Goralenvolk

For previous and later history of the people, see Gorals.

Visit of Governor Hans Frank in Zakopane in November 1939

Goralenvolk was the name given by the German Nazis in World War II during their occupation of Poland to the population of Podhale in the south near the Slovakian border. They postulated a different ethnicity for that population, in an effort to divide the Polish people. The word was derived from the Polish word for people of the region, Górale (the Highlanders). There Germans suggested this group were part of the Greater Germanic Race and worthy of separate treatment from the rest of the Poles.

Origin

The Gorals (Górale) were considered by the Nazis to be a part of the "Greater Germanic Race". Nazi ideology claimed that a significant fraction of their ancestry was descended from ethnic Germans who allegedly settled in this region during medieval times. For example, the 1885 Meyers Lexicon entry under Goralen states, that Germans (also) lived in that area in the 11th century and were slavicized.

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 collaboration with the occupying forces. Soon, a group of collaborators formed under the leadership of Witalis Wieder, Henryk Szatkowski, Wacław Krzeptowski, his cousins Stefan and Andrzej Krzeptowski and Józef Cukier. The latter five proposed to establish a separate state for Goralenvolk during a visit to Governor-General Hans Frank on 7 November 1939.

A census conducted in 1940 showed that 72% of the local Goralenvolk population identified as Polish rather than ethnic German. This result was a great disappointment to the collaborators and the occupiers alike. After attempts to revive the idea during the following years proved unsuccessful, the Germans abandoned the project in 1943. With the arrival of the Allied troops towards the end of the war, the short-lived existence of the so-called Goralenvolk became a footnote of history.

See also

• Germanisation
• Walddeutsche

External links

• 1939 proposal for a Goralenfolk flag (it was never officially accepted)
• "Goralenvolk", National Digital Archive