Ślepa sprawiedliwość. Katolicy niemieccy w Łodzi 1939-1950

Abstract

The multinational, multidenominational and multicultural character of Łódź was its specific trait in the last two hundred years. The German community, constituting a big industrial centre, was the most active and the best organized group with a highly-developed need to posses cultural goods and be social committed. Now, the German Catholics played an important role in socio-cultural activities and in the pastoral care of a few Łódź parishes. The Polish element within Roman Catholicism became dominant in the Second Polish Republic, a fact that caused a specific diaspora among the German Catholics. In three Łódź parishes (the Elevation of the Holy Cross, St. Ann’s and St. Anthony’s) they participated in liturgical and sacramental pastoral care, attended religious instruction, were active in numerous fraternities, choirs, associations, organizations of political character, and issued local magazines. During the Second World war and Nazi occupation the Roman-Catholic Church was subjected to anti-Church Nazi policy, due to ethnic reasons rather than ideological. Thus the pastoral care of the Łódź German Catholic diaspora was limited to minimum, whereas its activity in the cultural, educational, and political field was eliminated. Moreover, the Catholics of German origin from Łódź had to declare to which nation they belonged by signing, voluntarily or under compulsion, the German Folks List. After the Nazi occupation all the Germans in Łódź were collectively held responsible for Nazi crimes. The whole German community in Łódź, irrespective of their ideological, political, social or professional commitment in the years 1939-1945, was subjected to criminal responsibility (often for the crimes they had not committed) and administrative restrictions (general labour warrant). The Ministry of Secret Police established a special labour camp for them in Siklawa (one of the three largest camps in Central Poland). Eventually, 35.000 Łódź Germans were deported to Germany within five years after the war, thereby depriving Łódź and the Roman-Catholic Church of the most active element of their local community.