“Pro arduis negociis destinandum” – Papal Delegates and the Neapolitan Succession (1328–1352)

Polish Immigrant Community Building in Brussels: The Role of the Polish Catholic Mission

This paper provides the first outline of the history of the Polish Catholic Mission (PCM) in Belgium, focusing on its role in the Polish immigrant community from 1926 to 2023. It examines the transformation of the PCM and its impact on the Polish diaspora, considering the broader context of secularization and social changes. The study utilizes primary sources, interviews, and participant observations to explore the PCM’s influence on community building, cultural preservation, and social capital formation within the Polish immigrant population in Belgium.

Keywords: Polish diaspora, immigration, Catholic Mission, pastoral care, catholic community, history.

The text offers a sketch of the Polish Catholic Mission (hereinafter PCM) in Belgium and its transformation over the course of a century (more precisely, between 1926 and 2023).1 Although a great deal of research has been done on the Polish diaspora in Belgium,2 no systematic history has been written about this institution, which became a center of leadership for both the Polish-speaking pastoral ministry and the Polish immigrant community in Belgium.3 We show that, while it was a conservative institution, the Polish Catholic Mission maintained its role as one of the key places of Polish activity in Belgium, despite an ongoing process of secularization.   

The study is based on a critical analysis of the literature, including primary sources (newsletters, memoirs, immigrant press, webpages), and participant observation and interviews. The primary sources which were examined are stored at the KADOC center at the Catholic University in Leuven and at the archive of the Polish Catholic Mission. The interviews were conducted in a recent study with Polish immigrants and Polish priests, but citations from interviews conducted in previous studies are also used here.4

The process of organizing and changing the Mission is shown in the context of the local Polish immigrant community and in the broader context of the receiving society. Launched in Brussels in 1926, the Polish Catholic Mission initially addressed the needs of Polish Catholics in Belgium, and in 1927, it extended its activities to the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Denmark.5 The text focuses on the Belgian part of the story. It provides a brief information of the Polish group in Belgium (part one), a basic chronology and data on the Polish Catholic Mission (part two), and an analysis of the changing functions of the PCM within the context of the Polish group in Belgium (part three).

Due to limited space, the text is devoted to the history of ethnic Poles, but it is worth keeping in mind that the influx from Polish lands also brought Polish Jews in the early twentieth century and the interwar period, as well as members of the Belarusian minority from the region of Podlasie since the late 1980s. 

Polish immigrants in Belgium managed to build their own world in the new milieu. In migration studies, this process is theorized as immigrant community building.6 In the case of this community, this process began in the nineteenth century, with each stream of Polish immigrants both contributing to and benefiting from the community. A network of institutions and relationships that comprised an immigrant community/immigrant communities embraced many newcomers.7 An ethnic institutional completeness8 has never been achieved, but the communities made it possible for newcomers to find their anchor in a new surroundings.9 In general, Poles oriented themselves towards their home country, their host society, and their immigrant community, which bridged the two. Today, researchers refer to this ability to create a new space in which migrants function on a daily basis across ethnic and state borders as transnationalism.10 Another concept that is useful in interpreting the findings of our study is social capital,11 which is produced in immigrant communities in a dense net of daily interactions. Bonding social capital is inward-oriented and contributes to internal social cohesion, while bridging social capital is produced in interactions with the new environment and with other immigrant groups.12

The Polish community in Belgium was made and remade, invented and reinvented by the successive streams of immigrants.13 The process of immigrants’ integration and their participation in cultural life of the host society was eased by the fact that the ethnic community helped them overcome the cultural shock that they experienced upon arrival.14 The community structures initiated by the first generation of each wave of immigrants often served the immigrants who arrived later.

The study challenges the traditional paradigms of the ethnic studies developed in the 1960s and 1970s, which portrayed ethnicity as “an insider identity generated in largely closed minority communities whose members struggle in the interaction with society at large.”15 The case of Poles in Belgium makes such an understanding of ethnicity inadequate, which is why one of the concepts underlying the study presented here is the New Architecture of Ethnic Studies (NAES). This new approach shows that ethnicity, as practiced or experienced by recent immigrants, allows and even facilitates the crossing of ethnic boundaries.16

There are many studies on the role of religion in the lives of immigrants.17 As Yang and Ebaugh observe, “Historically, religious institutions were among the most important resources that immigrant groups used to reproduce their ethno-religious identity in a new surrounding and to help them adjust to the challenges of surviving in a demanding and often threating environment.”18 This is certainly the case with the Polish Catholic Mission, which underwent significant evolution, changing its name to the Polish Catholic Community in 2018 and retaining its role as one of the key places of Polish activity in Belgium.

Polish Immigration to Belgium

Poland, a country with a population of about thirty-eight million (2022), has been left by at least seven million inhabitants over the course of the last two centuries.19 Massive outflow began in the mid-nineteenth century, reached its peak in the early twentieth century, and continues to this day with a few interruptions. Emigration produced several centers of Polish diaspora, the largest in the United States but also in Germany, France, and Great Britain. Other popular destinations include Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Sweden.20 Belgium and the Netherlands received only a small portion of the Polish outflow, yet Poles built visible immigrant communities there.21 In the 1830s these communities, began to be formed by successive streams of newcomers from the Polish lands. The influx included both political refugees and migrants who came in search of work. 

The Polish diaspora communities in Belgium consisted of various groups of immigrants and their descendants: political refugees of the failed uprisings (who arrived in the 1830s and 1860s), Polish students at the postsecondary schools (Antwerpen, Liege, Glon near Liege, Leuven), migrants who came in search of work in the early twentieth century and the interwar period, World War II refugees, political and economic immigrants from communist Poland, including Solidarity refugees, migrants in search of work in the period of political transition (since 1989), and migrants who were and are taking advantage of greater mobility following Poland’s accession to the EU. Each wave of immigration stream had its particular social profile and contributed to the internal diversity of the immigrant group. While discussing its past and present, historians often tend to oversimplify the situation, usually focusing on working class communities because immigrants who come in search of work were and are the most numerous. As migration research shows, economic migration prevails in international flows, and this has been true in the case of waves of Polish migration. However, political motivations to migrate were usually intertwined with economic considerations. As Norman Davies has noted, in the nineteenth century, when Poland was partitioned, “The émigrés who stayed abroad because their lands and property had been sequestrated, or because they lost their source of livelihood in a home district annexed by a foreign power, were reacting as much to economic as to political factors.”22 The same interplay between political and economic factors in the decision to migrate can be found in the case of the outflow from communist Poland as well.23

It should be noted that this outflow did not stop with the fall of communism (1989), when Poland embarked down the path towards political transition and the free market. In fact, economic reforms of the 1990s (which initially resulted in high unemployment rates) and Polish accession to the EU in 2004 brought new streams of migration to the West, and Belgium became a popular destination for Poles. In 1991, Polish citizens were given an exemption from visa requirements in Belgium, and in 2009, Belgium opened its labor market to Poles. The influx that started in 1990s initially resulted in the undocumented employment of many Poles. At the time, circular migration became common, especially with Polish women working in Belgium for a few months, returning to Poland for a few months, and then coming to Belgium again.24 After 2009, most immigrants were able to legalize their status.

It is very difficult to determine precisely the actual size of migration flows, so we quote various estimates here. Currently, the estimated size of the Polish group in Belgium fluctuates around 60,000, including more than 43,000 Polish citizens.25 This number includes not only members of the first generation of Polish immigrants, but also members of the second and third generations. According to the population census conducted in Belgium in 1930, 48,840 Polish citizens resided in the country, including around 23,000 Polish Jews.26 In 1935, PCM rector Fr. Ryszard Moskwa estimated the group of Polish Catholics in Belgium at 24,000.27 In 1939, it was estimated that there were around 60,000 immigrants from Poland in Belgium, half of whom were Polish Catholics and half of whom were Polish Jews.28

The main Polish communities were found in the industrial regions of Liege, Limburg, and Hainaut (Charleroi, Mons, and the central area between them).29 During World War II, many Polish men who fought alongside the Western Allies ended up in the Benelux countries and took part in the fighting against the Nazi forces.30 After the war, there was a chaotic migration reshuffle. Poles who did not want to return to the communist country stayed in Belgium. This group included earlier immigrants and Polish Displaced Persons, many Polish soldiers among them.31 On the other hand, several thousand Poles left, deciding simply to return home.32

In the Polish collective memory,33 it is believed that the outflow of people from the country was the result of political oppression. In other words, the political dimension of the outflow is overestimated and the economic dimension is underestimated. In a sense, the heroic narrative of Polish émigré streams dominates Polish historiography.34 As nineteenth-century Polish publicist and independence agitator Maurycy Mochnacki famously contended, Polish emigration “has its own separate, historical character, not similar to the emigration of any other contemporary people […]. We are soldiers of the independence of our country, citizens of the future Poland.”35

This perception was shaped by the nineteenth-century Polish refugees who became diaspora leaders and understood their situation in exile as a continuation of the fight for the Polish cause. According to their speeches, memoirs, personal letters, and publications, the refugees believed that, while living abroad, they had a national mission to fulfill, i.e., they felt responsible for Polish cultural continuity, including Polish Catholicism. Indeed, many exiles in the nineteenth century were well-known figures who became symbols of Polish patriotism. Among the refugees from the uprisings there were several dozen officers and representatives of culture and science, among them Joachim Lelewel, an outstanding Polish historian and spiritual guide in a diaspora democratic camp who spent almost three decades in Belgium (1833–1861), and Stanisław Worcell, thinker and social activist of the Great Emigration.36 Another important element of the heroic history is related to Polish involvement in the Allied Forces and the anti-Nazi underground movement during World War II.37 The focus on heroism and martyrdom in Polish history, both on Polish soil and in the diaspora, is evident in the profile of patriotic activities organized by the Polish Catholic Mission in Belgium. Examples are given later in this discussion.

