultural Difference, and the Remaking of Europe’, in Rita Chin, Geoff Eley, Heide Fehrenbach and Atina Grossmann, After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009). For an excellent overview, see Klaus J. Bade, Legal and Illegal Immigration into Europe: Experiences and Challenges (Wassenaar: Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, 2003), and Migration

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in European History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). Also: Panikos Panayi, Outsiders: A History of European Minorities (London: Hambeldon Press, 1999); Thomas Faist, ‘Migration in Contemporary Europe: European Integration, Economic Liberalization, and Protection’, in Jytte Klausen and Louise A. Tilly (eds), European Integration in Social and Historical Perspective (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 223–48. 9. Here I need to acknowledge the European boundedness of my discussion. While the chapters in this volume are legitimately concerned with a specifically European upheaval, there are many ways in which the latter requires a much wider comparative frame, namely, the various global contexts of European history and European life, particularly the imperialist and colonial ones. That becomes especially pertinent, yet all too commonly neglected, precisely when migration and migrancy are brought under discussion. In the interests of brevity and focus, I have confined my thoughts here to the immediate European setting. For an indication of the wider contexts of migration, see Wayne A. Cornelius, Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip L. Martin, and James F. Hollifield (eds), Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, second ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), and for differing examples of transnational study: Matthew Connelly, Unnatural Selection: The Population Control Movement and Its Struggle to Remake Humanity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich: Beck, 2006). For my own efforts in this direction: Geoff Eley, ‘Historicizing the Global, Politicizing Capital: Giving the Present a Name’, History Workshop Journal, 63 (Spring 2007), 154–88; Eley, ‘The Trouble with “Race”: Migrancy, Cultural Difference, and the Remaking of Europe’, in Rita Chin, Heide Fehrenbach, Geoff Eley, and Atina Grossmann, After the Nazi Racial State: Democracy and Difference in Germany and Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009) especially the final paragraph. 10. See for example Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), especially 131–268; Anna Holian, ‘Displacement and the Post-War Reconstruction of Education: Displaced Persons at the UNRRA University of Munich, 1945–1948’, Contemporary European History, 17 (2008), 167–95. 11. The sharpness of the ‘displacement/replacement’ paradigm can disguise the relevance of a third term, namely, that of ‘return’. Despite their disruptive magnitude, the ultimately short-lived quality of the post-war upheavals (1918, 1945) each brought a renormalising which certainly included the return, sooner or later, of soldiers, other conscripts, and refugees. If the chapters in this volume commonly emphasise the element of non-return – as people tended not to be straightforwardly ‘re-placed’ to their sites of earlier displacement (which were themselves far less ‘original’ than might be assumed) – then a longer-term perspective might fruitfully complicate this question too. Thus to have been ‘un-homed’ during 1939–45 might lead to many different understandings of where one might find an original home, particularly in the longer context of the twentieth century as whole. The actual home that was lost at the moment of first displacement and its physical location (nationally, regionally, locally) was one of a possible number of

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A Disorder of Peoples referents, and not necessarily the most decisive. Various kinds of continuity might be imagined or reclaimed, working to sustain an imaginary of return. For some suggestive explorations, some of them autobiographical, see Angelika Bammer (ed.), Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). The German national economy since the later nineteenth century has not been alone in this structural reliance on international or transnational migrant labour markets, although the relative strength and dynamism of the German economy, as well as its particular vulnerabilities after 1918–19, tended to generate particular logics as a result. Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation, is an especially valuable demonstration of this perspective, with compelling pertinence for other national histories and studies on a larger European or broader comparative scale. If all due allowance is made for national particularities, moreover, the circumstances of guest workers and asylum-seekers after 1945 will appear fully equivalent (structurally, culturally, ideologically) to those elsewehere. Here I am indebted to unpublished work by Dennis Sweeney on ‘Pan-German Conceptions of Colonial Empire’ and many associated conversations. See also Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Robert L. Nelson (ed.), Colonialism in Europe? Germany’s Expansion to the East (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘The Birth of Ostland out of the Spirit of Colonialism: A Postcolonial Perspective on the Nazi Policy of Conquest and Extermination’, Patterns of Prejuduice, 39 (2005), 197–219; David Furber and Wendy Lower, ‘Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-Occupied Poland and Ukraine’, in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 372–400; Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (London: Penguin, 2008). During the past decade the relevant historiography has become ever more extensive, but the pioneering research was by Ulrich Herbert, both in his studies of Nazi labour policies and in the longer historical setting. See Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; original German edn 1985); Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980: Seasonal Workers/Forced Laborers/Guest Workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990; original German edn 1986); Herbert (ed.), Europa und der “Reichseinsatz”: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und KZHäftlinge in Deutschland 1938–1945 (Essen: Klartext, 1991); Herbert, ‘Labour and Extermination: Economic Interest and the Primacy of Weltanschauung in National Socialism’, Past and Present, 138 (1993), 144–95; Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit under dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge in Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001); Wolf Gruner, Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938–1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Viking, 2006), 513–51. My thinking here is heavily indebted to the unpublished dissertation of Roberta Pergher, ‘A Tale of Two Borders: Settlement and National

