Kazimierz Odrobny

In the second half of the 1970s, the meetings of the ZPU board were only a weak attempt to continue the activities of the previous years. The chairman was accused of not complying with the rules of the statutes, and the organisation should have urgently replaced its leadership and recruited new members. Sadly, Kazimierz Odrobny was against accepting “new” refugees from the People's Republic of Poland because he believed that the ZPU was built up and developed primarily by representatives of the war refugees. As a result the ZPU continuously lost members and more and more local groups were dissolved. When the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the association were due, the occasion offered a good opportunity to draw a conclusion to the work of the organisation. Unfortunately, however, the chairman delayed the planning of the anniversary celebrations until the event proved superfluous. Instead, he merely published his own version of his more than twenty years of association work in the ZPU Bulletin, listing the most important achievements of the association. In 1975 he took part in the international conference “Polonia Jutra” (roughly, Future of Polonia) and gave a lecture on the situation of Polish refugees, but his appearance did not have any strong influence on his further commitment. At the end of the 1970s, his activities were limited to working in international bodies (he was elected chairman of ZAF) and to heading the then declining structures of the Endecja movement in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1979, on a pilgrimage of Poles to Rome organised by the Federal Republic of Germany he participated in a private audience with Pope John Paul II. In the early 1980s he was no longer able to lead the ZPU, but still had the energy to give interviews to the German press in which he spoke about the most important issues for Polish refugees and about German compensation payments to former concentration camp prisoners.

Kazimierz Odrobny died in Velbert on 13thSeptember 1981. He left an organisation on the brink of collapse due to unresolved problems and internal quarrels between the younger and the older generations, advocates and opponents of his policies, usurpers and those who resisted the takeover of the organisation. No successor was nominated. His funeral was hosted by Witold Szwabowicz, the former ZPU secretary who lived in the same building at 58 Höferstraße in Velbert. The financial situation was so desperate that Szwabowicz was forced to finance part of the funeral costs with a bank loan. He took the rest tacitly from the ZPU treasury without informing the board members. The memorial service took place on 21st September 1981 in the St. Maria Rosenkranz Church in Düsseldorf-Wersten. Kazimierz Odrobny was buried next to his wife Zofia at the cemetery in Werstener Feld 203, Düsseldorf-Eller. There were no descendants.

Łukasz Wolak, April 2018