Dziennik Berliński

After some initial success the rescue measures initiated by the Polish press proved to be insufficient. The third gathering of the Polish press in Berlin on 11th February 1928 discussed the situation in detail. The head of the legal headquarters informed the meeting about the catastrophic situation of the Polish press, including that of the “Dziennik”. In his opinion the only solution was to bring together the different editors working in different areas. The amount of subscriptions continued to fall from year to year and the remaining subscribers had to deal with a lot of chicanery. Priests condemned the reading of Polish newspapers from their pulpits; nasty tricks were played on Polish children in the schools, German civil servants made things very difficult for subscribers to deal with their affairs, and the postal service refused to deliver Polish publications.

After the Nazis seized power in 1933 the situation of the “Dziennik Berliński” and other Polish journals deteriorated even more. On 14th February 1933 the “Dziennik“ published the following statement: “Hitler has announced to journalists that the press would not be restricted in its activities. However it is not allowed to injure his personal honour with criticism […] by publishing news which could be dangerous to the vital interests of the Reich”. More and more restrictions were placed on the newspapers. And on 25th February 1933, shortly before the Parliamentary elections on 5th March 1933, the President of the Berlin police decreed that all Polish daily newspapers should cease publication until the 12th March. His decree was published in the “Dziennik Berliński” on 26th February but because of restrictions this edition scarcely covered a single page.

The legal situation of journalists was regulated by a press law which came into force on 4th October 1933. Here reporters were not allowed to exercise their profession unless they were registered in the list of the German Press Union. Anyone contravening these regulations would be banned from reporting and their newspaper would be closed down. More dirty tricks soon hit the Polish newspapers. Editorial offices were searched, specific editions of newspapers confiscated and journalists were regularly barred from exercising their profession. In this way the Berlin journalists Stefan Dziamski and Jan Skala lost their right to publish. The circulation of the “Dziennik Berliński” declined from year to year and by 1937 it had sunk to 1,000 copies. The Nazi government increasingly censored the contents of the “Dziennik Berliński” and other newspapers. In August 1937, a period of relatively good German-Polish relationships, a new column appeared under the title of “Our Affairs” to inform readers of cases of persecution, arrests and other anti-Polish activities instigated by the Nazi regime. Just two months later, in October of the same year the column was removed on the orders of the Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick.

In 1939 the regime tightened its control over the “Dziennik Berliński" even further. Now every edition had to be checked by Gestapo officials. From June 1939 onwards the newspaper was forced to publish its title, date and editorial footers in German. In the same month the Ministry of the Interior informed the Polish press that, despite its right to publish objections to the way minorities were treated, it had a duty to present a truthful image of the events taking place in the Reich. On 27th July 1939 the Polish ambassador in Germany wrote from Leipzig to his headquarters in Warsaw that “[…] in a part of the Polish press, including the ‘Dziennik Berliński’, there is nothing more about persecutions nor about the true situation of the Polish minority”. The last edition of the “Dziennik Berliński” appeared on 1st September 1939. Some days later, on 7 September, the assembled representatives of Poland informed the Ministry of the Interior of its decision to close down Polish institutions and organisations. The “Dziennik Berliński” and other Polish newspapers were shut down.

Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, June  2014