Problem repatriacji Polaków z Norwegii (maj 1945 – kwiecień 1946 roku)

The repatriation of Poles from Norway affected about 25,000 people who could be divided into three groups: former soldiers of the Wehrmacht, workers from the Todt Organisation (OT) and prisoners of war. Having separated the Poles from the Wehrmacht and having moved the repatriation camps from the north of Norway to its central and southern regions, at the beginning of October 1945 the final number of repatriated people amounted to 17,317. It was the Alliance expedition corps together with the Alliance expedition corps in London and the Norwegian Repatriation Office that dealt with selecting Poles from the Wehrmacht and translocating them to the repatriation camps. Foreign civilians (in the case of Poles- forced labour for the OT) were to report to the Norwegian Repatriation Office. The process of repatriation lasted until the spring of 1946 and further complicated due to various political and practical reasons connected with the creation of communist Poland and the supervision of the Soviet committee of Gen. Andriej I. Ratow over the repatriation. The Polish Repatriation Mission (PMR) did not arrive in Oslo until 20 October 1945, and its head Jerzy Halwic, a former worker for the German company employed by the OT in northern Norway, turned out to have been a collaborator with the communist authorities in Warsaw. In the spring of 1946 one thousand one hundred eighty-seven Polish citizens (the so called displaced persons who refused to be repatriated) remained from all the Poles kept in 17 repatriation camps in three zones: Trondheim, Oslo and Stavanger. The Norwegian authorities tried in vain to send them to France, which led to the decision to set up three camps in the eastern zone of Oslo: Ystehede near Halden, Mysen and Jeloy near Moss. In the meantime, 2281 Poles from the Wehrmacht rejected by the Polish Repatriation Mission were sent to the British occupation zone in Germany.