The Friedland Refugee Transit Camp As Regulating Humanitarianism, 1945-1960
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“GATEWAY TO FREEDOM”: THE FRIEDLAND REFUGEE TRANSIT CAMP AS REGULATING HUMANITARIANISM, 1945-1960 DEREK JOHN HOLMGREN A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2015 Approved by: Konrad H. Jarausch Christopher R. Browning Chad Bryant Tobias Hof Donald J. Raleigh © 2015 Derek John Holmgren ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Derek John Holmgren: “Gateway to Freedom”: The Friedland Refugee Transit Camp as Regulating Humanitarianism, 1945-1960 (Under the direction of Konrad H. Jarausch) Using the refugee transit camp located in Friedland, Lower Saxony as a case study, this dissertation examines the efforts in West Germany to aid and resettle millions of persons displaced during and after World War II. These uprooted populations included foreign victims of the Nazi regime (forced laborers, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors), Germans evacuated from bombed-out cities, Germans fleeing or expelled from from Eastern Europe, and German soldiers who were demobilized and released from prisoner of war camps. Established by order of the British military government in September 1945, the camp at Friedland functioned as the lynchpin for a system designed to collect, aid, register, and resettle displaced populations as quickly as possible. As such, this study describes the operation of the camp as a regulating form of humanitarianism that not only aided refugees with food, shelter, and medical services, but also turned unmanageable masses into settled individuals with claims on the postwar welfare state. Between 1945 and 1960, the camp processed over 2.1 million individuals. Given the scope of the crisis, this intervention to ameliorate suffering and restore social order depended on the work of German civil authorities, the British military government, and German, British, and international charities. This study of the Friedland camp makes three major contributions to scholarship on postwar displacement in Central and Eastern Europe. First, it demonstrates how improvisational efforts at Friedland became formalized into a comprehensive system of regulation in which the iii camp played a crucial role. Second, examination of groups processed at Friedland shows that the postwar unsettling of populations was both broader in scope and longer lasting than previously recognized. Groups whose dislocation was tied to the war included evacuees, released military and civilian prisoners of war, young refugees from the Soviet zone, and “resettlers” who left Poland. Third, this dissertation deconstructs the mythology of Friedland as the “Gateway to Freedom” by analyzing credible elements of myth, counter-examples to it, and officials’ cultivation of the camp’s public image. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A variety of grants and fellowships made possible the research for this study. Much of the research was completed with the support of a Fulbright Research Grant to Germany. Additional funding came from the UNC Center for Global Initiatives Pre-Dissertation Research Grant. The UNC Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies and the Indiana University Summer Workshop in Slavic Languages both supported Polish language studies through Foreign Language and Area Studies Grants. The archivists and staff at the Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv in Hannover provided much friendly assistance. I owe them a particular debt for tracking down de-Nazification files for many of the camp staffers when I could give them only names and dates of birth. In Göttingen, archivists at the city and county archives and the Protestant Kreiskirchenarchiv were always eager to assist, as was Waltraud Schmidt at the Caritasstelle in Friedland. Joachim Mrugalla and his colleagues from the Bundesverwaltungsamt—Friedland Außenstelle deserve special mention for generously agreeing to allow access to the camp’s registration files and for their help in explaining the organizational system. I am deeply grateful to a number of individuals in Germany who helped to guide my research and the conceptualization of my project. Dirk Schumann at the Georg-August- Universität Göttingen graciously agreed to serve as my sponsor for Fulbright in Germany. I am thankful to him and the other participants in the Forschungskolloquium zur Neueren und Neuesten Geschichte for their warm welcome throughout my research year as well as their critical feedback on my presentation. In particular, I am indebted to Sascha Schießl, who kindly v shared his knowledge of everything Friedland, from the camp’s history to suggestions for archival research. I would also like to thank Dagmar Kleineke and Julia Kleinschmidt for their expertise on Friedland. Klaus Magnus offered not only his enthusiasm for the camp’s history, but also a number of primary sources he had collected over the years. Petra Siebert and Rainer Köster were great mentors and friends when