The Polish group in Belgium was often compared to the Polish diaspora center in France.38 This comparison is important because in the nineteenth century, Paris became the main center of Polish (unsuccessful) patriotic mobilization for the reestablishment of an independent Polish state. However, life in the diaspora could not focus solely on the old country. Everyday challenges prompted and compelled members of the émigré community to orient themselves towards the host society. Therefore, on the one hand side, there was a narrative about Polish refugees and their patriotic mission, while on the other, there was a more complex reality. The reality of the diaspora included both the integration process and ethnic community building. Subsequent generations of Polish immigrants integrated and dispersed in the host society, especially in the case of those born into binational families.39 Moreover, hope for social advancement was usually an incentive for immigrants to go beyond the (symbolic) boundaries of their ethnic group.40 

The migration path that led Poles to Belgium in the twentieth century is an interesting and little researched topic. Many Polish migrants who traveled to Belgium in search of work came directly from Polish lands before and after World War I, but a significant group came from Germany and France during this period. A priest who ministered to Poles in the interwar period estimated that only one third of the Poles in Belgium came from Poland, while one third came from Germany and another third from France.41 We are dealing here with multiple migrations that involved living and working in the diaspora prior to arrival in Belgium. These migrants moved to Belgium in search of better opportunities from industrial regions in Germany (Westphalia) and France (Pas de Calais and Nord), where Polish men were employed in coal mines. In the case of Westphalian Poles, another major push factor was the requirement to take the German citizenship if the migrant wanted to remain in the country after World War I.42 This push factor, rooted in the migrants’ attachment to their identity as Poles (the decision not to accept German citizenship), can be seen as cultural and political rather than economic. However, the labor market in Belgium (coal mines and work that Polish men were used to) proved a strong pulling force. This shows the interplay of various incentives in the decision to migrate.

Polish families brought with them from Germany and France a tradition of establishing ethnic institutions and associations, which during their stay in Belgium proved helpful in the process of building new immigrant communities.43 The experiences of working-class immigrant communities were thus added to the nineteenth-century traditions of refugee activities. The spiritual connection between waves of immigration, old and new, working-class and intellectual, is exemplified in the name of the (Polish student) Lelewel Society in Brussels.44   

From the perspective of gender, in the refugee streams in the nineteenth century, men predominated. In turn, the Polish economic migrations involved primarily single men and families.45 World War II brought soldiers to Belgium, meaning men, but the group of people referred to as Displaced Persons consisted of both men and women. Emigration from communist Poland involved both sexes, including the Solidarity refugees: families, single men, and single women. Polish immigration to Belgium in recent decades, however, has been dominated by women.46 Many of these Polish women have decided to stay, however, and they brought their nuclear families to Belgium, while earlier they had perceived migration as a short term solution or circular move.47

Today, the migration process has slowed or halted shifts in gender roles on the labor market. Most men are employed in traditionally male occupations, for instance the construction and renovation of buildings and as truck drivers, and most women are employed in typically female jobs, for instance as caretakers, nannies and babysitters, and cleaning staff.48 However, “in a recent study on female migration in Belgium […] it was found that women often perceived migration as an empowering experience: it not only strengthened their economic situations but also changed their intra-familial and gender positions for the better.”49 The most recent study which analyzes changes in the PCM focuses entirely on gender roles within this group.50 Its authors closely examine the intersection of class, gender, and ethnicity (minority status), and they demonstrate that Polish women must fight if they want to exercise agency. In this context, it should be noted that Polish migrants often have been working below their skill level. This situation is gradually changing, with more and more Polish men and women finding jobs in Belgium that are compatible with their education and/or getting education in Belgium to improve their position on the labor market.51

Polish Catholic Mission – Basic Information

In the case of waves of Polish migration, the religious dimension of the diaspora experience is clear. In most diaspora centers, Poles established their churches and developed an immigrant community around them.52 The initiative usually came from the bottom up, with immigrants raising funds to start their own churches and cover maintenance costs. They sent petitions to the Church hierarchy to get Polish clergy. It was a grass-roots activity, but a Polish priest often became the leader of a local group. However, the Polish group in Belgium differed significantly from that in countries with the largest Polish diasporas. Unlike in the religiously pluralistic United States, where Catholics were in minority, or France, where the process of secularization was already well underway, in Belgium, Polish immigrants joined the religious majority. Nevertheless, their religiosity, strongly associated with Polish national and folk culture, differed from the religious patterns they encountered in Belgium. They tried to exert some control over the situation by setting up their own structures. In Belgium, the initiative came from above.

Another important aspect was the existence of several pillars on which the social engagement of the Catholic Church in Belgium rested. From its foundation in 1830 in the wake of the Belgian Revolution, Belgium was a Catholic state, and the Catholic Church controlled education, culture, and charity. Thus, the endeavors of immigrants in these fields necessarily took place within the existing Church structures. Cooperatives, sick funds, trade unions, volunteer associations, the school system, and a Catholic party (from 1921) were the pillars of the institutionalized Catholic system.53 Ironically, however, it was more difficult for Poles in Belgium to become part of this established system than it was for Poles in the religiously diverse but nonetheless predominantly Protestant United States to establish ethnic parishes and schools.

On January 1, 1926, through the efforts of August Hlond, primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, and with the approval of Cardinal Désiré Joseph Mercier, the Polish Catholic Mission in Belgium was established.54 Its purpose was to provide pastoral care for Polish immigrants. A year later, the scope of activity was expanded to the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Denmark. The Mission, which is a church organizational unit, was responsible for the organization and development of the religious life of the Polish immigrants. The pastoral activities of the Mission were the same as those of any parish in Poland and included celebrating services, administering the sacraments, receiving confessions, granting absolution, and providing religious instruction. The main task of the PCM rector was to organize pastoral care so that every Polish local community would have access to a Polish priest. This was difficult since the communities were numerous and dispersed. Another crucial challenge was to organize religious instruction in Polish. Due to the lack of priests, the first PCM rector, Fr. Kotowski, trained a group of parishioners representing scattered communities and supplied them with catechisms and songbooks.55

Pastoral care by Polish clergy was and still is essential, as many Polish workers in Belgium either spoke neither French nor Flemish or had difficulty with the languages. Until the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Catholic masses were celebrated in Latin, to which Poles were accustomed, but listening to sermons, singing hymns, and giving confession in French or Flemish seemed alien to immigrants. As diaspora studies indicate, it was often difficult for immigrants to give confession in a foreign language, so they avoided doing do, even though the Roman Catholic Church requires one to give confession at least once a year.56 The Polish Episcopate was aware of this, and in 1921, it issued a decree recognizing pastoral care for Poles living abroad as necessary. In 1969, the legal situation of churches in the diaspora was regulated by the papal decree Pastorialis Migratorum Cura.57

The first PCM rector Fr. Tadeusz Kotowski (1926–28) established eight places of Polish pastoral care in Belgium and one in the Netherlands.58 Before coming to Belgium, he studied in France (Lyon, Nancy) and worked in Polish communities in the industrial regions of France, so he was accustomed to ministering among working-class immigrants.59 The second rector, Fr. Ludwik Kudłacik (1928–1935), also spent several years in France before being assigned to the PCM in Belgium. Both had official contacts with the Belgian Church hierarchy, as well as with the Polish bishops of their home dioceses, where they had worked before their departure. Both left rich correspondence with their Polish bishops, through which we gain some insight into the challenges they faced in their daily activities.60 Their actions were financially supported by Polish Roman Catholic Church and by the Polish Consulates (Brussels, Antwerpen). Thus, in addition to being subjects of the Belgian and Polish bishops, PCM rectors had to know how to navigate the world of diplomats and politicians. There was one more influential actor in the puzzle: the workplace. The owners of the coal mines where the immigrants were employed supported the Polish pastoral ministry. They offered places of worship and education and funded libraries, and in return, they expected the Mission to provide priests.61 This, however, was extremely difficult and caused frustration, and the PCM rectors expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation. In addition, the material support from all sides proved insufficient. The Mission rectors struggled financially, especially during the Great Depression.

