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After
the capitulation of Warsaw on 23.09.1939 and the cessation of
fighting, despite the crushing defeat, the Polish community
quickly set about clearing the damage and organising schools.
Unfortunately the Germans were equally quick in imposing their
own civilian administration. The occupied Polish territory was
divided into a section that was incorporated into the Reich (the
regions of Silesia, Poznan and Bydgoszcz) and the General-Gouvernement
(up to the river Bug border), with its capital in Krakow, where
Governor-General Frank set up residence.
The
Germans made no secret of their plans regarding the Polish
population. They were not only interested in the occupation of
Polish land but also the destruction of Polish culture, whilst
the Polish people were to be degraded to nothing more than a
workforce. The Polish community was greatly shocked when all the
professors of the Jagiellonian University were arrested after a
lecture given by Müller, a Gestapo officer who had requested
the university’s rector for this gathering to be arranged.
In the
territories that were incorporated into the Reich there were no
Polish schools, not even primary schools, and Polish children
were not allowed to attend German schools. And yet, despite the
terror, clandestine classes were organised spontaneously. In
great secrecy, teachers would gather several children from their
neighbourhood and teach them. Parents would frequently ask
teachers to take care of their children, so that they would not
go astray due to a lack of education, and even pay the teacher
as far as they were able to. Each teacher would instruct his
small group of primary school pupils according to the pre-war
syllabus, naturally modified, two or three times a week. As the
number of classes increased teachers had to organise lessons for
several classes at different locations. This was possible thanks
to parents who allowed lessons to be held in their very small
flats (the larger Polish homes were sequestered). If a German
paid an unexpected call, he would be told that the children were
being taught the German language and sums, officially required
skills, for Poles had to be employed as menial labourers by the
age of 12-14. The secret schools in this part of Poland were
partly under the care and control of [Polish, underground,]
military organisations.
In the
General-Gouvernement all high and middle schools were closed,
while the remaining primary and vocational schools had a reduced
syllabus with the exclusion of Polish history, geography and
literature. The German education system was imposed onto the
existing Polish administrative structure, which the Germans now
supervised and where they gradually reduced the number and
competencies of Polish staff.
Towards
the end of October 1939 the Secret Teaching Organisation (Tajna
Organizacja Nauczania – TON) was founded to merge the
Polish Teachers’ Union with five smaller teaching
organisations. Meantime the ZWZ (Union for Armed Struggle) set
up the Commission for Public Education and there were also
several regional initiatives. The existence of multiple
organisations was only temporary. In 1940 the Polish Government
Delegation’s Department of Education and Culture was founded,
chiefly to prepare teaching and examination syllabuses as well
as future projects.
TON
was subsidised by the London based Polish Government-in-Exile.
The mission was to establish an underground education system
involving the entire Polish community. This was one of the forms
of combating the occupant. Initially TON concerned itself with
primary education: the older years were taught the officially
prohibited subjects and year seven was taught the programme of gimnazjum
(middle school) year one. Soon middle school classes were also
set up. Special rules were established: there were to be five to
six pupils to each class, the number of hours for each pre-war
subject was to be halved and lessons were to last two hours.
Lessons were to be held at someone’s home no more than twice a
week. Classes were not to change locations during a single day,
instead teachers were to go from class to class to give their
lessons. In exceptional cases, when a school location seemed
particularly safe, a secret teaching programme could be included
in the vocational lessons timetable. For example, a woman could
be secretly teaching history during what was officially a lesson
in bookkeeping and she could be in the classroom officially as
the form teacher. Maths or history teachers, for example, found
employment in such schools after changing their qualifications
to those of teachers of vocational subjects.
University
professors in Warsaw and Krakow also gave lessons to secret
classes. The gaining of permission from the German education
authorities to set up new vocational schools helped in the
organising of secret courses at university level. At least
partly, such courses could be held at these vocational schools
and benefit from some of the facilities they provided. For
example, what was officially a school for auxiliary medical
personnel run by docent [Assistant Professor] Jan Zaorski,
was in fact the Medical Department of Józef Piłsudski
University. The School of Draughtsmanship providing courses in
technical drawing was in fact the Warsaw University of
Technology, while a vocational farming school and private
fishing school were in fact the former Main School of Farming (SGGW).
Professor
Edward Lipieński of the Main School of Trade (SGH) acquired
a licence to run one-year economics courses. After a year,
students received a certificate for completing the ‘general
trade’ class, the second year was the ‘industry class’ and
in the third they did ‘banking’.
In
February 1940 some of the professors of the Jagiellonian
University were released from the concentration camp. In
December that year Prof. Mieczysław Małecki returned
and, having reached an understanding with the underground
authorities, found employment at the
to officially gather material for a dictionary of Polish words
of German origin. Thus he gained access to the Jagiellonian
Library and was able to take the books he needed for preparing
secret lectures. Małecki brought in more colleagues and in
April 1942 they founded a secret Polish studies faculty. Later a
law studies faculty was also founded. [This was achieved
because] Professor Małecki had set up and registered a
craftwork cooperative in which he employed fellow professors as
master craftsmen, academic assistants as assistant craftsmen and
students as ordinary workers from various firms.
Polish
territories on the east side of the river Bug did not come under
German control until 1941. To a certain extent, in the years
1939-1941 Polish primary and middle schools continued to
function in these regions. It was the German occupant who closed
them down and played on ethnic antagonisms between the Poles and
Lithuanians, Byelorussians and Ukrainians.
Secret
teaching was not just a matter of education but also of
upbringing. The teachers treated their work as a civil
obligation, while the young were eager to learn and studied
well. Both teachers and pupils knew that if they were caught,
all of them, including the owner of the home where the classes
were held, faced prison or the concentration camp. Yet the
occupant’s brutal repressions failed to deter the running of
secret lessons.
Further
Reading
*Stefan
Korboński, ‘Polskie Państwo Podziemne’ in Promyk,
Philadelphia P.A.
*Nadzieja
Drucka, Szkoła w podziemiu, Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony
Narodowej, Warsaw
*Janina
Kazimierska, Szkolnictwo warszawskie w latach 1939-45, PWN,
Warsaw 1980
*Mikołaj
Kozakiewicz and Stanisław Brzozowski, Szkoła w
konspiracji, Instytut Wydawniczy Nasza Księgarnia, Warsaw
1960
*Adam
Kowalski, Pamiętniki nauczyciela, Wydawnictwo Łódzkie,
Lodz J