Commission for Polish Relief

Following the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR, the country's most fertile agricultural land was annexed to Germany in October 1939. The remaining area of German-occupied Poland (the General Government) did not produce enough food to feed its population. National Socialist People's Welfare, Nazi Germany relief service, was not providing adequate service and very soon started to exclude Jews from its aid programmes. Herbert Hoover testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that around 400 to 500 million US dollars would be needed to feed approximately 7 million of destitute people in Poland, and argued that at least a quarter of that should be provided by the US. By mid 1941, the German minority in Poland received 2613 calories per day while Poles received 699 and Jews in the ghetto 184. The Jewish ration fulfilled 7.5 percent of their daily needs; Polish rations only 26 percent. Only the ration allocated to Germans fulfilled the full needs of their daily calorie intake. The Nazis-based food rations on racist basis with Germans considered "Übermenschen" receiving biggest food rations in Nazi occupied territories of Poland, with little spared for Polish and Jewish population: Prior to the war the General Government was not self-sufficient in agricultural production and was a net importer of food from other regions of Poland. Despite this food deficit the German occupiers confiscated 27% of the agricultural output in the General Government, thus reducing the food available for the civilian population. This Nazi policy caused a humanitarian crisis in Poland's urban areas. In 1940 20 to 25% of the population the Government General depended on outside relief aid. This crisis was made worse by the German expulsion of 923,000 Polish citizens from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany into the General Government. The Germans "showed no concern for the destination of the dislocated families" who depended on the local Polish welfare services.Richard C. Lukas points out "To be sure, the Poles would have starved to death if they had to depend on the food rationed to them To supplement the meager rations allocated by the Germans ( see table above) Poles depended on the black market in order to survive. During the war 80% of the population's needs were met by the black market Poles involved in the black market "risked arrest, deportation to a concentration camp, and even death" The German occupiers maintained a large police force to eliminate the black market. Also Poles were pressured to sign up for work in Germany hoping to improve their living standards, but most were disappointed when they found low wages and humiliating treatment in Germany. The brutal occupation policy of Germany resulted in a huge death toll. Prior to the establishment of the death camps in mid 1942 one-fifth (500–600,000) of Polish Jews perished in ghettos and labor camps. Apart from 2.3 million non-Jewish Poles killed directly during the course of the war an additional 473,000 perished due to the harsh conditions of the occupation, Additionally the Generalplan Ost plan of Nazis which envisioned elimination of Slavic population in occupied territories, and artificial famines – as proposed in Hunger Plan – were to be used. ==Organisation and operations of the Commission for Polish Relief==

painted by Elmer Wesley Greene. The Commission was organized on 25 September 1939, following an appeal by the Polish Government in Exile. The Commission was led by Maurice Pate and Chauncey McCormick with Herbert Hoover as (Honorary) Chairman. Funding came from governments and private charities as well as the American Red Cross. The Commission is said to have delivered 150 tonnes of supplies within a few months, and in early 1940 CPR organized kitchens served 200,000 meals a day. The Nazi government provided guarantees that ships from neutral countries that transported the relief would not be targeted by Kriegsmarine submarines At the same time, Nazis were opposed to CPR requests that American nationals are allowed to distribute the supplies, or that their aid be extended to Jews.) was to act as a liaison between them and the local groups. == Reduction and ending of relief ==

Soon after Poland's defeat in October 1939, controversies arose on whether the Nazis could be trusted to distribute the food properly. Contributions from the Polish-American community dropped, as the community became split over that issue. In May 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Chamberlain as the UK Prime Minister, and his policy made it much more difficult to ship food to continental Europe. This decision was motivated by the Nazi conquest of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France, the growing importance of economic warfare and difficulties experienced by the Americans in adequately supervising the distribution of supplies in Poland. The British government believed that the Nazi German government could not be trusted to allow aid to be delivered to its intended recipients and that there was no way of supervising how it was actually used. At the time of its announcement, the British government had no evidence that there was any actual or impending starvation in Europe and believed that food supplies would be adequate to prevent significant shortages until the spring of 1941. Nazi German propaganda statements made at this time also claimed that no part of Nazi-occupied Europe would go short of food, and on 26 June the Deutschlandsender radio station had broadcast a statement explicitly rejecting aid from Herbert Hoover's organisation to feed the populations of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Hoover campaigned against the British blockade. He was critical of Churchill, and later wrote that for Churchill, civilian starvation, if speeding up the end of the war, was justified. On 11 August 1940, Hoover issued a statement arguing that there was no reason why aid could not be sent to Europe through a neutral non-government organisation. The US Government did not support Hoover's statement and it also failed to win public support. An opinion poll conducted on 1 September 1940 found that only 38 percent of Americans believed that the country should send food aid if famine broke out in Nazi-occupied European countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Nevertheless, a campaign to provide food relief to Europe continued in the US until the end of the war, though it attracted little attention after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The Commission operated for several more years, providing aid to Poles outside German-occupied territories. == See also ==