The Care and Assistance Provided for Polish Child Refugees in Barcelona in the Immediate Post-WWII Period

This paper examines the care and protection provided for Polish children living in the Polish centre in Barcelona between 1946 and 1956. The majority of these children originated from the Polish Silesia and the d regions, which had been incorporated into the Reich, and most of them had been kidnapped by the Nazis during the War with the aim of Germanizing them. At the end of the confl ict, they were living in Displaced Persons camps, mainly in Austria, where they were found by offi cers of the 2nd Polish Corps. This text provides an analysis of the care and support these Polish children received in Barcelona, both from the Polish Government-in-exile and from the international community. Particular emphasis is placed on the care provided for these children from the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The role of the Spanish government (at that time under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco) in helping these children is also discussed. In addition, the 59 charges of the Polish centre in Barcelona who applied for IRO assistance in 1950 are analysed on the basis of documents from the IRO archives deposited in Archives Nationales, in France which have been used for the fi rst time in research on this topic.