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Transformation in Libya and South Tirol’, University of Michigan, Ph.D., 2007. The subsequent imagining and fleeting creation of a panMediterranean imperial context for Italian state-making may be followed in Davide Rodogno’s magisterial Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For my own further thoughts, see Geoff Eley, ‘Making a Place in the Nation: Meanings of “Citizenship” in Wilhelmine Germany’, in Geoff Eley and James Retallack (eds), Wilhelminism and Its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism, and the Meanings of Reform, 1890–1930 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 16–33; Eley, ‘How and Where is German History Centered?’, in Neil Gregor, Nils Roemer, and Mark Roseman (eds), German History from the Margins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 268–86; Eley, ‘Some General Thoughts on Citizenship in Germany’, in Geoff Eley and Jan Palmowski (eds), Citizenship and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 233–46, 300–4. 16. This argument owes a great deal to an unpublished paper by Tara Zahra, ‘Imagined Indifference: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis’, a brilliant exercise in sustained scepticism. Also Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Zahra, ‘The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands’, Contemporary European History, 17 (2008), 137–65; Jeremy King, ‘The Nationalization of East-Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond’, in Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur (eds), Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (Purdue: Purdue University Press, 2001), 112–52; Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Of course, the renewed migrations of the postCommunist era from regions across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, whether into unified Germany or to Israel, as sundry populations supposedly reactivated or rediscovered their older affiliations, suggest how the aforementioned latitude can reappear. 17. The indispensable starting-point here is Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell (eds), Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia 1918–1924 (London: Anthem Press, 2004); Baron and Gatrell, ‘Population Displacement, State-Building, and Social Identity in the Lands of the Former Russian Empire, 1917–1923’, Kritika. Explorations in Russian and European History, 4 (2003), 51–100; and Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War One (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). See also Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); Sanborn, ‘Unsettling the Empire: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in Russia during World War I’, 77 (2005), 290–324; Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Holquist, ‘To Count, to Extract, to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia’, in Ronald Grigor

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Suny and Terry Martin (eds), A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Building in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 111–44. The pioneering work spanning both world wars was Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948). For a brief overview: Peter Gatrell, ‘World Wars and Population Displacement in Europe in the Twentieth Century’, Contemporary European History, 16 (2007), 415–26; and for a useful general perspective: Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 18. See Bruce Clark, Twice Strangers: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (Cambridge, MA:: Harvard University Press, 2006); Renee Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: The Consequences of the 1923 GreekTurkish Population Exchange (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003); Penelope Papailias, Genres of Recollection: Archival Poetics and Modern Greece (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Mark Mazower (ed.), After the War was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Glenda Sluga, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Arrigo Petacco, A Tragedy Revealed: The Story of Italians from Istria, Dalmatia, and Venezia-Giulia, 1943–1956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). The Baltic provides similar opportunities for comparison in depth: Aija Predite, ‘Latvian Refugees and the Latvian Nation State during and after World War One’, and Tomas Balkelis, ‘In Search of a Native Realm: The Return of World War One Refugees to Lithuania, 1918–1924’, in Baron and Gatrell (eds), Homelands, 35–52, 219–22, and 74–97, 229–33; Eduard Mühle, ‘Resettled, Expelled and Displaced: The Baltic Experience 1945–1951’, in Norbert Angermann (ed.), Ostseeprovinzen, Baltische Staaten und das Nationale: Festschrift für Gert von Pistohlkors zum 70. Gerburtstag (Münster: Schriften der Baltischen Historischen Kommission, 2005), 565–89; Modris Eksteins, Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). 19. See most recently Jan Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006). 20. See the following essays in Bessel and Schumann (eds), Life after Death; Dagmar Herzog, ‘Desperately Seeking Normality: Sex and Marriage in the Wake of War’, 161–93; Michael Wildt, ‘Continuities and Discontinuities of Consumer Mentality in West Germany in the 1950s’, 211–30; Paul Betts, ‘The Politics of Post-Fascist Aesthetics: 1950s East and West German Industrial Design’, 291–322; Alon Confino, ‘Dissonance, Normality, and the Historical Method: Why Did Some Germans Think of Tourism after May 8, 1945?’, 323–47. Also Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005); Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 64–100; Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). I have used the example of Germany for these citations, but see also: Stephen

