The first newspaper

Głos Wielkopolski was the first newspaper printed in Poznań after the war. The first issue came out already during the battle for the city – on 16 February 1945. It was a new title, which from the very beginning was supposed to serve a propagandist function. At the same time, for the inhabitants the paper was a precious source of up-to-date information. It published announcements of city authorities as well as information on the introduction of the ration coupons system and the opening of new institutions.

On the other hand, advertisements printed in the paper demonstrate, to some extent, the situation of the inhabitants of Poznań. In the first months after the war, the challenges with finding clothes, shoes and other everyday items take centre stage. What is more, the paper also published numerous adverts put by employers looking for workers or informing about the opening of manufacturing and service companies.

Archival editions of „Głos Wielkopolski” are available on the website of Wielkopolska Biblioteka Cyfrowa.

Manufacturing plants

During the occupation many manufacturing plants in Poznań continued to operate, however under German management. These plants still employed Poles, although their company profiles may have changed. After the German army retreated, Polish workers began to return to factories and took over the management once more. The working conditions were difficult: often there was no machinery, which had been stolen during the chaos of the war, or even roofs and window panes. Some companies began to operate canteens for workers and distribute food products.

[In February 1945] a general registration for new workers was announced [at Cegielski Company]. The process was slow because we could only provide workers with a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread every three days instead of payment. But people did turn up. On the day of the surrender of the Nazi management we were already employing 1,100 workers.

Lutosławski, Zbigniew. 1970, in: Tadeusz Świtała (ed.) The hardship of the first days. Poznań 1945. Poznań: 152.

After a four-week-long period of fighting in the city, the company buildings were severely damaged. The roofs over many factory floors either ceased to exist or were seriously damaged, there were no window panes at all. The factory had been looted and all most precious objects and resources had been stolen, machines had been taken to pieces. The ones that had been left behind rusted because they had been standing in buildings with damaged roofs. Entire workshops (…) had been taken away. The scale of damage in the 3^rd Branch (Górna Wilda), in terms of buildings and equipment, reached approximately 25 per cent. The Casting Factory (the 1^st Branch) in Główna Street suffered even more significant losses. 80 per cent of the buildings and 20 per cent of machinery were damaged. This was the condition of the Company when the work commenced.

Grot, Zdzisław. 1946. 100 years of Cegielski Company 1846-1946. Poznań: 202.

However, the first thing every reactivated institution, office, association and union did was to open a canteen, find food and provide meals for their members or employees. A canteen was a magnet attracting workers, even more effective than salary because no one knew how high the latter might be and how it would be paid.

Kraszewski, Zbigniew. 1970, in: Tadeusz Świtała (ed.) The hardship of the first days. Poznań 1945. Poznań: 135.

School

During the German occupation Polish school education system was practically dismantled. Children were to be taught only the most basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic. Teachers were being executed, taken to concentration camps or displaced. Therefore, clandestine education presented an enormous challenge.

After the war, the enthusiasm connected to the rebuilding of the Polish school system was extraordinary. When the fighting continued at the Poznań Citadel, the work on opening schools in safer districts began. This was possible, first and foremost, thanks to the grassroots work of the pre-war teachers. The first school opened on 12 February in Jarochowskiego Street in the district of Łazarz. In February and March a total of 16 state schools opened.

In the beginning teaching was very difficult. It was noticeably impacted by staff and infrastructure shortages. Combining classes and grade levels was a necessity. There was a shortage of paper and teaching materials.

There was no school [during the occupation] because children in the area of Poznań did not go to school, (…) for example, my brother was nine when the war broke out, he was a third-grader, he finished the third grade, he did not know much, so we had to help him a little bit. I had all sorts of, let’s say, textbooks at home anyway, so he was learning on his own, but my sister could not read or write, like many other children who were supposed to start school at the time, so they had to be taught reading and writing so that they could write their own names and surnames. So in my case the most important thing to do [after the war] (…) was to fight illiteracy among these children.

Excerpt from Krystyna Kaniewska’s account recorded in 2011 by Anna Kaczorowska. The account (file no. AHM_2461) comes from the collection of the Oral History Archive of KARTA Centre Foundation.

The fighting was not yet over but as soon as our district was liberated from the occupier, a handful of teachers immediately got down to work. When we came to this school for the first time it was a terrible sight. The [building] wasn’t destroyed but there were dead German soldiers, bandages, rags, cans lying around in the school yard. The classrooms were an equally horrifying sight (…). Before we got to work, we had to roll up our sleeves and seriously get to cleaning the school (…). It took several days. And bullets were whistling above our heads.

Wrońska, Grażyna and Michał Nowakowski, excerpt from a radio programme The 60th anniversary of the Polish Radio, Radio Poznań.

I will never forget the risky ventures in search of school equipment. Eventually, we learnt that the Nazi administration had taken away the entire school equipment to the warehouses behind Villa Flora in Grunwaldzka Street when they were turning the old schools in Jarochowskiego Street into a hospital. Accompanied by the sound of cannons, we reached the warehouses near the zoo and took school desks, blackboards, tables and chairs to our school. Jadwiga Witucka found a trolley somewhere, which we used to transport a wardrobe. (…) On 8 February, with our hearts pounding in our chests, we stuck handwritten posters on trees and walls of burnt-down buildings, using glue made from flour and water. [The posters] announced the cheerful news about the beginning of school being set for 12 February and encouraged young people to enrol without delay. (…) On 13 February, when the fighting for Poznań still continued, children started school in Łazarz.

Cynkówna, Izabela. 1970, in: Tadeusz Świtała (ed.) The hardship of the first days. Poznań 1945. Poznań: 48-50.

And then children (…) were divided into ten units, not on the basis of their age but on the basis of their knowledge. Children who had been part of clandestine education were put in higher grades, while those who could not read and write had to start with the first grade. (…)

Children were studying for two hours, but teachers worked in two shifts because the building was not heated enough, children came to school poorly dressed and often hungry. (…) The caretaker, [Mr] Gościniak, would hit an old pan and signal the beginning of lessons. (…)

(…) There were no books; teachers wrote the texts themselves and read them [out loud] during lessons. There were no notebooks, there even wasn’t enough paper. Students wrote on some scraps of paper, on the margins of old newspapers, on pieces of cardboard.’

Cynkówna, Izabela. 1970, in: Tadeusz Świtała (ed.) The hardship of the first days. Poznań 1945. Poznań: 50.

Already at the beginning of March a representative from ‘Oświata’ School Aids Cooperative located at 78 Focha Street, Jan Brzozowski, came to the printing house and commissioned a design for the first textbook. The book was made in two weeks! I was given only a few days to put it together. The textbook was incredibly simple. The necessity to save paper forced us to reduce its volume. Despite these shortages, it was a huge help in primary education. These textbooks were intended not only for our city, but were also distributed to the countryside, where [people] did not have any money at the time so they paid with food products. For this first textbook I myself received a ‘royal’ fee of eggs and bacon! At phenomenal speed, already in March, a new reader for children with text written by Jan Brzozowski and my drawings was published.

Romała, Marian. 1970, in: Tadeusz Świtała (ed.) The hardship of the first days. Poznań 1945. Poznań: 283-284.