The 28-year-old Aniela C. was well aware of the German censorship when she wrote a letter to her good friend Jan B. on January 9, 1942. Nevertheless, she gave free rein to her anger.1 She lived in her ancestral village of Grodziec, which had been part of the territories annexed by the German Reich after the occupation of Poland in 1939. Her friend Jan had been sent to perform forced labour in East Prussia since the spring of 1941. The budding couple missed each other very much and tried to bridge the period of separation by keeping a regular correspondence. Aniela often wrote her letters “on the off chance” that “any one of them would get there”. It appears that the young Polish woman used this communication as an outlet for her unexpressed emotions, as her letters were full of anger at the Germans. She was angry about new orders, such as the compulsory handing over of winter clothing for German soldiers. She also feared being abruptly expelled from her house, something that had happened next door, where the Germans had deported an entire family to the General Gouvernement for no reason, a fact she also told her friend about in her letter. Aniela hated the occupiers because of the everyday terror.
In her (supposedly) private correspondence, she no longer wanted to restrain herself. She railed against the Germans and was not afraid of the consequences of her anti-German sentiments. Among other things, she wrote: “The Lord has confounded any reason in their foolish minds. I have written a little too much, perhaps the letter will be withheld. I expect this and will write the second letter immediately and, if necessary, the third. I will play on their [the Germans’] nerves. May they turn like worms on a red-hot plate.” Just 10 days later, the letter, which had been censored and translated into German, was handed over to the Gestapo in Zichenau, whereupon the trained seamstress was arrested and locked up in the court prison. As Aniela made no secret of her hatred of the Germans during her interrogation, she was subsequently transferred to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. In the eyes of the Gestapo officials: “she posed a particular danger to the consolidation of conditions in the eastern territories.” Once in the camp, she not only had to perform forced labour in the cold and hunger, but also endured medical experiments.
What historical insights can we gain from analysing this letter and Aniela’s fate?
Given the letter’s emotional depth, it is worth exploring Aniela´s self-perception within the context of occupation. Drawing on the history of emotions, it quickly becomes clear that her letter serves as a strategy for coping with the occupation.
The young Polish woman’s behaviour is symptomatic for Poland under German occupation. The everyday harassment, expulsions and arrests left the local population stunned. In the end, they simply no longer knew what to do with their pent-up and overwhelming emotions, so they sent letters to each other. Some senders were better able to encode their anger and hatred, while others, in their desperation, did not want to make the effort.
Between 1941 and 1945, countless letters were recorded by the Auslandsbriefprüfstelle (Foreign Letter Inspection Office), an authority within the Wehrmacht responsible for the inspection of foreign mail, which had several regional offices on the Reich’s external borders. It employed dozens of linguists who randomly read the letters arriving in the German Reich and translated suspicious passages into German. The authority then forwarded the letters to the Gestapo, which carried out investigations among the senders and recipients in order to track down anti-German sentiments and potential resistance fighters. In addition to the Ausländerbriefprüfstelle, the German Reichspost also sporadically censored foreign correspondence on behalf of the local police stations and the Gestapo.3
The withheld letters represent a special type of source that has hardly been recognized in previous historical research.4 These are ego-documents that display a contemporary snapshot in the midst of the war, especially of the “little people”, and thus bring to light many previously unknown fates of persecution. We can view these letters as evidence of a double persecution. The primary persecution is the policy of the German Occupying Forces. The people subjected to it saw themselves as passive victims of arbitrary rule. They feared for their possessions, lived in poverty and experienced humiliation and injustice due to their ethnic origin. The persecution on a secondary level resulted from the consequences of letter censorship. The Gestapo arrested both senders and recipients for the duration of the investigation. Depending on the Gestapo functionaries’ wishes, the punishment could range from a warning to temporary detention in a Arbeitserziehungslager (Labor Education Camp) or even incarceration in a concentration camp. However, it was common for the police to call in the ordinary courts, which sentenced the accused under the Heimtückegesetz (The Law against Insidious Attacks on the State and Party and for the Protection of Party Uniforms of December 20, 1934) for their anti-German statements.
Although postal secrecy was also lifted for citizens of the German Reich, the correspondence partner concerned was generally spared sentencing based on racial ideology. Both as so-called Polish civilian workers on “labour deployment” in Germany and as “national Poles” in the occupied territories, ethnic Poles were considered inferior “sub-humans” in the eyes of the Nazis.
Where can we find the intercepted letters from occupied Poland?