In 1939, the Polish Catholic Mission was entrusted to the (Polish) Society of Christ Fathers, a community established in 1932 that has directed its service to Poles in the diaspora. In 1948, the Christ Fathers were succeeded by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a community originally established in 1816 in Aix en Provence. This French community decided in 1921 to establish a Polish Province, which consisted of Polish priests dedicated to caring for Polish immigrants. Both Polish communities had been trained to serve migrants and help them keep their faith. The first Oblate in Brussels was Fr. Karol Kubsz, who, like the first rectors, had experience ministering in Polish communities in France (during WWII).62 He became the PCM rector in 1948 and remained in that position until 1961. The Oblates continue to look after the Mission today.

In 2018 the Mission changed its name to the Polish Catholic Community, and its leader, Fr. Damian Kopytto OMI, became (instead of rector) a coordinator of Polish Pastoral Care in Belgium.63

Until 1925, there was no Polish Catholic parish, mission, or any other type of religious center in Belgium. Several Polish communities were served occasionally by Polish priests who studied in Leuven. In the 1930s, the situation improved a little. There were four Polish priests and two Belgian Capuchin Fathers who had learned Polish, and Polish priests who studied in Leuven still helped on occasion. In 1974, there were 14 priests taking full care of the Poles and three more assisting them. There were also roughly 15 students from the Catholic University of Leuven available.64 In 2023, two Polish priests (Oblates) resided in the Mission house at the Rue Jourdan, one at the St. Elisabeth in Schaerbeek and four Missionary Sisters of Christ the King for Polish Emigrants who helped them.

In Belgian society, where overall religiosity was and is diminishing65 and the Roman Catholic Church has been struggling with declining membership,66 the Polish Catholic Mission appears to have been a unique case of success. It has played and plays a crucial role in the local Polish group. There are currently four places in Brussels metropolis where services are held in Polish: Chapel of the Polish Catholic Community, St. Gilles; Sainte-Elisabeth, Schaerbeek; Notre Dame de la Chapelle, downtown; Saint-Joseph, Anderlecht. To this day, there is no Polish parish in Belgium, though Belgian parishes with large or significant numbers of Polish members try to provide Polish language services. The Polish Catholic Mission coordinates the pastoral care and orchestrates activities that are going on around churches. As already mentioned, Polish churches have always been centers of immigrant community life in the diaspora. Ethnic parishes were entwined with a network of associations. In Belgium, the institutionalization of the pillar system of Church life has made it more than natural for the local Catholic Church to go far beyond pastoral care. In these two contexts, the PCM developed its agenda. From the very beginning in the 1920s, the role of Polish priests was never limited to pastoral ministry. Fr. Kotowski, the first PCM rector, initiated social meetings at the Mission which took place once a month.67 He initiated the establishment of Polish Academic Youth Circles (Koła Polskiej Młodzieży Akademickiej) in localities where Polish students lived. In 1927, he opened at the PCM a kind of tourist branch to facilitate Polish student travel and enable Polish students to visit neighboring countries.68

While many decades have passed in the meantime, the situation has remained very similar. In the 1970s, the Rector of the Polish Catholic Mission stated that Polish priests devoted only 25 percent of their time to religious services, while 75 percent was devoted to counseling, teaching, and organizing social life.69 The same was said by a Polish priest in an interview that he gave in 1990s,70 and a similar claim was made in the recent study conducted in 2021–23.

Polish priests became not only spiritual guides for their compatriots but also teachers, translators, and social workers. Indeed, the religious life of immigrants was woven into a network of ethnic associations and institutions: schools, choirs, societies, clubs, and media organs. Catholic societies included women’s, men’s, and youth units, and many of them published newsletters, calendars, and/or regular magazines.71 Together with the PMC, the role of coordinating Polish activities was initially played by the Committee of Cultural and Social Welfare for Polish Emigration in Belgium (Komitet Opieki Kulturalno-Społecznej dla Wychodźstwa Polskiego w Belgii). The Committee published a bulletin, which is now a valuable source of detailed information on activities held in local communities. It should be noted that the editor of the Bulletin was the rector of the PCM.72

In 1923, the Catholic Men’s Association was established (Stowarzyszenie Mężów Katolickich).73 Another example of men’s societies was the (Polish) Association of St. Barbara, launched in coalmining towns. In several places, the local units gathered all Polish coalminers. They worked with mutual aid funds to help families cover the costs of accidents, health crises, and funerals.74 Polish women’s societies had a different range of interests. The Community of Living Rosary (Bractwo Żywego Różańca 1933), which brought together Polish women, was a prayer association, but its purpose was also to remind women of their patriotic mission in raising children. It emphasized the traditional role of the “Mother-Pole” and reinforced the gendered patterns of the family, in which men were breadwinners and women were bread-bakers. Baking bread is used here in its metaphoric sense, including the tasks of managing the daily life of a family, but also caring for the spiritual needs of the young generation.

In 1948, the Oblates founded a (Polish) Catholic Action in Belgium, a religious association modeled on the Catholic Action operating in Poland in the interwar period and banned during the communist period. At the same time, the (aforementioned) Catholic Men’s Association was active, and the local units of the Living Rosary of Ladies fell under the control of an umbrella organization, the Association of Confraternities of the Living Rosary of Ladies. This consolidation was necessary because the number of local Rosary groups had gradually increased.75 In addition, there was a Polish Catholic youth organization that dated back to 1947 (Workers Catholic Youth, Robotnicza Młodzież Katolicka) and later operated under the name Polish Catholic Youth Association (Katolickie Stowarzyszenie Młodzieży Polskiej). Polish (Girls’ and Boys’) Scout Teams, another type of immigrant youth association, were not directly affiliated with the Catholic Church, but scouts in their uniforms participated in Polish religious ceremonies.76  

Educational activities focused on religious instruction and Polish courses, language, history, geography, and literature. In 1952, the Polish Educational Society (Macierz Szkolna Wolnych Polaków) was established. This Society worked closely with the Polish Catholic Mission.77 Currently, Polish language, history and geography lessons are held on Saturdays in buildings owned by the Polish Catholic Community. An important part of the program is the teaching of Catholic religion, now conducted by Polish nuns. After the political changes in 1989, Polish classes are supported by the Polish state. In a 2012–13 survey of Polish women in Antwerp, half of the respondents reported that their children attended both Belgian schools and Polish supplementary schools.78

In the 1980s, the PCM actively supported Solidarity, a trade union in Poland, independent of the communist state. In December 1981, when martial law was declared in Poland, Solidarity was suspended and later outlawed. At the time, Fr. Bolesław Kurzawa, rector of the PCM (1981–1984), collected funds for the families of imprisoned (in Poland) Solidarity activists, and he cooperated with the head of the Solidarity office in Brussels, Jan Kułakowski, and sent secret literature to Poland and provided care for Solidarity refugees who had managed to leave Poland. Thanks to this initiative, a few days after Martial Law was declared, Cardinal Goodfried Danneels celebrated a solemn mass for Poland in the Brussels Cathedral.79 This part of the PCM’s achievements has contributed to the emergence, in Poland and in the diaspora, of a legend of heroic national history and has become an important part of the collective memory of the Belgian Polish community.

Before and after the Solidarity period, the PCM organized Polish cultural events that focused on Polish heroic history. These events aimed to reinforce Polish national feelings by commemorating the Polish uprisings (1794, 1830–31, 1863–64, and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944) and the legacy of Solidarity (1980–81). Another reason for celebration was the anniversary of the May 3 Constitution of 1791, a failed attempt to reform the Polish monarchy. Polish priests were also involved in the ceremonies that were held annually at the Polish war cemetery in Lommel. An interesting detail relates to Fr. Bolesław Kurzawa, who studied philosophy in Leuven between 1951 and 1954 and served during this time as chaplain to Polish war veterans in Ghent. Fr. Kurzawa purchased a plot in Ressaix and initiated the establishment of the St. Maximilian Kolbe Church, named to commemorate a Polish priest who had saved the life of his fellow Auschwitz prisoner by offering himself for execution.80 According to the records, Fr. Kurzawa managed to build a rectory, but there is no trace of the church today.

Polish pilgrimages to the Banneux shrine in Belgium and the shrine of Lourdes in France are an important element of Polish religious life which helps increase bonding social capital in the immigrant group. These events bring together Poles representing various local groups. Moreover, Poles meet occasionally in the Millennium Center opened in 1961 in Comblain-la-Tour in Ardennes, a province of Liege, Wallonia. This holiday center for Polish youth still operates today, and it hosts summer camps for Polish youths from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The Millennium Center thus has served as a bridge among Polish Catholic communities scattered around these countries. In the 1970s, some 400 Polish children spent part of their holidays there every year.81 Another place for trips and youth camps was Stella Maris, located in Pas de Calais, France, on the coast. Like the Millennium Center, Stella Maris brought together Polish migrants from several countries and served as a bridge among members of the Polish diaspora from France, Britain, and Benelux. In both cases, the centers were launched by the Polish Catholic Mission (in the case of Stella Maris, it was the Polish Catholic Mission in France), and over time, they opened to serve a wider range of guests. The Millennium Center is now managed by the Polish Educational Society, and it cooperates with the PCM.

