Union of Poles in Germany (Polish: Związek Polaków w Niemczech, German: Bund der Polen in Deutschland e.V.)

), which refused to recognize the communist Polish government of the Polish United Workers' Party, and the Union of Poles "Zgoda" (Unity) (German: Bund der Polen "Zgoda" (Eintracht)), which recognized the new communist government in Warsaw and had contacts with it.

[2] The union was intended to express the views of the Polish minority in Germany, This partly comprised the Polish-native population of the former East German provinces which remained with Germany under the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles (Upper Silesia, East Brandenburg, Pomerania, Warmia) or areas where Poles settled in Middle Ages (East Prussia) — mostly farmers and workers — and partly the Polish immigrants in Ruhr area (see Ruhr Poles).

[citation needed] Official German statistics from the mid-1920s showed approximately 200,000 persons with Polish mother tongue.

[4] However, the Polish minority was only legally recognised as such in Upper Silesia, where they possessed international status due to Treaty of Versailles.

Union of Poles in Germany According to postwar estimates based on rescued archives, in mid-1924 Union of Poles in Germany had approximately 32 000 members in all districts: Even before the German invasion of Poland, leading anti-Nazi members of the Polish minority were deported to concentration camps; some were executed at the Piaśnica murder site.

Some of them, who had held German citizenship prior to 1945, emigrated en masse into West Germany subsequently, during the Communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland.