23. My Mother Worked for Adolf Hitler
A silent distance had always stretched between us, filled with the weight of the invisible burden my mother carried. Don’t get me wrong, she was a caring mother, the kind who tucked her children in every night and was always there, and later, a doting babcia who spoiled her grandchildren. No one questioned the bigness of her heart. But beneath her nurturing facade lay something tightly coiled and fiercely protected. For years, I rationalized it was her modest upbringing in a time-stood-still farm village and the educational gulf between us. Then I learned to bury the enigma somewhere deep in my unconscious mind.
From a young age, I knew my mother, Maria Wałęsa (yes, a distant cousin of the electrician in the Gdańsk shipyard), had worked in Germany during the war, and at some later point in adulthood, the term "forced labour" crept into my vocabulary and understanding of that work. There, the matter rested until, in the pages of the history books, I learned what she had endured. The weight she had silently carried for decades was a burden that, once revealed, would forever change my understanding of her life—and mine, for that matter. You can’t unlearn what you learn.
Maria was forced to work for Adolf Hitler's insane regime. She was not unique—almost two million other Polish citizens, against their will, did too. It's strange how you can discover something like this, and it alters the neatly constructed puzzle pieces of your life.
Following the German invasion and occupation of Poland in 1939, Maria's home region of western Poland, with its population of five million, was annexed to Germany as the Wartheland district, and targeted by Hitler for resettlement with Germans and racial purity. The man Hitler put in charge was Arthur Greiser, a fervent devotee of Nazi ideology. Under Greiser's rule, this vast region of fertile farmland and small villages, dotted by towns like Poznań and Łódź, saw even harsher measures implemented than those in the General Government territory, which included Warsaw.
In short order, the Nazis began systematically dismantling Polish culture and identity: they banned the Polish language, closed schools and libraries, prohibited Polish newspapers and books, and Germanized all city and street names. Even the tiny hamlet where my mother was born, a place so small it barely made it on any map, became Kleinefreitag, a literal translation of the Polish name of the village.
Religious oppression was severe, with churches shuttered and most Polish clergy imprisoned or sent to concentration camps, including the priest who would eventually make his way to my childhood town and parish church in Canada. Economic restrictions were crushing, with strict regulations on shopping for Poles, while Germans had the first choice of everything. Strict food rationing made hunger a daily reality. Personal freedoms were severely curtailed through strict curfews, bans on personal items like radios and cameras, and control of all written correspondence. Young Polish men faced conscription into the Wehrmacht. This dizzying array of measures collectively aimed to erase Polish culture and subjugate the population to Nazi rule.
A campaign was initiated to forcibly remove people from their homes and seize their property. Greiser reported back to Germany that by February 1940, 87,000 people in the Wartheland had been expelled. He carried out the expulsions with extreme brutality and a shocking lack of humanity. By the end of 1944, 630,000 people had been expelled and resettled in the General Government district.
There would be a dull, insistent pounding on the wooden door or a sharp rapping on the window in the middle of the night, and a couple of policemen with guns gave people a few short minutes to gather basic essentials. Many people said they had a small bundle already packed in case of such a visit. Their land and property were confiscated and amalgamated with the properties of Germans already residing in the area or allocated to newly arriving German settlers, fulfilling Hitler's goal of Lebensraum—expanding living space for Germans.
Families with children, the elderly, and disabled persons were relocated to the rural areas of the General Government—dumped in the middle of nowhere, without arrangements for food or lodging to face homelessness, hunger, unemployment and an utterly uncertain future. Anyone able to work was sent to Germany.
Forced labour was extensively implemented, with Poles required to register at labour offices and face deportation to Germany for work. This registration system was part of a broader Nazi strategy to control and exploit the population. This is where life got complicated for Maria.
Towns and villages were emptied this way with the dual goal of making room for the arriving German settlers and providing needed workers in Germany. As the war progressed and Germany's labour needs intensified, these policies became increasingly harsh and widespread, with children as young as twelve being brought to Germany for forced labour.
Over the course of the war, the Nazis brought twelve million foreign workers to Germany to support Hitler's war economy and war machine. Of this staggering number, eight million were civilians, including 1.9 million Poles—more than one million Polish women and 700,000 Polish men, whose average age was twenty.
The remaining four million workers, often referred to as slave labourers, were prisoners of war and inmates from concentration and extermination camps. Maria was one of these twelve million foreign and slave workers caught up in the vast machinery of Nazi forced labour.
The majority of foreign workers were initially from Poland, but after June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the ranks swelled with Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. There were also forced workers in fewer numbers from France, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Greece, and the other countries invaded by Germany.