 Most records indicate that Polish migrants gathered around the church. In fact, the Polish Catholic Mission became a “miniature Poland” and a kind of “small homeland” where people sought assistance and guidance in difficult moments of life. As the sources suggest, a parallel was even drawn between the experiences of the Polish refugees and the plight of Christ: “it is not unusual for migrants to hear during Mass that they are the same refugees that Christ once was, that they are refugees from communism, the consequences of which they still have to deal with”.82 This message reinforces the narrative of the heroism, although the sermon was mainly aimed at labor immigrants. To those who felt humiliated or exploited, however, it may well have given some consolation.

At the moment, Poles in Brussels celebrate anniversaries of the reestablishment of the Polish state (November 11, 1918), with the central ceremony being a holy mass in Notre Damme de La Chappelle. During the Mass in 2019, the dedication of the banner of the 24th regiment of lancers of the Reconstruction Group of the First Armored Division “Antwerp” was held.83 The event proves that reconstructions of heroic events have become an important part of Polish patriotic celebrations, and the PCM plays an important role in this.

The Polish Catholic Mission continues to serve as something of a substitute for the homeland for Polish emigrants, despite their integration into the host society. In addition, thanks to the size of the Polish émigré community and their attachment to religion and the significant participation in Sunday and holiday services, which is incomparably greater than that of the local community, arguably, the PCM activities have revitalized Brussels’ deserted churches. With more and more services in Polish attended by hundreds of worshippers, the church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in the center of Brussels, the church of Sainte-Elisabeth in the Schaerbeek district, and, more recently, the church of Saint-Joseph in Anderlecht have regained their former character, are more readily visited, and parishioners help cover the costs of utilities and building maintenance through contributions and donations. Thanks to the Polish émigré community, some churches in Brussels have been saved from total neglect or even closure. 

 Polish migrants involved in religious activities confirm that the Polish Catholic Mission is important to them:84 “The Mission is our home” (“Misja to nasz dom”); “I feel at home in the Mission” (“Na Misji czuję się jak w domu”); “The church is a substitute for the motherland (“Kościół to namiastka Ojczyzny”); “The church is Poland in miniature” (“Kościół to Polska w miniaturze”); “The Polish church is important to me for religious reasons; without it, life would be more difficult. Besides, it has a tradition here. It is a place to meet other Poles, although sometimes it turns into a big gossip forum.” (“Polski kościół jest dla mnie ważny ze względów religijnych, bez niego byłoby trudniej. Poza tym ma tu swoją tradycję. Jest miejscem do spotkania z innymi Polakami, chociaż czasami zamienia się w wielkie obgadywanie, jeden drugiego.”)85 

The Polish Catholic Mission did not shield immigrants from the host society, however. On the contrary, it helped create bridging social capital between them and the local population. It was anchored in the Belgian structures of the Roman Catholic Church, and despite some tensions in the first decades, it was fully endorsed by the local Church hierarchy.86 Polish priests have cooperated with Belgian clergy in the local parishes, and Polish societies and choirs functioned alongside the parochial Belgian societies. Polish cultural events are attended, moreover, by members of the non-Polish community. Belgian bishops celebrated masses on Polish holidays, especially on the occasions of visits by Polish bishops. As mentioned earlier, they also celebrate Polish patriotic masses in cooperation with the PCM. Polish students at the Catholic University in Leuven have belonged to the Belgian academic world and have been ready to help in the Polish Catholic Mission. Moreover, the Mission supported the (Polish) Workers Catholic Youth (1947), which was born out of inspiration coming from two sides: the French movement (Économie et Humanisme) and the Belgian JOC, or Jeunesse Ouvriere Catholique. This is another example of the creation of bridging social capital, in this case in the transnational Catholic space.

Polish involvement in the Polish Catholic Mission has not diminished, despite the ongoing process of secularization, with Poland following trends initiated in the West. Today, the PCM is present in eleven places: Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Genk, Leopoldsburg, Liege, Maasmechelen, Mons (Tetre), Namur, and Ressaix.87 Many migrants declare that they did not go to church in Poland, but as members of the diaspora, they remain in regular contact with the PCM. The community gives them a sense of belonging and security. This is especially the case of Polish Catholic women from Podlasie, who appreciate the social ties that function within the immigrant community. They do not question gender roles in the immigrant church, where women are denied both leadership positions and the right to assist in services. The relatively new rule allowing women in the Catholic Church to give Holy Communion and serve at the altar (“altar servers”) is not recognized in Poland, so Polish immigrants are not pursuing it.88 It seems that labor migrants are more involved in the PCM than Poles who managed to integrate into the Belgian social structure and who found jobs appropriate to their skills. Indeed, many educated and accomplished women declare that they do not participate in the PCM activities.89 On the other hand, church involvement depends on the migrants’ stage of life. Young couples want to have church weddings, baptize their children, and send them to Polish schools, at least until their first Holy Communion.90 Most of them hold their weddings in their hometowns in Poland, but pre-marriage courses are organized by the PCM.

The religious life of Polish immigrants is becoming diverse, however. In 2000, the Polish Section of the European Catholic Center in Brussels was established, offering services at the Dominican Church (Avenue de la Renaissance). The Polish Catholic Community Coordinator admits that the Section has little in common with the PCM/PCC (2023). As the group of Poles involved in EU structures increases (members of the European Parliament, employees in EU offices and their families), it seems that its role will grow. In addition, a Polish Orthodox Parish has been operating in Brussels since 2015. It was founded by immigrants from Podlasie who belonged to the Belarusian minority. Previously, all immigrants from Podlasie were seen as ethnic Poles, which is a typically ethnocentric/polonocentric approach. Research on the Belarusian minority in Belgium, its relations with other immigrants from Podlasie, and with immigrants/refugees from Belarus would be welcome.

The activities of the Polish Section of the European Catholic Center and the Polish Orthodox Parish contribute to the internal diversification of the Polish community in Belgium and may one day challenge the dominance of the PCM/PCC. On the other hand, their emergence demonstrates the importance of church attendance for many migrants: Catholic and Orthodox, PCM/PCC participants, and outsiders.

The PCM is conservative in every possible way. It preserves a heroic version of Polish history and conducts patriotic missions. It reinforces traditional Catholicism with its folk culture (for example the Corpus Christi processions). It provides religious instruction (led by Polish nuns) which is based on the teachings of Pope John Paul II. It reinforces traditional gender roles, with Polish women seen primarily as mothers. However, to this day, the PCM/PCC is an extremely thriving center of religious, cultural, educational, and social life which unites Poles living in the Kingdom of Belgium.  

To sum up this brief overview of the Polish Catholic Mission/Community in Belgium, the initiative to establish the Polish Catholic Mission sprang from the conviction that faith and national identity are strongly connected. At the time, the Polish diaspora leaders tried to prevent the dispersal of immigrants in the host societies, and their countermeasure was to promote Polish cultural continuity and preserve their understanding of “Polishness.” In this case, cultural continuity meant preserving the Catholic tradition and the heroic narrative of the Polish past and present. The Church hierarchy, in turn, feared losing members or loosening ties with the Catholic Church.91 Both sides wanted the immigrants to stay within the immigrant community, which was to be organized around the religious institution.  The migrant communities have proven an enduring entity and continue to function today.

To put the achievements of the PCMs in a broader perspective, it is worth returning to research on religion in the lives of immigrants. Most of this research has been conducted in the United States, and it has tended to highlight the positive role of religion in easing and facilitating the adaptation process. As Nancy Foner and Richard Alba have suggested, however, this is an oversimplification at best. In some instances, “[i]n contrast (…), religion is seen in Europe as the marker of a fundamental social divide. (…) The focus of scholarly commentaries on immigrant religion [in Europe] is almost exclusively on Islam.” Muslims in Europe, it has been noted, struggle to practice their religion and build up their institutions, and this has triggered conflicts (or been used as a pretext for conflicts) with long-established residents and institutions. Moreover, the incorporation of Muslims into European societies is viewed by some as very problematic.92 Looking from this perspective, the welcome enjoyed by Poles (who are EU citizens) in Belgium should be understood as something of a privilege in comparison with the response shown to Muslim immigrants. In other words, racism and Islamophobia create additional fault lines, alongside the fault lines of class, gender, and ethnicity. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, Poles were seen as mere a labor force and were not expected to integrate. Their Catholicism was perceived as an element that helped the host community exert a degree of control over them but did not bring them closer to the mainstream.

The Polish Catholic Mission at the Center of a Network of Migrant Associations and Institutions

Within the process of immigrant community building, Poles in Belgium supported Polish language ministry, raised funds to secure some form of Polish education, established and maintained publishing houses and libraries, published press materials, newsletters, and books, founded several societies,93 and in the course of time managed to have their own ethnic services: shops, workshops, counseling, medical services, gastronomy, etc.94 The list that gives names and data of many Polish immigrant institutions and societies in Belgium was compiled two decades ago and needs to be updated.95 Here, we provide the most illustrious examples of Polish structures in Belgium. The process of their establishment can be conceptualized as an attempt to achieve ethnic institutional completeness.96 However, nowhere was full “completeness” ever reached. In Belgium, there were no Polish parishes, and at the beginning, church services in Polish were irregular.

