Goralenvolk was a geopolitical term invented by the Germans Nazi Germany in World War II in reference to the Gorals highlander population of Podhale region in the south of Poland near the Slovakia border. The Germans postulated a separate nationality for people of that region in an effort to extract them from the Polish citizenry during their occupation of Poland's highlands. The term Goralenvolk was a neologism derived from the Polish word Gorals (the Highlanders) commonly referring to the ethnic group living in the Beskids and Tatra Mountains. In an attempt to make the Gorals collaborate with the SS, the Nazis proclaimed that they were of Germanic descent, and were thus worthy of Germanisation and separate treatment from other Polish people.
Origin
Nazi ideology claimed that
Gorals (Górale) were descended from ethnic Germans who allegedly settled in that region during medieval times in significant numbers. They were considered by the Nazi ideologues to be of Germanic origin. The concept of the Gorals being from German descent did not originate with the Nazis themselves. For example, the 1885
Meyers Konversationslexikon entry under
Goralen stated, that Germans (also) lived in that area in the 11th century but were
slavicized.
[ Meyers Konversationslexikon: Band 7, Seite 518: von Göppingen bis Gordianus. ]
German occupation
The region inhabited by
Górale (pre-war Polish Nowy Targ County in
Podhale) was annexed by
Germany immediately after the Invasion of Poland in 1939. Later, the German authorities attempted to assimilate the population into the body of
Volksdeutsche, and to encourage their collaboration with the occupying forces. Soon, a small group of local collaborators gathered under the leadership of
Witalis Wieder, with Wacław Krzeptowski – a self-proclaimed
Goralenführer – and his cousins Stefan and Andrzej Krzeptowski, as well as suspected German spy Henryk Szatkowski, and Józef Cukier from Zakopane. During a visit of Nazi
Governor-General Hans Frank to Podhale on 7 November 1939 they proposed to establish a separate state for
Goralenvolk. Most fled to Germany at the end of the war except for Krzeptowski himself, who decided to hide in the mountains (at
na Stołach) in a secluded shack. He was apprehended by the Polish
Armia Krajowa unit under Lieutenant Tadeusz Studziński, charged with high treason and hanged on 20 January 1945.
The implementation of the Goralenvolk action aimed at germanization of the Polish highlanders was actively opposed by the underground Tatra Confederation, a Polish resistance organization founded in May 1941 in Nowy Targ (the historical capital of Podhale), by the poet and partisan, Augustyn Suski ( nom-de-guerre Stefan Borusa) with Tadeusz Popek ( Wacław Tatar) as his deputy and Jadwiga Apostoł ( nom-de-guerre Barbara Spytkowska) as their administrative secretary. Suski was murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Popek was tortured and executed in Zakopane.
Failed attempt at recruiting
In January 1943 the SS
Germanische Leitstelle in occupied
Zakopane in the heartland of the
Tatra mountains embarked on a recruitment drive, with the objective being to create a brand new Waffen-SS highlander division. Some 200 young
Goralenvolk signed up after having been given unlimited supplies of alcoholic drinks. They boarded a train to Trawniki, but got off the train in nearby Maków Podhalański, when they had become sober. Only twelve men arrived at the SS training base in Trawniki next to Lublin. At the first opportunity they got into a major fistfight with
Trawniki men. They were arrested and sent away. The whole idea was abandoned as impossible by
SS-Obergruppenführer Krüger in occupied Kraków by an official letter of 5 April 1943.
The failure has inevitably contributed to his dismissal on 9 November 1943 by Governor General
Hans Frank.
See also
Notes and references
External links