Geoff Eley

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

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Gundle, ‘Visions of Prosperity: Consumerism and Popular Culture in Italy from the 1920s to the 1950s’, in Carl Levy and Mark Roseman (eds), Three Postwar Eras in Comparison: Western Europe 1918–1945–1989 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 151–72; Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff (eds), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture, Society, 1948–1957 (Oxford: Berg, 1955); David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle (eds), Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and for a fine general vignette of this transition, Judt, Postwar, 226–37. For the first quotation, Ralf Dahrendrof, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 390, 384; and for the second, Robert G. Moeller, ‘Introduction’, in Moeller (ed.), West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 7, whose argument I am following closely here. Moeller, ‘Introduction’, 8. The key transitional publication ushering in the new perspective on 1945 was a volume edited by Werner Conze and M. Rainer Lepsius, Sozialgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Beiträge zum Kontinuitätsproblem (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1983), itself the product of a series of programmatic conferences held during 1976–79. See Lutz Niethammer (ed.), ‘Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll’: Faschismus-Erfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet, and ‘Hinterher merkt man, daß es richtig war, daß es schiefgegangen ist’: Nachkriegs-Erfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet (both Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf., 1983); Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Plato (eds), ‘Wir kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten’: Auf der Suche nach der Erfahrung des Volkes in nachfaschistischen Ländern (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf., 1985). An excellent overview of the whole project can be found in Ulrich Herbert, ‘Zur Entwicklung der Ruhrarbeiterschaft 1930 bis 1960 aus erfahrungsgeschichtlicher Perspecktive’, in Niethammer and Plato (eds), ‘Wir kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten’, 19–52. See Martin Broszat, Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Hans Woller (eds), Von Stalingrad zur Wahrungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988); Hans Woller, ‘Germany in Transition from Stalingrad (1943) to Currency Reform (1948)’, in Michael Ermarth (ed.), America and the Shaping of German Society, 1945–1955 (Providence: Berg, 1993), 23–34. See Ulrich Herbert, ‘“Die guten und die schlechten Zeiten”: Überlegungen zur diachronen Analyse lebensgeschichtlicher Interviews’, in Niethammer (ed.), ‘Die Jahre weiß man nicht’, 67–96. For an eloquent example of work stressing the centrality of memory, see Tony Judt, ‘From the House of the Dead: An Essay on Modern European Memory’, in Judt, Postwar, 803–31. Also Jan-Werner Müller (ed.), Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner, and Claudio Fogu (eds), The Poltiics of Memory in Postwar Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). Two of the best examples from the vast literature on Germany would be Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of

314

27.

28.

29.

30.

A Disorder of Peoples California Press, 2001), and A. Dirk Moses, German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For the historiography in general, see Robert G. Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims? Thoughts on a Post-Cold War History of World War II’s Legacies’, History and Memory, 17 (2005), 147–94, and ‘What Has “Coming to Terms with the Past” Meant in Post-World War II Germany? From History to Memory to the ‘History of Memory,’ Central European History, 35 (2002), 223–56. The quoted phrases are taken from a paper presented by Robert G. Moeller, ‘Winning the Peace at the Movies: Suffering, Loss, and Redemption in Postwar German Cinema’, at the February 2007 Conference on ‘Histories of the Aftermath: The European “Postwar in Comparative Perspective”’ at the University of California, San Diego, mentioned in Note 4 above. See here Robert G. Moeller, ‘War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany’, American Historical Review, 101 (1996), 1008–48; and in full and compelling detail, Moeller, War Stories. See Alice Förster and Birgit Beck, ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and World War II: Can a Psychiatric Concept Help Us Understand Postwar Society?’, together with Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann, ‘Introduction: Violence, Normality, and the Construction of Postwar Europe’, in Bessel and Schumann (eds), Life after Death, 15–35, 1–13. By the time Susan Traherne steps onto that hillside we know that such days will never follow. During the course of Plenty she descends from the wartime intensities of underground work for the French Resistance, which had spelled purpose, excitement, and optimism for the post-war period, into emotional illness and aimless marginality. Her personal story – drifting through jobs and relationships, failing to conceive a child, settling for an establishment marriage, sinking into medicalised quiescence – is woven into a narrative of Britain’s decline, marked by the public events of Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 and the Suez Crisis in 1956. Her emotional breakdowns, presented as a willful ‘loss of control’, become metaphors for the failure to break out, where the banalities and returning conservatisms of post-war society briefly crack, only to be relentlessly restored. The material ‘plenty’ of post-war reconstruction betrays a moral lack, as Traherne moves from a logic of agency and emancipation to one of abjection. I discuss this film more extensively in larger context in Geoff Eley, ‘Finding the People’s War: Film, British Collective Memory, and World War II’, American Historical Review, 106 (2001), 818–38, esp. 829–34.