Still, in the network of Polish societies on a local level, the Church was very visible. According to detailed data provided by the rector of the PCM in 1936, after the rector’s visitation to the Polish community in Winterslag in Limburg, most of the local societies were connected to the church or directly supported by it (see the table below).97 Among the network of societies were men’s, women’s, and youth organizations, a cultural unit (church choir), and a parents’ association. All were directly controlled by the PCM. The sport units (the Falcons, the Riffle Association, the scouts) and the women’s association seemed to be independent. But the scout teams, established by Polish consulates and formally not under the control of the PCM, were actively involved in Polish church celebrations animated by the PCM.98 And the veteran society had a chaplain who cooperated with the PCM on a daily basis. In the case of the Eucharistic Crusade, it was initiated in the Polish local community by the Belgian Catholic Church and operated outside the influence of the PCM. However, it belonged to the network of Polish immigrant structures and contributed to its dynamic. Moreover, this case shows that the process of immigrant integration was advanced, and bridging social capital between the immigrant and the Belgian Church was generated.99

Table 1. Polish associations in Winterslag, (Belgian) Limburg, 1936.

Organization	Polish name	Supported by	Number of participants
Committee of Local Societies	Komitet Miejscowych Towarzystw
St. Adalbert Mining Society	Towarzystwo Górnicze Św. Wojciecha	Church*	50
Polish Union	Związek Polaków	Neutral (no church affiliation)	70
Sport Society FALCONS	Towarzystwo Gimnastyczne “Sokół”	Indirect Westphalen pattern	40
Rifle Association	Związek Strzelecki	the Polish government	20–30
Church choir	Chór kościelny	Church	30
Confraternity of the Living Rosary (women’s organization)	Bractwo Żywego Różańca	Church	115
Polish Women’s Society	Towarzystwo Polek	Independent	120
Polish Parental Care	Polska Opieka Rodzicielska	Church	30
Union of Former Military	Związek Byłych Wojskowych		25
Scouting	Harcerstwo	the Polish government	50 + 50**
Eucharistic Crusade	Krucjata Eucharystyczna	Belgian Church organization***	20 + 20**

* Polish Catholic Mission, Roman Catholic Church

**Boys and girls

***La Croisade Eucharistique: https://fsspx.org/en/the-eucharistic-crusade

Source: Szymański, “Życie organizacyjne wychodźstwa polskiego,” 64.

Data similar to that for Winterslag was provided following visits by the PCM rector to Polish communities in Limburg’s industrial cities: Waterschei, Zwartberg, Eysden, and Hensen.100 Moreover, Polish newspapers were received regularly from France, and one should note the impressive Polish editorial and publishing achievements in Belgium.101

Another factor particular to the Polish diaspora in Belgium relates to the working-class movement, which (both Christian oriented and secular/anticlerical) proved to be quite strong among Polish immigrants and led them to cross the ethnic boundary in their activity.102 On the other hand, it must be noted that there were Polish sections of the local trade unions, and the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna – PPS) was quite visible both before and after World War II.103 This means that the Poles’ participation in working-class activity was accepted in Belgium. Immigrants were welcome to launch their ethnic organizations within the broader structures, and they knew how to take advantage of these opportunities. Being active, whether in the structures of the Catholic Church or in the labor movement, Poles gradually integrated into the host society. Immigrants who joined the Belgian labor movement were simple workers, but there were some well-known figures among them. Edward Gierek worked as a teenager in the Arenberg coal mine in France, and around 1930, he joined the Polish Section of the French Communist Party, which caused him to be deported to Poland. In 1936, he arrived in Belgium, where he was employed as a coal miner in Limburg. He joined the local (Belgian) and Polish units of the labor movement. In this case, we again see a direct link between the Polish immigrant experience in France and Belgium and the advantages that knowledge of the language provided in the French-speaking regions of Belgium. After World War II, Gierek returned to Poland, and he eventually became a leading figure in the Polish United Workers Party, which gave him the highest position in the communist state (1970–1980).104 His participation in the left-wing parts of the anti-Nazi movement during World War II was probably exaggerated, since the research was done under the communist regime.105 Another key figure was Jan Kułakowski (1930–2011), a World War II refugee and graduate of the Catholic University of Leuven, who became a high-ranking official in international Christian trade unions and the International Labor Organization. Kułakowski is also an example of return migration. He settled in Poland after the fall of communism, reclaimed Polish citizenship, successfully led the process of Poland’s accession to the EU, and was elected to serve as a member of the European Parliament in 2005.106 As already noted, alongside these well-known figures were hundreds of anonymous Polish members of the labor movement who contributed significantly to the dynamics of the host society.

As shown above, Poles established a wide variety of associations and institutions in Belgium. In the late 1920s the leaders of the Polish group presented a typology of these structures: church societies, educational societies, mutual aid societies, and sports societies. At the same time, Polish consuls distinguished three types of associations: social, cultural, and sport.107 As for the labor movement, Polish leaders distinguished three branches: communist groups that were hostile to the Polish state at the time (Seraing near Liege); a radical group which questioned the role of the Church; and a Christian group which included Polish immigrants from Westphalia and the province of Poznan/Poznan. All typologies show that ethnic associations and institutions formed a very dense fabric within the immigrant communities.

After eight decades, a 2001 research report revealed information about Little Poland in Brussels. The list of the entities and activities in this community included Polish-language church services at two locations in the city, several associations, Polish language schools, choirs, small business (hairdressing, car repair shops, medical and legal services) and markets (South Market, Butchers’ Market), discos, and gastronomy.108 The religious activities (in Polish) were listed first in the report, which indicated the key role played by the Polish Catholic Mission.  

However, it should be noted that formal membership in Polish societies in Belgium is rather low. This situation is similar to the situations in other centers of the Polish diaspora, and generally it indicates a decreasing level of social capital in the modern/postmodern world.109 It is estimated that about 20 percent of immigrants are somehow involved in community life. This is probably an overestimate, since the typical level of Polish immigrants’ involvement does not exceed 10 percent.110 It is estimated that in Antwerp 14 percent of Poles belong to an immigrant organization.111 Still, migrants feel that they belong to an ethnic community. Many young Polish couples send their children to Polish schools, and they attend the events organized by the school communities. Many Polish children in Belgium attend Polish religious instruction, at least until the First Holy Communion. Whole families are eager to participate in the most important Polish holidays, such as Christmas Service and Easter ceremonies (blessing food on Good Saturday), but they avoid involvement in other activities. Moreover, ethnicity that is practiced or felt by the recent immigrants is often observed among those who do not engage much in ethnic institutions.112 Indeed, while Poles in Belgium have managed to produce high levels of bonding social capital,113 many still construct their identities outside the traditional structures of the diaspora.

Despite a certain level of social anomie, subsequent streams of Polish immigrants and geographical dispersion produced not just one but many local communities.114 These communities are comprised in part of people who belonged to various immigration streams, and they are diverse in terms of class and region of origin. Because the Polish Catholic Community operates in very traditional ways, which include reinforcing conservative gender roles,115 competing forces are gaining members, such as the Polish Section at the European Catholic Center and the Polish Orthodox Parish. However, these are religious institutions, and there is no secular body strong enough to take over the leadership of the Polish Catholic Community.

Living together and apart, over the course of the last half century, Poles in Belgium met for patriotic holidays and /or in the Millenium Center, and quite often they competed with one another. The main dividing line both before and after World War II was politics. Before the War, there was a division between groups that identified with the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand and groups that were involved in the working-class movement on the other. However, the strong position of Christian trade unions in Belgium has kept many labor activists in the Catholic Church. There was also a division between the groups that supported the Polish government after 1926 and groups that decided to remain neutral. After World War II, the division between pro-communist and anti-communist Poles was the most visible and rigid fault line. This division led to two separate celebrations in Lommel at the cemetery where Polish soldiers who died in World War II are buried.116 Admittedly, conflicts always attract attention and make headlines in the media. In other words, conflicts produce many records, which is why many researchers who examine organs of the Polish media emphasize disagreements within the Polish diaspora, both in Belgium and elsewhere.117 Daily cooperation and harmony are undervalued because they take place quietly and leave little trace.  

There is another interesting and disturbing aspect of diaspora studies. In traditional Polish historiography, the diaspora is characterized as a group that is an immanent part of the nation.118 From this perspective, researchers have focused on documenting the process of immigrant community building, highlighting the community’s successes in promoting Polish culture, and they have paid a lot of attention to outstanding individuals (Polish immigrants) with whom average immigrants wanted to identify. This is true in part simply because these outstanding individuals produced a lot of records, such as memoirs, letters, interviews, and other publications. The main sources for Polish studies on the diaspora were the files of Polish institutions and associations abroad and personal records. These files highlighted all Polish patriotic efforts in Belgium and usually contained little or no information about how Poles had integrated into the host society and culture. Therefore, the researchers’ perception of the diaspora reality was biased. Subtle indications of the integration process are often implicit, except for lamentations about members of the younger generation, which (according to these lamentations) preferred not to speak their native language (especially in public, but also with their siblings) and tried to avoid ethnic events.

