Kazimierz Odrobny

From 1943 onwards he worked as an interpreter in the Political Department of the Mauthausen concentration camp, then at the Linz Police Headquarters. He also acted as an interpreter in various court proceedings in Linz. He used his position to help his fellow prisoners and those arrested by using his circulated texts to try to save them from maximum punishment. As time went by, he took on the task of organising increased food rations for the Poles, the French and the Serbs in the camp. Starting in 1943 he gave secret foreign language lessons (mainly French) and educated his fellow prisoners in grammar school subjects. In their recollections, his fellow prisoners judged him to be an indomitable personality who never yielded to German terror. He himself recalled that he had many opportunities to save the fellow prisoners whom he served as the camp interpreter.

On the day the camp was liberated Kazimierz Odrobny set off for Holland, but he never arrived there. Indeed, he remained for a long time in the British occupation zone of Germany, from where the administrative authorities moved him to the camp for DPs in Cologne-Mülheim along with other fellow victims. Here, too, he integrated rapidly into the surrounding environment. He was involved in the work in the camp and in the development of the school system for Polish DPs. There he met his later wife, Zofia Ogonowska (1917-1960). The two were united by a shared passion to provide education for Polish children. When Polish educational facilities were established in the Cologne-Mülheim camp, he was one of the fathers of the Polish school where he taught English. As a result, in June 1946, the teaching staff elected him as the new school director to succeed Wacław Dudziński. In early October 1946 Kazimierz Odrobny began the task of moving the Polish school from the camp in Cologne-Mülheim to Lippstadt, where the occupying powers had made the building of a former German high school available to the Polski Okręg Szkolny(Polish School District). After the move he continued his teaching activities and finally became director of the newly founded Polski Ośrodek Szkolny (Polish School Centre) in Lippstadt. He held this office for almost a year until the institution was dissolved in 1947 by the Komitet dla Spraw Szkolnych i Oświatowych przy Zjednoczeniu Polskim w Niemczech (Central Committee for School and Education Affairs at the Association of Polish Refugees in Germany). However, his work was so appreciated by his fellow teachers that they  continued to regard him unofficially as their head and representative. In addition to his school duties he also published numerous textbooks for Polish DPs, something he continued to do for most of his life. He also worked as a foreign correspondent in the western occupation zones of Germany and completed a large number of translations.

As early as 1946 he was involved in the Centralny Komitet byłych Więźniów Niemieckich Więzień i Obozów Koncentracyjnych (Central Committee for former prisoners of German prisons and concentration camps) in the British occupation zone, where he became head of the verification commission. Previously, he himself had been examined by the district commission in Göttingen and granted the status of a former prisoner. With the establishment of Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech (ZPU), the Association of Polish Refugees in Germany and central organisation of Polish DPs, he joined the management and took over the deputy chairmanship of the board.