The Ruhr Poles

From the very start the young Polish state had not only been entangled in numerous military conflicts but also in an effort to unite three former divided territories to form a functioning state structure. Many Ruhr Poles who wanted to return, acted in the same way as their compatriots who had already taken the path of integration decades before - they came to terms with the situation and chose the path of integration. To a certain extent, other factors played a role: increasing political and social pressures resulting from the social repercussions of the border conflicts between Germany and Poland, the plebiscites in Warmia and Masuria and Upper Silesia, and the occupation of the Ruhr area by France, which had allied itself with Poland in 1923. Others took advantage of the opportunity and moved to France, Belgium or the Netherlands in the 1920s. Only a few thousand nationally conscious Ruhr Poles, who remained in Westphalia managed to resist these pressures. They continued to organise themselves within their own structures like the Bund der Polen in Deutschland (founded in Berlin in 1922), which had its regional headquarters in Bochum. When the Second World War broke out in autumn 1939, the leaders of Polish minority organisations were doomed by their activities: they were detained and interned in concentration camps where many of them perished.[52] That said, the majority of the Ruhr Poles who remained in the Rhine and Ruhr regions managed to integrate with the local population, which was also marked by immigration from other regions in Germany and Europe.

David Skrabania, May 2018