The other side of the coin (the integration process) is usually overlooked by Polish researchers. However, studies on the integration of immigrants are being conducted by Belgian scholars and have yielded interesting findings. A new perspective was introduced by Idesbald Goddeeris, who noticed the interconnectedness of the political and economic causes of migration and has pushed for the de-heroization of the Polish experience in Belgium. Goddeeris later joined a group of researchers from Antwerp, and the whole group skillfully showed that Poles gradually integrated into their host society.119 Immigrants’ integration was a slow and quiet process that has been going on in daily life, e.g. children at school, adults at work, and in regular contacts with neighbors representing the host society. Such a process is usually not documented, except on rare occasions, for example celebrations of Polish religious holidays in Belgian churches (as reported sometimes by local media). However, one can examine the process by taking into consideration several key indicators of integration. These key indicators are markers and means (employment, housing, education), social connections (within an immigrant group, with the host society), factors that facilitate integration (language and cultural knowledge, safety and stability), and rights and citizenship.120

On the Polish side, we have studies on immigrant integration by Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska and Kamil Bałuk. Their works are unique in the sense that both authors understand the significance of the integration process and use some indicators of integration. Grzymała-Kazłowska has analyzed Polish women’s migration experiences in liminal time of their lives, and she has found connections between “doing family” and the integration process.121 Bałuk also noted a connection between migrant family life and the integration process, and he demonstrated that members of the second generation of recent immigrants feel at home in Antwerp (where the study was conducted) and motivate their parents to stay in Belgium. The decision to stay (instead of to live as circular or short-term migrants), in turn, results in participation in language and vocational courses in Belgium, which leads immigrants to integrate into the host society.122

Conclusion 

The history of the Polish diaspora in Belgium began in the 1830s and continues to the present day. It included various migration streams and counter-streams: emigration from Poland to Belgium; return migrations from Belgium to Poland (especially after World War I and World War II); multiple migrations, such as the arrival of Poles from Germany and France to Belgium, and the emigration of Poles (mostly DPs) from Belgium to the USA, Canada, and Australia (1950–55);123 and circular migrations in recent decades. At the moment, we witness each of these phenomena at the same time. Many Poles arrive in Belgium and settle there, while others move between Poland and Belgium on a regular basis. Migrants who seemed to be well established in Belgium decide to return to Poland, while seasonal migrants prolong their stay and change their status (in documented or undocumented ways) from temporary to permanent residents. After having spent several years in Belgium, many Poles decide to move on and they go to France or Quebec. Moreover, young people born in Polish families (or mixed families) in Belgium often decide to spend a longer time in Poland, and sometimes, they stay. At the same time, Polish students at the Belgian universities often marry Belgian classmates, and the couples move between Belgium and Poland. On the top of that, the number of Poles employed in EU institutions is increasing, and many of them live their everyday lives in Brussels. Almost all Poles representing these groups are or have been in touch with the Polish Catholic Mission/Community. There is a group of people who are connected with the PCM on a regular basis, but they are a minority among the local Polish diaspora. A larger group appears typically on Polish holidays and celebrates Polish traditions of Christmas carols and Christmas meetings (sharing wafers or opłatek), Easter traditions (pisanki), Corpus Christi processions, etc.  Many Poles show up in the community when they engage in ceremonies involving rites de passage, which they want to celebrate in accordance with Polish traditions. These rites of passage include First Holy Communion, confirmation, weddings, and sometimes funerals. An even larger group has contacts with the PCM that have little to do with religious life but are related, rather, to teaching children the language or getting a job.   

Nevertheless, studying the evolution of the PCM/PCC over the century, we found evidence that this institution, which had to struggle since its early years, managed to overcome the various difficulties it encountered. It has played a leadership role in the Polish community in Belgium and has contributed to the survival of this community to the present day.

In the age of online communication, it seemed that the traditional community was obsolete and would be replaced by online groups. The experience of the Polish immigrant group in Belgium shows that these expectations were premature. The diversity of Polish groups and the central role played by the Polish Catholic Community are indisputable. The immigrant church and school in their traditional form, with buildings, meetings, and celebrations in person, are still central in the lives of many immigrants. 

The question that researchers have not asked so far is whether Poles moved within Belgium and/or the Benelux countries. It would be important to know whether Poles, if they changed their region of residence, moved between Polish communities or (what seems much more likely) whether they left their communities and settled in places where there was no ethnic infrastructure. One must consider that today it is possible to participate in many forms of ethnic activity without residing in an ethnic neighborhood. However, as shown above, traditional forms of immigrant activity, with in-person meetings and a degree of religious decorum, have proven attractive.

The history of Poles in Belgium resembles the history of Poles in other destination countries and generally resembles the history of any diaspora center. In examining this history, we have focused on general trends that are common to all large diaspora centers (founded by immigrants from different countries), as well as on the characteristics of Polish immigration to Belgium. Each migration stream and each local immigrant community has its own unique set of experiences, but common patterns can always be identified.  

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Leman, Johan. “Religions, Modulators in Pluri-Ethnic Cities: An Anthropological Analysis of the Relative Shift from Ethnic to Supra-Ethnic and Meta-Ethnic Faith Communities in Brussels.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 14, no. 2 (1999): 217–31. doi: 10.1080/13537909908580863

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Leszczyńska, Katarzyna, Sylwia Urbańska, and Katarzyna Zielińska. Poza granicami: Płeć społeczno-kulturowa w katolickich organizacjach migracyjnych [Beyond Borders: Gender in Catholic Migration Organizations]. Cracow: NOMOS, 2020.

Leszkowicz, Tomasz. “Edward Gierek: aparatczyk czy reformator?” histmag.org, August 25, 2016. Last accessed August 11, 2023. https://histmag.org/Edward-Gierek-aparatczyk-czy-reformator-23517

Levrau, Fracois, Edith Piqueray, Idesbald Goddeeris, Christiane Timmerman. “Polish Immigration in Belgium since 2004: New Dynamics of Migration and Integration?” Ethnicities 14, no. 2 (2014): 303–23.

Mraczek, Fr. Michał. “Troska o migrantów w dokumentach Kościoła i w kontekście aktualnej sytuacji migracyjnej w Polsce związanej z konfliktem zbrojnym na Ukrainie” [Care for Migrants in Church Documents and in the Context of the Current Migration Situation in Poland Related to the Armed Conflict in Ukraine]. Społeczeństwo. Studia, prace badawcze i dokumenty z zakresu nauki społecznej Kościoła 32, no. 2 (2022): 59–69.

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Panecki, Tadeusz. Polonia w belgijskim ruchu oporu [Polonia in the Belgian Resistance Movement]. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1986.

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The Evolution of Migrant Mobilization in One Polish Diaspora Community: A Case Study of the Polish Catholic Society Eindhoven

This research concerns the transformation of one migrant community. It is based on an analysis of selected documents presenting Polish migrant associations in the Netherlands from the beginning of 1950s until the 1990s. The study offers an analysis of the minority mobilization process, with a focus on migrant organizational agency. It is a case study devoted to the Polish community in Eindhoven and its association, which was a local branch of migrant organization operating at a national level. The main sources used in the study are archival records, including organizational statute, circulars, information leaflets, press releases, official and private correspondence, bulletins, protocols, organizational reports, official declarations, and minutes from meetings. In addition, interviews and biographical data are taken into account. Most of the written sources were obtained from the archive of Franciszek Łyskawa, a Polish migrant soldier who settled in Eindhoven shortly after World War II. Over the course of the following decades, he remained an active member of the diaspora while also integrating into the host society, and he became a Dutch citizen. The study shows the evolution of this Polish migrant community from the precarious situation of the early postwar years through the development of immigrants’ associations and institutions which emerged in parallel to efforts to integrate into the multicultural society in the 1960s and 1970s and eventually the gradual decline of activity among the members of this community as immigrants.

Keywords: migrants, refugees, Polish Catholic Society, Franciszek Łyskawa, the Netherlands, mobilization, immigrant community

Introduction

Historically, Belgium was the primary destination country for Polish migrants heading to the Benelux region. This topic has been addressed in the secondary literature.1 Therefore, in this study, the aim is to shift the focus to a case from the history of the Polish immigration center in the Netherlands. This paper highlights selected aspects of the organizational experiences of Polish migrants in the latter half of the twentieth century, a period marked by their settlement in the Low Countries which commenced in the late 1940s. According to the studies on the Polish diaspora in Belgium and Netherlands,2 this wave was triggered by wartime migration, including soldiers and displaced persons (DPs). Many Poles who belonged to this cohort ventured to distant shores, predominantly seeking opportunities overseas, particularly in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. In the history of Polish immigration, they formed an important wave of migration to the region.3 Earlier, from 1908 to 1939, a significant number of Polish migrants arrived seeking employment opportunities, including indirect or intermediate Polish migration movements via Germany and France and a group of irregular immigrants. At the time, immigrants were mainly employed in the coal mines of Limburg province, and they remained focused on daily issues and were not politically active.4 Still, even with this movement into some areas of the Netherlands, Belgium was the main destination for Poles who were heading to this part of Europe. In the 1980s, yet another wave of Polish refugees emerged, again primarily seeking refuge in Belgium. This wave was inextricably linked with the “Solidarity” social movement and consisted of individuals who often sought only temporary sanctuary in the country against the backdrop of the tumultuous events unfolding in their homeland.5 Taking into consideration the migration movements described above, it should be highlighted that in the second half of the 1940s (the initial point when considering the case study), the Polish diaspora in the Netherlands was not a big one, consisting of some 5,000 to 6,000 people.6