I first came to Göttingen as an English teaching assistant at the Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium . They introduced me to Friedland when we went on a hike in the area, and years later they hosted me during a research trip to Göttingen. I could not have asked for a better academic home than the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My fellow graduate students have been wonderful colleagues and friends. Julie Ault was always willing to provide a critical eye on papers, grant applications, and chapters. She has been a great friend and provider of lemon bars. Likewise, conversations with Ned Richardson-Little helped me to better understand my own project, and he regularly offered a sympathetic ear (and a place to stay in Berlin). In addition to their friendship, Aaron Hale-Dorrell, Jonathan Hancock, Tom Goldstein, Friederike Brühöfener, Philipp Stelzel, Kristen Dolan, and Alex Ruble all offered me invaluable advice on scholarship and the profession. I wish I could say more about each of them, but I would also like to thank my colleagues Christina Carroll, Scott Krause, Peter Gengler, Lorne Hillaker, Lars Stiglich, Zach Smith, Dan Giblin, and David Williard. I owe a great deal of thanks to the members of my committee and other faculty. Chad Bryant and Christopher Browning have helped with my project since the beginning stages. They have provided thoughtful comments on papers and presentations, and they have both greatly influenced my understanding of the historical and geographical contexts in which the Friedland camp operated. Don Raleigh has contributed greatly to my understanding of the Soviet and vi Eastern European history as well as posed incisive questions about my dissertation. I have valued my opportunities to discuss German history and scholarship on fascism and genocide with Tobias Hof, and I am grateful he could serve on my committee. I would also like to particularly thank Karen Hagemann for her unstinting support of this project, constructive feedback, and pushing me to be bold in arguments and engagement with other scholarship. I had the opportunity to learn from Carol Helstosky, Susan Schulten, and Gabi Kathöfer at the University of Denver. All of them played important roles in my development as an historian. I am fortunate to have worked with my advisor, Konrad Jarausch. He provided clear direction, insight, and all kinds of support, from helping me recognize my own arguments to last- minute letters of recommendation. When a camp employee finishing his doctorate in Göttingen tried to prevent a transfer to a faraway facility, the assistant director supported the move: “ Die Lagerleitung ist der Ansicht, daß die beabsichtigte Doktor-Arbeit schon seit längerer Zeit hätte durchgeführt werden können .” The same could have been said about this dissertation. I therefore owe Konrad Jarausch much gratitude not only for his patience, but also his willingness to help me with a writing program to complete the project. Finally, I cannot imagine completing this dissertation without the support of my family. David and Evelyn Lowry were always interested and happy to help in any way they could. My grandparents, Helen and Bill Holmgren, were curious to know more about the dissertation and my studies, and visiting with them has been a joy. William and Andrew Holmgren, my brothers, provided much needed perspective from their own graduate studies, and my sister-in-law, Alex, always found time for me and made me look forward to working with the UNC Center for European Studies. My parents, Jean McSpadden and David Holmgren, along with my stepparents, Ernest McSpadden and Paula Stock, have been sources of encouragement, vii sympathy, and strength. I cannot thank them enough for everything they have provided, but I am especially grateful that they taught me the value of an education. I count myself as lucky to have had Sarah Lowry at my side throughout my studies. Sharing successes with her made them so much sweeter, and she got us through the difficult times as well. Thanks to her friendship and steady partnership, I am glad that I can say we are finally done with our dissertation. viii PREFACE Over the past seven years, when my conversations with Germans have turned toward research, typically there has been some form of the question, “Why are you, an American, interested in this topic of Friedland?” This question is natural, and it is one I admit to having asked myself often while researching and writing this dissertation. Many Germans have heard of the “Gateway to Freedom,” especially those of older age cohorts or from the Göttingen area, but it is not self-evident that a foreigner would know of the camp, much less spend years of his life on the topic. Oddly enough, my path to Friedland began in the former Yugoslavia. I had long been interested in that region and the wars during the 1990s. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in a University of Denver “service-learning” course in Sarajevo and Vareš after my freshman year at DU in 2005.