Ruhrpolen
The Poles (including Masurians,[1][2][3] Kashubians,[4] Silesians, and other groups) migrated to the rapidly industrializing region from Polish-speaking areas of the German Empire.
[5] The Protestant Masurians did not accept being identified with Catholic Poles and underlined their loyalty to Prussia and the German Empire.
[16] The main center of the Polish community of the Ruhr area was Bochum, and since 1905, many organizations and enterprises were based at Am Kortländer Street,[12] which was hence nicknamed "Little Warsaw".
[13] The former Redemptorist Monastery in Bochum, which was closed down by the Prussian government during the Kulturkampf in 1873, was reopened and became a Polish religious center.
[22] In 1909, the Central Office for Monitoring the Polish Movement in the Rhine-Westphalian Industrial Districts (Zentralstelle fur Uberwachung der Polenbewegung im Rheinisch-Westfalischen Industriebezirke) was established by the Germans in Bochum.
[23] Other measures included instructing teachers and officials that their duty was to promote a German national consciousness.
[20] The Settlement Law of 1904 made it difficult for Poles who wished to return east to purchase land.
[29] Bochum was the headquarters of the Third District of the Union of Poles in Germany, which covered not only Westphalia and Rhineland, within which the Ruhr is located, but also Baden and the Palatinate.
[28] On 15 July 1939, the Gestapo entered the headquarters of the Union of Poles in Germany in Bochum, searched it and interrogated its chief Michał Wesołowski.
The Nazis limited freedom of assembly, increased censorship and confiscated Polish press for reporting on the persecution and arrests of Poles.
[12] The Gestapo closed the Polish monastery in Bochum, which was then converted into a transit camp for people deported from German-occupied Lithuania.
[38] Polish men and women from German-occupied Poland were deported by the Germans to slave labour in the region, including to the subcamps of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Bochum,[39] Dortmund,[40][41] Essen,[42] Unna[43] and Witten.
