The results of a recent investigation of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit revealed some previously unknown facts about the Nazi racial segregation in the area of Podhale. The research team is composed of scholars from the JU Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, led by Dr Małgorzata Maj and Dr Stanisława Trebunia-Staszel.
The Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit was established in 1940 in the buildings of the Jagiellonian University. Its task was to consistently enforce the Nazi racial segregation policies in occupied Poland in order to select people deemed "worthy" by Germans, both culturally and racially. About 22,000 pages of the Institute's documentation and photographs remained intact and, after a period of storage in the United States, were transported to Kraków.
The researchers did not limit themselves to analysing archives and documents, but also followed the paper trail and contacted the victims of Nazi anthropologists' examinations. Many of them suppressed those traumatic memories and did not even share them with their loved ones. It was only when they saw the photographs that they started remembering what happened to them.
Most of their memories were harrowing: terror, the shame of having to strip naked and the fear of being subjected to tests that determined if the child was "worthy" of being Germanised. "I remember it well. I think it took a whole month in 1942. There were several desks, at which different parts of the examination were performed. There were about ten doctors. The tests were conducted at the local clergy house. They measured us. They asked about our diseases. They examined everything. Eyes, throat, hair. They took our fingerprints. . . . It was a question of race, ethnicity. We were classified as Germanic. We're supposed to be of Germanic ancestry here in Podhale," one of the victims recalled.
The results of the JU researchers' study will be published in a book entitled Antropologia i etnologia w czasie wojny. Działalność Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit w świetle nowych materiałów źródłowych [Anthropology and ethnology in the time of war. The activities of Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit in the light of new source material].
Original text: www.nauka.uj.edu.pl