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Index Adenauer, Konrad 145 Agudat Israel 171,173 Aliyah Bet 164, 170,173–4 Allied Control Commission 186, 196 Allied Control Council 35 Allied Military Government, Italy 81, 117,123–4 American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Italian Service 121 American Joint Distribution Committee (The Joint) 15, 162, 171–2, 177 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry 169 Armia Krajowa (Home Army) 93

Clay, Lucius D. 212 The Cominform 40–1, 125 Curzon Line 92

Balt Cygnet scheme 229, 233, 236, 243 Bedell Smith, Walter 38, 168 Ben-Gurion, David 168–9, 174 Beneš, Edvard 36 Brandt, Willy 60 Bricha 170, 174 British Element of the Control Commission for Germany (CCGBe) 210 British Foreign Office 169 The Bund 166, 173, 177 Bund der Vertriebenen (Union of Expellees) 62

Gottwald, Klement 40 Grass, Gunter 61, 63–4 Greek Orthodox Church 274

Central Administration for German Resettlers (Zentralverwaltung für deutsche Umsiedler, ZVU) 188 Central Administration for Work and Social Security (Deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, ZVAS) 196, 200 Central Committee of the Liberated Jews (Zentral Komitet, ZK) 167, 172–5 Churchill, Winston xvi, xviii, 54

Dimitrov, Georgi 32, 40 Dobi, István 41 Eden, Anthony 54 Eisenhower, Dwight 168 Escapee Program 8 Exodus Affair 170 Fierlinger, Zdene˘k 32 Frederica, Queen of Greece 272–3, 280–2 De Gasperi, Alcide 84–5

Haber, William 172 Haganah 162, 173–77 Harrison, Earl 167–69 Hitler, Adolf 3, 12, 30, 50–55, 74, 143, 198, 210, 302 Holocaust 6, 60, 162, 165, 174, 178 Hulme, Kathryn 222 Inber, Vera 253 Jewish Agency for Palestine 164, 168, 170, 173, 175–6 Jewish Brigade 164, 166–7 Kielce pogrom 6, 170 Khrushchev, Nikita 95–6, 100 Klausner, Abraham 167 Komsomol 259–60, 263–5 Košicky Programme 7 International Committee on European Migration 129 339

340

Index

International Labour Organization (ILO) 9 International Refugee Organization (IRO) 13, 15–16, 120–1, 127–9, 132, 210, 213 Italian Christian Democratic Party 72, 85, 125 Italian Communist Party (PCI) 71, 77

Nuremberg Trials 259

Lausanne Convention 7, 30, 34, 52, 55 Law on Resettlers (Umsiedlergesetz) 203 League of Nations 9, 13, 15–16 High Commissioner for Refugees (Nansen) 9, 10, 15 Minorities protection xvii, 32 Lutheran World Federation 15

Pan ´ stwowy Urza˛d Repatriacyjny (State Administration of Repatriations, PUR) 13, 102–5 Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers 37 Paris Peace Conference, 1946 37–9, 42, 79–82 Paris Peace Treaty, 1947 81–2 Patton, George 17 Pavelic´, Ante 74 Polski Komitet Wywolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee of National Liberation, PKWN) 94, 99 Potsdam Conference 7, 11, 34–5, 38–9, 52, 54–5, 105, 148, 186, 189, 191, 199

Macmillan, Harold 78 Marshall Plan 127 Masaryk, Jan 39, 41 Mihailovic´, Draža 75 Molotov, Vyacheslav 31, 40 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Hitler-Stalin Pact) 51–52, 92 Munich Agreement 52 Mussolini, Benito 74, 76

Rákosi, Mátyás 40 Red Army 6, 12, 51, 53–4, 93, 99–104, 149, 166, 170, 199, 254–7, 260–1 Red Cross 145, 150, 222, 259, 273 Roman Catholic Church 121, 150, 154 Roosevelt, Franklin 34, 54

Office of the Military Government of the United States (OMGUS) 210, 213, 219 Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani Dalmati (OAPGD) 122–3, 125, 130, 133 Operation Vistula (Akcja ‘Wysła’) 92–3, 107 Organizatsija Ukraïns’kih Natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN) 93 Orwell, George xvii Ottoman Empire 28, 275, 301