The Gestapo files come to mind first. However, most of them were systematically destroyed at the end of the war. Today only the personnel files of the State police Station Zichenau/Schröttersburg (Ciechanów/Płock) and the Gestapo Lodz/Litzmannstadt (Łódź) have been preserved for the former German-occupied Polish territory. Nevertheless, these regional holdings alone show the enormous scope of the persecution practice with regard to letters classified as hostile to the Germans. In contrast, the personnel files of the Nazi judiciary (General Prosecutor’s Office; courts, prisons) are very well preserved. They contain numerous judgments against Polish citizens based on letter censorship. In addition to the letters as evidence, the files in question also contain information on investigations conducted, which largely enable the necessary contextualization of the respective exchange of letters.
The surviving letters are preserved in the original and mostly in official translation. The envelope, often used as a means of communication itself, is usually documented. Some senders wrote in broken German that the letter was very important and asked for it to be delivered quickly. Some envelopes contain family photographs or religious objects, which illustrate the subjective nature of these sources.
The advantage of this type of source material is its decentralized origin and the diversity of its authors, who often carry unstable ethnic-national identities within themselves. This makes it possible to examine emotions and experiences of the occupation in various territorial, social and ethnic contexts. Underlying many letters is the pain of separation, which gives them a particular emotional density. The senders living under occupation mainly wrote to their friends and family members about matters particularly close to their hearts, revealing their emotions and experiences. Even those who were unable to write utilized the medium of letters and put their feelings on paper with the help of neighbours.
If epistemology at the time of the war is the object of investigation, it is essential to clarify the role of censorship of letters. It is clear that the senders’ knowledge about the control exercised over their correspondence was vague, situational and individual. Even if certain authors were aware of the monitoring of correspondence, they still conveyed the messages they wished to send, such as Aniela quoted above. However, some information only emerges by reading between the lines.
The use of the letters intercepted by the German censors for historical research requires deep ethical reflection. First, it takes a considerable effort to read other people’s correspondence for academic purposes. Is it justified to use these deeply personal objects as sources of knowledge and to disregard the postal secrecy that was already being disregarded by the German censors at the time? None of the authors of the letters can give a declaration of consent. The same applies to the descendants, for whom the letters would normally be an exemplary family memento. However, they are often unaware of the existence of these letters.
For all of these reasons, it is essential to treat these documents with respect. We should primarily understand them as the intimate legacy of people living in extremely difficult circumstances. The persecuted people often wrote their letters as cries for help with highly emotional or spiritual content. Some letters were even farewell greetings. Respect for research ethics is therefore to be directed both at the letters themselves and at the biographies of the senders. From a hermeneutic point of view, it means considering the people concerned as subjects, including their experiences, emotions and prejudices. It is therefore advisable to include only those letters in the analysis for which the biographical background can be reconstructed and understood in order to correctly situate the letter authors in their environment. In the publication of the letters, we should ensure the partial anonymity of the biographies, even if the persons concerned are long deceased. After all, it is unknown whether they would have agreed to the usage of their personal documents.
The letter intercepted in the middle of the period of occupation is an ego-document of persecution, depending on the content and consequences of the letter censorship. In the case of Aniela C., this is definitely the case. Her letter and her biography would be an important source for contemporary debates about the “Besatzungsmuseum” and the place of remembrance and encounters with Poland.5 In this sense, dealing with intercepted letters shifts the perspective to everyday life under occupation and ultimately gives the persecuted “little people” their voice back.
Translation: Nils Bergmann
References
- Quotations and further information are taken from Aniela C.‘s personal file in the “Gestapo Zichenau” fonds. Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej w Warszawie [Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw], Sign. IPN GK 629⁄633. For her concentration camp experience, see the compensation file from 1972 in the same archive: Sign. IPN GK 927⁄5850. The text was written as part of the project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) entitled ” (Emotions under extreme conditions. Emotional worlds in Poland under German occupation, 1939–1945) (project number: 448792852, project duration 2020–2026).
- Cf. Christine Hartig, Briefe als Zugang zu einer Alltagsgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 2018, online publication, https://ns-alltagsgeschichten.blogs.uni-hamburg.de/wp-content/uploads/themen/Briefe-als-Quelle/index.html (last accessed: 07.01.2023).
- Historical research has often focused on the mail of concentration camp prisoners, whose special feature, apart from the self-evident censorship of letters, was the compulsion to write in German. See: Benjamin Grilj, Briefe aus den Lagern der NS-Herrschaft (1933−1945), in: Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig, Jörg Schuster, Gesa Steinbrink, Jochen Strobel (Hrsg.), Handbuch Brief. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, 2 Bd.., Berlin 2020, pp. 1441–1449; cf. Heinz Wewer, Spuren des Terrors. Postalische Zeugnisse zum System der deutschen Konzentrationslager, Berlin 2020.
- In November 2017, against the backdrop of the Polish debate on German war reparations, an appeal was made to the German Bundestag and the German public to erect a monument to Poland in the centre of Berlin to commemorate the Polish victims of the German occupation.