Belarusian publications in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany
Toward the end of the Second World War, many people became displaced and found themselves in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria run by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) and later by the International Refugee Organization (IRO). Many people fled their homes fearing the advance of the Red Army and joined other uprooted groups such as prisoners of war, civilians deported to Germany, and concentration camps’ survivors. Despite repatriation efforts, approximately 100,000 Belarusians did not return to the USSR, but remained in DP camps in the English, French, and American zones of the West Germany (Koval’, 2008 p.67). Many of these people were opposed to the Soviet rule in Belarus and/or feared prosecution upon return.
People grouped themselves in DP camps according to their cultural, religious, and national affiliations. Following the initial period of “fear and chaos,” the communities established schools for children and youth, vocational and language training programs for adults, churches, theatres, and publishing houses (Isajiw and Palij, 1992, p. xix). The organization Verband der Freien Presse [The Union of the Free Press] was founded in 1947 to provide support to various ethnic communities in DP camps for their publishing efforts, such as assistance with licensing and paper supply (I͡Urėvich, 2006, p. 23). DP camps, as they tended to be organized by nationality, developed into places of “exile nationalism and political agitation” (Zahra, 2011, p. 122). Political periodicals, newspapers, leaflets, and bulletins tended to reflect political divisions among refugees committed to ideas of Belarusian nationalism and the establishment of the Belarusian government in exile. Other types of DP publications included literary, religious, and professional journals, and a variety of children and youth publications. Highlights in the Pashkievich collection include the trade journal Medychnaia dumka [Medical thought] and literary journal Shli͡akham zhyts’tsi͡a [By way of life] published in the DP camp Wattenstedt, the literary journal Shypshyna [Wild rose], published in Michelsdorf, and other titles.
Children and young people were a considerable demographic group in the DP camps. Belarusian refugees organized kindergartens and schools and published educational materials such as textbooks, compilations of folk songs and poems, and scout publications. Belarusian scouting groups organized in exile saw themselves as competing with other youth organizations as well as with apathy and disinterest among Belarusian youth in DP camps. Leaders of scouting organizations involved in publishing bulletins, leaflets, and journals tried to get young readers interested in questions of national identity and in nation building by publishing patriotic poetry and folk songs. For example, the poem Pahoni͡a [Pursuit] by Maksim Bahdanovich is featured on the front cover of Skaut [Scout] 4 (May 1946). Scouting publications also covered jamborees and sporting events and attempted to entertain their readers with crossword puzzles, games, and humour. For an overview of publications for children and youth in the Pashkievich collection, see PJRC Update 16 (2025).
Belarusian publications in the DP camps in the Pashkievich collection supplement the primary-source holdings at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library which include books and journals by Ukrainian refugees in the John Luczkiw Collection of DP publications; personal documents, periodicals, and other writings from DP Camp Korigen in the collection of the Pip family papers (PJRC Update 11 (2018); Leonid Denysenko’s collection of drawings and illustrations from DP camps in Germany and transitory camps in Australia (PJRC Update 10 (2017); and a collection of pencil and ink portraits of Ukrainian refugees from the DP camp in Mannheim by an unknown artist (PJRC Update 11 (2018).