Excluding the post-accession migration of the 2000s, the Polish diaspora residing in Belgium and the Netherlands until the 1990s can be described as relatively diverse in terms of its socioeconomic profile.7 In addition to the wartime migrants, the diaspora also included pensioners who had previously worked in coal mining and industry. As a result of this heterogeneity, there was a notable absence of firm organizational structures.8 Since the 1960s, the Polish diaspora had become more and more geographically dispersed, with some of its members successfully climbing the social ladder.9 It is worth noting that some wartime immigrants, mainly soldiers and their children, were active members of various religious and veterans’ organizations.10

The history of Polish immigration to the Netherlands has not been studied extensively, resulting in limited attention to the development of Polish migrant organizations in the latter half of the twentieth century. While there have been a few exceptions, such as a brief overview by Willems and Verbeek (originally in Dutch and later translated into Polish),11 there are no truly comprehensive studies on this subject.12 Moreover, relations between Polish and Dutch miners in the interwar period were ambivalent at best, as was the situation of former Polish soldiers who migrated to the Netherlands in the immediate aftermath of the war and the postwar period. It would be fruitful to begin by analyzing a case of organized community life in this setting. In particular, it is important to consider experiences of agency in the organized community life of these immigrants,13 especially “the everyday ways in which their fellow countrymen and women sought to recapture, safeguard, and even reshape the national cultural identities.”14 The role of religion in these efforts also merits particular attention,15 as religion was often an integral element of Polish cultural identity in the diaspora community.

Migrants’ Community Organizations, Mobilization Processes and Civic Engagement

The phenomenon of organized community life among migrants is universal, meaning that various migrant communities around the world have consistently tended to establish the necessary institutional infrastructures to ensure organized community life in the past and today.16 Several cases indicate that migrant community organizations are especially active among the first generation of immigrants. The diversity and sheer number of migrant organizations make it difficult to venture generalizations about their universal characteristics and changing patterns of functioning. Numerous studies17 have shed light on intriguing patterns observed in the evolution of migrant community organizations. One notable change is the process of institutionalization and continuing specialization. Initially, these organizations primarily served affiliative functions, helping to establish social bonds among their members (for instance, the notion of bonding social capital introduced by Putnam18). However, as time progresses, these institutions grow into more structured entities, catering to the diverse needs of their communities by offering a myriad of services. Another compelling aspect is the emergence of power struggles and succession issues within these organizations. As the organizations mature, internal dynamics come into play, resulting in the pursuit of leadership positions and potential challenges in ensuring smooth transitions of authority. Moreover, reorientation in terms of areas and methods of operation becomes apparent as these organizations broaden their scope of engagement. Beyond exclusively serving their own community, they can increasingly establish connections with members of other minority groups and seek meaningful interactions with the host society (as reflected in the conception of bridging social capital).19 Cultural issues emerge as a prominent focus for migrant community organizations. Understanding the significance of cultural identity for their group members, they actively invest in preserving and promoting their rich cultural heritage, recognizing it as a vital bond that empowers their community. Moreover, some organizations may experience marginalization, witnessing a decline in active participation among their members. Additionally, subsequent generations assimilate into the host society over time, thus shaping the composition and dynamics of these organizations. A comprehensive exploration of the abovementioned processes illuminates the dynamic nature of migrant community organizations and their integral role in the lives of immigrants as the immigrants navigate the complexities of adaptation and transformation in their adopted homelands. Finally, in many contexts, the issues evolving around competition and conflict between organizations representing various waves of migrants as well as political and social stances can be observed. Survival and prosperity are dependent in part on the availability of funding for organizational activities, but they also depend on the skills and persistence of organizational leaders and other engaged members of the community.

The establishment of migrant associations is one of the first activities in the process of immigrant community building, and often the first institutions launched by immigrants are places of religious worship, such as churches and other religious organizations.20 This can range from attempts to replicate practices familiar in the homeland to efforts to adapt to the patterns popular in the new place of residence, though of course in most cases, the organizational initiatives launched by migrant communities fall somewhere between these two extremes. The presence of other religious denominations and ethnic groups may introduce a heightened sense of self-awareness among immigrants based on the feeling of being minority “others.”21 Moreover, exposure to a predominantly irreligious society can prompt immigrants to become more aware of their religion. This could deepen attachment (and thus commitment) to some aspects of religious practice and beliefs held in the immigrant community. Still, changes in a migrant community can be observed in the shifting priorities of its members, from putting an emphasis on maintaining its ethnic and religious identity to an openness to the mainstream in the host society. Acknowledging the need to be open to other ethnic and religious groups does not mean losing or weakening an existing identity. Rather, it reflects the need to engage with people who represent diverse ethnic and religious identities. On the other hand, it can be a phase in the process of assimilation.

Concern for a notion of ethnic cultural continuity (no matter how chimerical) becomes apparent in ethnic mobilization processes, including mobilization among diaspora communities.22 Ethnic mobilization, as an example of social movement, can be understood as a collective action driven by interests shared by at least part of an ethnic or migrant group and organized around some features of ethnic identity, or broadly speaking, their distinctive cultural characteristics, and aimed at achieving an important group goal. Ethnic mobilization has been an increasingly salient part of cultural and political processes in the modern world, especially since the 1980s,23 which has much to do with the development of parallel processes: globalization (including increasing international migration) and regionalization/ethnicization. Within this context, the evolution of complex relationships in civil society is crucial.24 Migrant mobilization contributes significantly to these changes. It must be noted that self-help organizations play an important role in this process. In describing these processes, Però and Solomos use the term “ethnicity era,”25 which followed the former “era of collective action” and marked two important developments of the organizing of social groups and immigrants in Europe in the previous century. These activities could originally be of a material justice character. Furthermore, they included securing legal status, tackling discrimination issues, and enhancing migrant participation in structures of representation, especially political ones. The cultural distinctiveness of the ethnic collective, separatist tendencies, organizational cohesion, and a sense of economic and political injustice are also significant for ethnic mobilization.26 Nevertheless, mobilization processes at the level of immigrant organizations27 boil down to two objectives: preserving identity and nurturing the political representation of migrant communities, thus increasing the chances of survival for these communities as distinctive groups. Migrant organizations can thus be seen as fulfilling an identity function for their members, as they create spaces for socialization as part of a small group as well as in wider society, including both the majority society and among fellow minorities.28 Cohen29 points to religion as a major mobilization factor in a diaspora. The Polish community discussed in this article investigates offers a clear example of a case in which there is a strong intersection of faith and ethnicity. As Cohen notes, “Such an overlap between faith and ethnicity is likely to enhance overlapping forms of social cohesion and to create situations where it is difficult to decide whether one is describing a faith or an ethnicity.”30 The case under study supports Cohen’s contention. Religion and the protection of ethnic identity might be so intricately interlined that it would be difficult or impossible to separate them.

Migrant mobilization activities were usually understood as determined either by working class situation (violation of labor law) or the reflection of their ethnicity that is “specific cultural traits of a given ethnic group.”31 More recently, this understanding has been supplemented with the political opportunity structure (POS) approach,32 “the opportunities for mobilizing provided to migrants by the institutional setup of the receiving context.”33 Però and Solomos34 contend that one must also take migrants’ feelings and emotions into account “to balance the rational choice approach that underpins prevalent theories on migrant mobilizations.”35 The rationale for this is sound:

In fact, migrants, like the rest of the population, may at times mobilize in partial or total disregard of the chances of success and the achievement of concrete goals and material rewards, and they can be substantially driven by their values, affection, sense of self and of group membership, need to feel well and realize themselves, and so forth, all significant elements that are overlooked in the ‘rational actor’ decision-making model.36

These processes can be identified as emotional and “hot” in nature, and in many cases not instrumental but rather based on what is understood as part of ethnic identity and flowing from what could be axiological motives. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social capital may also help further a more subtle understanding of the state of a migrant community.37 In particular, when considering two forms of social capital—bonding and bridging—an interplay of internal and external group processes can become clear. Bonding social capital is a form of social capital that gives the members of the community a sense of security flowing from the intensity of these relations. The concept of a bridging form of social capital could be helpful to understand the importance of migrant community actions directed outside of the group. Engagement among migrants in relations with social actors representing the wider society as well as other migrant communities helps them interact in a wider social sphere. It should be noted that in the case of ethnic and migrant communities, social capital is sometimes considered a cornerstone of political engagement among the members of the given community, as social capital is essential to the creation of social and political trust.38 Some research suggests that there is a positive relation between both forms of social capital in migrant settings, which would mean that building ties within a minority group does not hinder the establishment of fruitful relations with the wider society.39

From a broad perspective, civil activities can be understood as the promotion of civil rights, participation in civil society, defense of equal opportunity, and combating discrimination. However, it is worth remembering that the very involvement of migrants in the activities of organizations is indicative of grassroots activity among them and is a manifestation of the exercise of civil liberties, but also a manifestation of agency among organization members where their reach their full potential. Minority political activism can take the form of lobbying aimed primarily at initiating counter-marginalization.40 The quality of these activities can influenced by the availability of various resources, such as financial support and social capital.41 Mobilization and social capital could thus be used to understand civil engagement transfers, which are exchanges of practices of self-organization and engagement between migrant and host communities. Ethnic and migration studies can adopt a bottom-up approach and in this way highlight the roles of individuals and organizations and their agency in the mobilization activities of the immigrant community and participation in the construction and maintenance of a modern democratic society.

