Letter from the Polish Main [Central] Committee to the General Government of Poland, on conditions of Polish workers and families in Germany, including the prohibition of religious services and practices

Polish Main Committee 5 Vischer Street
Cracow Cracow, 17th May 1944
To the Administration of the General Government,
Main Department Home Administration, '
Dept. Population and Welfare, .
Cracow
13 University Street.
No. Pa 1/724, 6699/44
Subject: Situation of the Polish Workers in the Reich
The conditions of life for about 2 millions of Polish male and female workers in the Reich have given rise to difficulties which are to a large extent lowering the will and the power to work of many workers, endangering their health and even their lives, and also having a strong influence on the situation of their families within the General Government, thus even directly affecting the sphere of our own work.
These bad conditions are felt especially by those groups of workers who have been assigned for work in factories and have been lodged in large camps. With regard to workers on the land they only occur for individual cases which are easily dealt with. The conditions have become worse since whole families often with many children were brought into the Reich and, defenseless and unprotected against the outrages of Ukrainian murder gangs, were placed in camps for Eastern workers.
The sanitary and moral effect of the bad conditions is for us too far reaching to be considered with indifference; we beg therefore to draw attention to them and to ask to consider the elimination of these bad conditions.
They concern housing, feeding, clothing, care of children and their education, sanitary conditions, and finally separation of families. *"
Question of housing
First consideration is due to the situation of families who have been inducted into camps for Eastern workers, together with numerous younger and older children * * * Once arrived in
the camps they have been deprived of any liberty of movement and are being treated as prisoners without any rights. The privileges of voluntary workers, which are due to them, are not granted. Nobody is asked what work he is suited for. Land workers are assigned to factories where they are unused to the
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work and unable to accomplish as much as they could on the land .... Husband, wife and older children are called to work in factories, the younger children remain without due supervision in the camp areas, behind barbed wire, without any opportunities of exercising in the open air and not subject to any discipline.
The cleanliness of many overcrowded camp rooms Ms contrary to the most elementary requirements. Often there is no opportunity to obtain warm water for washing, therefore the cleanest parents are unable to maintain even the most primitive standard of hygiene for their children or often even to wash their only set of linen. A consequence of this is the spreading of scabies which cannot be eradicated.
* ***** * Help in Feeding. -We receive imploring letters from the camps of Eastern workers and their prolific families beseeching us for food. The quantity and quality of camp rations mentioned therein—the so-called fourth grade of rations—is absolutely insufficient to maintain the energies spent in heavy work. 3, 5 kg of bread weekly and a thin soup at lunch time, cooked with swedes or other vegetables without any meat or fat, with a meager addition of potatoes now and then is a hunger ration for a heavy worker.
Sometimes punishment consists of starvation which is inflicted
e.g. for refusal to wear the badge "East". Such punishment has the result that workers faint at work—(Klosterteich Camp, Gruenheim, Saxony)—The consequence is complete exhaustion, an ailing state of health and tuberculosis. The spreading of tuberculosis among the Polish factory workers is a result of the deficient food rations meted out in the community camps because energy spent in heavy work cannot be replaced.
*******
The food and bread fixed for Polish children in the camps are by no means sufficient for building up the substance for growing and developing their organism. In some cases children up to the age of 10 and more are alloted 200 gr. of bread weekly, 200 gr. of butter or margarine and 250 gr. of sugar monthly and nothing else—(Zeititz near Wurzen, Saxony).
Prices in the open market are far too high. The call for help which reaches us, brings to light starvation and hunger, severe stomach and intestinal trouble especially in the case of children resulting from the insufficiency of food which does not take into
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consideration the needs of children. Proper medical treatment or care for the sick are not available in the mass camps.
* * * « tfc * * ;
Care of Children , .
In addition to these bad conditions, there is lack of systematic occupation for and supervision of these hosts of children which affects the life of prolific families in the camps. The children, left to themselves without schooling or religious care, must run wild and grow up illiterate. Idleness in rough surroundings may and will create unwanted results in these children. (Suggestions follow to remedy the situation.) * * * An indication of the
awful conditions this may lead to, is given by the fact that in the camps for Eastern workers—(camp for Eastern workers "Waldlust", Post Office Lauf, Pegnitz) there are cases of 8 year old delicate and under nourished children put to forced labor and perishing from such treatment. * * * ,
Sanitary Treatment.
The fact that these bad conditions dangerously affect the state of health and the vitality of the workers is proved by the many cases of tuberculosis found in very young people returning from the Reich to the General Government as unfit for work. Their state of health is usually so bad that recovery is out of the question.
The reason is that a state of exhaustion resulting from overwork and a starvation diet is not recognized as an ailment until the illness betrays itself by high fever and fainting spells.
Although some hostels for unfit workers have been provided as a precautionary measure, one can only go there when recovery may no longer be expected—-(Neumarkt in Bavaria). Even,there the incurables waste away slowly, and nothing is done even to alleviate the state of the sick by suitable food and medicines. There are children there with tuberculosis whose cure would not be hopeless, and men in their prime who, if sent home in time to their families in rural districts, might still be able to recover.
* * , * * * * *
Protection of the Community of Families.
Grave depression is caused among the Eastern workers by the ordinance forbidding marriage among them within the borders of the Reich. * * * No less suffering is caused by the separation of families when wives and mothers of small children are
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torn away from their families and sent to the Reich for forced labor.
There'are also fathers who Occasionally volunteered for labor and who have already been working for four years in the Reich, without ever getting any leave, from whom their own children have been alienated because of their long absence, who often do not even know their own children born after their departure, because they have had no opportunity of visiting their families on leave.
******* Religious Care.
If under these bad conditions there is no moral support such as is normally provided by regular family life, then at least such moral support which the religious feelings of the Polish population require should be maintained and increased. The elimination of religious services, religious practice and religious care from the life of the Polish workers, the prohibition of church attendance at a, time when there is a religious service for other people and other measures show a certain contempt for the influence of religions on the feelings and opinions of the workers. -* * * * * * *
[signed] The Polish Central Committee
[signature illegible] > President