The forced labourers toiled in munitions factories making bombs and artillery shells aimed at destroying their own countries, for businesses and industrial complexes filling gaps left by German men who had been almost entirely conscripted into military service, and on farms, small and large, to ensure the sustenance of the German population. They even cleared land and built roads and rail tracks. Shockingly, the Catholic Church exploited thousands of forced labourers in hospitals, homes and monastery gardens.
Without workers like Maria—working for a pittance, a fraction of the wages paid to German workers—Nazi Germany's economy, infrastructure, food supply, and the entire war effort would have collapsed much sooner.
The Nazi labour recruitment in occupied Poland began as a seemingly voluntary process but quickly turned compulsory.
Initially, an energetic propaganda campaign attempted to recruit volunteers for work in Germany. Posters urged people to sign up for work with promises of travel assistance to Germany, generous meals, good treatment, hours of rest, comfortable living quarters, and good pay. This approach sought to build upon a pre-war practice where Poles from border regions had often worked as seasonal migrants in Germany, particularly during harvest times, before returning to their families. But now the takers were few. Only the most desperate to support their families signed up voluntarily despite the alternative: hunger, lack of work, and a precarious future.
In March 1940, a decree was issued requiring all Poles over the age of sixteen to register at one of the newly established local labour offices. Maria, like countless others, registered at one of the newly established local labour offices that had sprung up seemingly everywhere.
With not enough volunteers, the labour offices developed quotas, laying the groundwork for the widespread use of forced labour that would become a hallmark of the German war economy, affecting millions of lives across occupied Europe. Lists appeared on lamp posts and outside the labour offices with the names of individuals required to report on a specific day for work in Germany. Failure to comply resulted in fines, retaliation against entire families, and deportations to concentration camps. Sometimes as punishment, the Nazis burned the homes of locals who did not turn up as required or the whole village—over three hundred villages were razed in reprisals of various sorts.
When quotas failed to provide enough workers, the Nazis simply began rounding people up at random, encircling city blocks and entire villages, loading people into trucks until their documents could be checked. The able-bodied unemployed were immediately sent to Germany against their will.
Whether Maria was part of a quota, randomly seized, or wrenched from her home, I shall never know. Based on historical accounts and documents, I've pieced together what Maria's experience might have been like. I can only imagine.
Maria would have known what fate was looming. Each night, from the time she registered at the labour office, it’s likely she slept with a small bundle packed, ready to leave at a moment's notice. On June 5, 1940, according to the Arolsen Archives, Maria's fears became reality. In the depths of night, thunderous knocking and harsh shouts of "Aufstehen! We are here for Maria Wałęsa," jolted her family awake.
This was a terrifying moment in their small home. Maria had mere minutes. Frantically, she grabbed only what was vital: her small bundle, perhaps some bedding. They were there, a menacing presence: policemen and local Germans in crisp uniforms. They stalked Maria through her own home, snarling like rabid dogs: "Los! Los!"
I picture Maria taken by wagon or truck to the nearest town of Kalisz. She had turned twenty barely two weeks before and was healthy, unmarried and unskilled—ideal for forced labour. With just her small bundle, I hope her mother managed to slip her a loaf of bread for the arduous journey ahead. Did they have time to hug goodbye?
While I can't know for certain if Maria's experience matched this exact scenario, it represents the reality faced by many young Polish women during this dark period. The next time Maria would return to Poland would be in the 1980s, as a tourist accompanied by her husband, my father, long after the war's end—this much I know for certain.
A year later, her mother and three younger siblings were expelled from their home, and their small piece of land and tiny straw-thatched house were seized. What exactly happened to them? I am not sure. By some miracle, they were not transported to the General Government and left to fend for themselves like so many others.
Unlike extermination and concentration camp prisoners or survivors, the millions of forced civilian labourers like Maria received little public acknowledgment or support after the war for processing their painful memories, shame and humiliation at being made to support the Nazi war effort. The German government and businesses that profited from the forced labour system denied any responsibility. Under the Soviet-backed regime in Poland, they were sometimes branded collaborators or traitors. Globally, no one considered them victims of Nazism—they were mere marginal notes overshadowed by the genocidal horrors of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka and other camps.
It took decades for Polish historians to publish the stories and memoirs of forced labourers. Almost four decades passed before academia broached the subject and scholarly works appeared in English. These accounts enable me to understand what happened to Maria and to piece together her story. In telling you her story over the next few Saturday mornings, I can finally shoulder some of the burden she silently carried throughout her life.