- Description
- Contains selected records of the Polish Embassy in the Vatican of the Polish Government in Exile relating to persecutions of the Catholic Church in occupied Poland by Germans and Polish relationship with Vatican. Includes lists of Polish citizens in hospitals and concentration camps in Reich, the matters of Jewish minority considering visas, and emigration to Palestine. The Ambassador of the Polish Embassy in the Vatican was Kazimierz Papee (1939-1970).
- Alternate Title
- Polish Embassy in Vatican
- Date
-
inclusive:
1921-1970
- Credit Line
- Forms part of the Claims Conference International Holocaust Documentation Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This archive consists of documentation whose reproduction and/or acquisition was made possible with funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Collection Creator
- Rzad Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchod?stwie
- Biography
-
Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie (Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile) was established after Germany and the Soviet Union occupied Poland in September 1939. The Polish government-in-exile was first based in Paris, but moved to London after the French army surrendered to the Germans in the mid-1940s. The Allied powers accepted the government-in-exile as the legitimate representative of the Polish people soon after it was created. The Polish government allied itself with the Allied powers, as its members believed that only a total military victory over Germany would restore Poland's independence and freedom. The government-in-exile led the Polish war effort throughout World War II, and amassed its own land, air, and naval forces. In addition, it commanded the largest underground army of the war, the Armia Krajowa (the Polish Home Army). In 1942, reports about the mass murder of Jews in Poland reached London. At that point, the Polish government-in-exile made several public declarations on the subject, and officially demanded that the Allied powers stop the Germans from continuing their campaign to murder Jews, and other individuals they deemed undesirable. From December 1942 onward, the government-in-exile backed the rescue work of Zegota, which offered aid to Jews throughout occupied Poland.
- Reference
- Chadwick, Owen. 1988. Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War. Cambridge University Press.
Phayer, Michael. 2000. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33725-9.
Guide to the Archives of the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, vol. I, compiled and edited by: Waclaw Milewski, Andrzej Suchcitz and Andrzej Gorczycki, Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London 1985.
