Bratnia Pomoc

Bratnia Pomoc (English: Brotherly Help), also known as Bratniak, was a popular Polish students’ mutual aid organization.

Bratnia Pomoc was originally aimed at helping less affluent students by providing them with loans and scholarships.

The Brotherly Help also contributed to the efforts to educate the populations of Polish towns and villages and to hinder their Russification and Germanisation.

During the Second World War, under the Nazi German occupation, Bratniak branches functioned at the illegal, underground Polish universities.

After the war, Brotherly Help existed until the early fifties, when it was first politicized and subsequently dissolved and replaced by the communist Zrzeszenie Studentów Polskich (Association of Polish Students).

Another photograph of Bratniak celebrations at the Jagiellonian University in May 1947
Document stating Bratniak membership at the Jagiellonian University during the Nazi German occupation of Poland