Save the Children 15 Shadmi, Nachum 174, 176 She’erit Hapletah 162, 164–8, 171, 173–6 Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) 189 Society of Friends (Quakers) 15–16 Stalin, Josef 5, 32, 41, 51–2, 54, 72, 79, 92, 95–6, 100, 104, 254, 274 Stojadinovicˇ, Milan 74 Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) 211–13

Nadich, Judah 168 Nagy, Ferenc 31 Nansen, Fridtjof 9–10, 15 NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) 98, 101, 259, 261

Tito, Josef 40, 72, 75–81, 84, 126, 274 Togliatti, Palmiro 77

Index Traeger, David 172 Treaty of Versailles 54 Truman, Harry 167 Ukraïns’ka Povstans’ka Armiya (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA) 93 United Nations 34, 37–8, 272, 282 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 121 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) 7, 9, 13, 15, 16, 119–21, 125, 128, 130, 134, 165, 170–2, 192, 210–23, 272 United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans (UNSCOB) 280 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) 170 US Army 168, 171, 176, 218, 223 U. S. Forces European Theater (USFET) 222

341

United States European Command (EUCOM) 211, 219 Westwood Ho scheme 229, 233–6, 239 Wiskemann, Elizabeth 195–6 Wolski, Władysław 102–4 World Council of Churches 7–8, 15–16 World Refugee Year 17, 120 Yalta Conference 104 Zemgor 15 Zenkl, Petr 35–6 Zentralverband der Vertriebenen Deutschen (Central Union of German Expellees) 150 Zhdanov, Andrei 40 Zhukov, Georgii 187 Zionist Federation 175 Zorin, Valerian 37 Zwia˛zek Patriotów Polskich (Union of Polish Patriots, ZPP) 99

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Illustration 1 ‘Changing Trains’, photograph by John Vachon, in: Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, 1995), p. 110 (Courtesy of Ann Vachon, reproduced with permission) A similar photograph in the UN files is captioned: ‘Polish Repatriates from Russia – March 1946. Transferring household goods from a broad-gauge Russian train on the right to standard gauge Polish train on the left, at Mikulczyce railroad junction, near Katowice.’ A caption on another photograph of the same scene reads: ‘Taken near the City of Katowice, in the district of Slask Dabrowski, Upper Silesia’.

Illustration 2 ‘Repatriate family living in Boxcar’, photograph by John Vachon, in: Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, 1995), p. 117 (Courtesy of Ann Vachon, reproduced with permission) ‘All their worldly goods are stacked inside and on the roof of a boxcar on a repatriation transport from Rudki, which is carrying them to a farm in Upper Silesia. The journey has already taken 9 days’.

Illustration 3 ‘German deportees, Wrocław’, photograph by John Vachon, in: Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, 1995), p. 142 (Courtesy of Ann Vachon, reproduced with permission) ‘German deportees carrying their possessions to the train station in Wrocław. The banner in the background reads, “Polish Party Workers”, the precursor of the Polish communist party, according to Dembinska’.

Illustration 4 ‘School in Lampertheim DP camp, Germany’ (National Archives & Records Administration, US (NARA), 260-MGG-1061-02)

Illustration 5 ‘DP children in Wiesbaden, Germany’ (NARA, 260-MGG-1061-04) ‘UNRRA Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. A staff worker takes a group of children to school at a camp for displaced persons in Wiesbaden, Germany. Operated by UNRRA, the camp houses about 7,000 refugees, including 1,000 children, from all parts of Europe. They live in former German Army barracks as self-governing nationality group communities, each with its own school and group activities. The camp also has a hospital, a cooperative store, recreation area and a theater. US Signal Corps Photo’.

Illustration 6

‘Rosenheim, Germany’ (NARA, 260-MGG-1062-08)

‘DP children in Rosenheim, Germany, are shown right before beginning their evening meal. The children have been donated gifts, toys, toilet articles, etc. The gifts have been distributed by UNRRA team 188, MGB, and American Red Cross’.

Illustration 7

‘Wetzlar, Germany, 9 April 1945’ (NARA, 331-CA-5A-6-657)

‘Slave labourer sleeps in Ernst Leitz Optical Works at Wetzlar’.

Illustration 8

‘Attendorn, Germany, 17 April 1945’ (NARA, 331-CA-5B-6-796)

‘Refugee camp near Attendorn, Germany, housing Russian, French, Italian and Polish labour conscripts freed from Nazi camps by 1st Army advance’.

Illustration 9

‘Neuweide, Germany, 28 March 1945’ (NARA, 331-CA-5B-6-828)

‘French, Polish, Italian and Russian refugees who live in Neuweide, Germany, line up to get wine, being handed out by 1st US Army’.