Education in Poland during World War II

Secretly conducted education prepared scholars and workers for the postwar reconstruction of Poland and countered German and Soviet threats to eradicate Polish culture.

According to Nazi racial theories the Slavs needed no higher education and the whole nation was to be turned into uneducated serfs for the German race.

Their equipment and most of the laboratories were taken to Germany and divided among the German universities while the buildings were turned into offices and military barracks.

However, many teachers, professors and educational activists organized underground courses all around the country, reviving the tradition of Flying University from the times of partition of Poland.

Those who survived the A-B Aktion and were not sent to concentration camps actively lectured to small groups in private apartments.

[4] By 1942, about 1,500,000 students took part in underground primary education; in 1944, the clandestine secondary school system covered 100,000 people and the secret university level courses about 10,000.

A new University of Western Lands (Uniwersytet Ziem Zachodnich) was created in Warsaw, with branches in Kielce, Jędrzejów, Częstochowa and Milanówek.

The Szare Szeregi (the underground Polish Scouting Association) opened its own NCO school in Warsaw nicknamed Agricola.