The Aim and Scope of the Current Study

The study focuses on a migrant community formed around a local branch of a national level organization which was thriving in the second part of the twentieth century in and around the Dutch city of Eindhoven. It offers insights into some of the wider processes taking place at the time in the Polish diaspora in the Netherlands and across Benelux. The main research question is explanatory in nature and points to one of the main characteristics of mobilization processes: What are the directions of actions (e.g., internal vs. external) undertaken by the migrant community to maintain its identity? An additional question concerning the research project is: Are civic engagement actions identifiable among the mobilization processes? As the source material spans approximately four decades, it makes it possible to track change occurring over time.

The sources examined in this research are drawn from the Franciszek Łyskawa archive and are publicly available at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. The source material, which consists of digitalized versions of 98 loose pages forming seven packages, was obtained from Łyskawa’s daughter, Ludka. The materials were preselected by the donor from the sources deposited by her at the IISH. They include circulars, information leaflets, organizational statutes, press releases, official and private correspondence, accounting reports, and other documents (overall 109 pages). The folders were not ordered formally. In addition, the statute of the Polish Catholic Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Katolickie or PTK) is used to provide basic information about this migrant organization (10 pages; also provided by the main donor). An outline of Franciszek Łyskawa’s life42 and some of the existing secondary literature are also used to present the story of Polish war migrants who settled in the Netherlands after postwar demobilization. Alongside the sources described above, face-to-face interviews and email communication with Ludka Łyskawa were used to clarify some of the details concerning the materials she provided.

Franciszek Łyskawa – A Migrant’s Life Story43

For decades, numerous Polish veterans in the Low Countries were living in the villages and towns that had been freed by them during World War II. After the war, the establishment of a Soviet satellite communist state in Poland created a new reality, one that many Polish soldiers fighting in the West were not willing to accept. Often, it was not tempting or even possible for them to return home, because they fundamentally rejected the new sociopolitical reality in postwar Poland. In some cases, the demobilization of Polish soldiers, which left them stranded in Western Europe, put them in the most difficult circumstances of their lives.44 In addition, in the case of Franciszek Łyskawa, the decision not to return home after the war was also based on family reasons. The rationale to reintroduce his case to the wider public is based on his rich experiences as a soldier who was forced to roam around Europe and North Africa from the outset of the war and who had a chance to be an active member of his immigrant community after he settled in the Netherlands.

Franciszek Łyskawa was born on November 27, 1912 in Gorzykowo, which at the time was part of the German Empire.45 He attended grade school in his hometown and later studied at the grammar school in Gniezno. He joined the Polish military in 1933 in Lviv (then Lwów) to become a non-commissioned officer. The army allowed him to acquire new skills and get promoted. As a result of the September 1939 campaign, Łyskawa and numerous other members of the defeated Polish armed forces pushed through to Bucharest. The invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union ended in a German-Soviet victory. The evacuation to Romania was one of the endpoints of 1939 defensive war, and for Łyskawa, it marked the beginning of a life of a soldier migrant who entered the Polish Armed Forces in the West. In January 1940, Łyskawa embarked on a trip to Paris, where he joined the formation of Polish forces. Stanisław Maczek was another Polish soldier who managed to break free to one of the Allied or neutral countries. He escaped the Soviets and found safe haven in Hungary, later moving to France, where his troops took part in the defense of the country.46 In early 1940, Franciszek Łyskawa was training Polish emigrants who had joined the nascent Polish forces being assembled in France. In June 1940, around Paris near the Marne River, Łyskawa was injured while fighting against the German forces. In the aftermath of the French defeat, the only way for Łyskawa and his accompanying party of soldiers to escape was to push south to the port of Marseille and then go by sea to Oran, Algeria and further by train to Casablanca and by boat to Rabat, Morocco. From there, he traveled to Gibraltar and finally to England. Two years later, during Operation Overlord, Łyskawa landed in continental Europe and took part in the liberation of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.47 With the end of the war, Łyskawa became one of the Polish soldiers who decided to start a new life in one of the freed countries of Western Europe. On September 18, 1946, he married Maria Heijligers, a Breda citizen, with whom he had three daughters: Marysia, Ludka, and Lieke. Łyskawa was demobilized on March 12, 1948 in Bury St Edmunds. Shortly thereafter, he and his family moved to Eindhoven, where Łyskawa worked as a radio technician in the Philips factory.

War trauma, grim perspectives in the home country, and the challenges of living in an unfamiliar social and geographical environment created a challenging life situation, especially considering the sense of rejection felt by war veterans of Eastern European origin who found themselves in Western Europe after World War II.48 These circumstances led to various existential conditions, including psychological crises, as well as sometimes situations in which veterans developed transnational ties and conflicting loyalties and, as migrants, felt that they had to take stands concerning the sociopolitical circumstances of the time.

One of the ways to face the challenges of cultural shock and war trauma was to take an active role in the immigrant community. This is exactly what Franciszek Łyskawa did. He acted as both initiator and leader in various postwar Polish diaspora associations in the Netherlands. Many of these organizations were Catholic in nature, a characteristic that was, and in many cases still is, a defining feature of Polish diaspora life the world over. For decades, the Łyskawa family was actively engaged in the Polish community and its organizations in the Netherlands, simultaneously trying to maintain ties with Poland on the institutional and personal level. Łyskawa was the treasurer of the PTK in the Netherlands and secretary of the branch in Eindhoven. Łyskawa also belonged to the song and dance group “Cracovia” in Eindhoven (initially affiliated with the PTK Eindhoven, later an independent organization, currently known as Zespół “Cracovia”) and supported charitable organizations, for example the Catholic Akcja Miłosierdzia (Action of Mercy). He also organized holiday camps for Polish diaspora children in the Netherlands and participated in patriotic and religious events, for example the celebration of Constitution Day, which honored the declaration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s constitution on May 3, 1791. This particular event was an occasion for anti-government and anti-communist protests in the Polish diaspora, as the constitution is considered a national symbol of the Polish struggle to reform the country, as well as one of the political and social traditions disdained by the communists.

Łyskawa took part in other activities, such as annual meetings to commemorate the liberation of Breda and veteran events in Normandy, Scotland, and Poland. These efforts were noteworthy contributions to the construction of social bridges between the Polish diaspora and the wider society, as the war effort of Polish soldiers was not well known in the Netherlands, with the city of Breda being an exception. In addition to this kind of institutional activity, Łyskawa built strong personal ties with numerous migrants and was involved in various forms of charity actions. He also offered his services as a sort of consultant. He thus managed to build substantial (bonding) social capital that strengthened the immigrant community as an ethnically homogenous group of people, especially in challenging times for the diaspora. While working in the Eindhoven Philips factory, Łyskawa became fully integrated into the working team and benefited from various social programs introduced by the company. In other words, he exhibited remarkable proficiency in acclimating to an unfamiliar social environment. His marriage to a woman who was not Polish and his notable accomplishments on the local labor market exemplify the process of acquiring social capital, and he effectively forged connections between the immigrant community and the host society.

In the summer of 1961, Franciszek Łyskawa embarked on a journey to Poland accompanied by his family, his first since having fled the country during the war. The primary intent of this expedition was to visit their Polish relatives. Grappling with the status of statelessness, Łyskawa relied on a passport specifically designated for stateless individuals. One year later, he gained Dutch citizenship, which allowed him more easily to solve the formalities associated with travelling to Poland. The abovementioned journey was described by his relatives as a stimulus for change in Łyskawa’s behavior, as if he were taking on a role as an older brother of sorts among the members of the Polish family who had remained in Poland and an interpreter of the Polish language and Polish culture for his Dutch family. Over the course of the following decades, Łyskawa led a rich and ceaselessly active life as a Polish migrant and Dutch citizen. He adeptly cultivated and sustained transnational connections with his relatives and colleagues across various countries, including Poland, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Canada, and beyond.

Franciszek Łyskawa passed away on February 5, 1997 and was buried in the cemetery of Saint Theresia in Eindhoven. His death was noted in the newspapers, and a commemorative exhibition was opened in Witkowo, near his hometown of Gorzykowo in Poland. The exhibition was titled “Franciszek Łyskawa – pancernym szlakiem z Gorzykowa do Holandii” (Franciszek Łyskawa: On the armored route from Gorzykowo to the Netherlands). In the exhibition, emphasis was put on his war achievements. Łyskawa’s legacy lives on thanks to his daughters and grandchildren. Archival material related to him was donated by the family and is publicly available at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. In the discussion below, I present the case of the Polish Catholic Society in Eindhoven, which was one of the organizations in the Polish diaspora in which Łyskawa was particularly active. I present the Polish Catholic Society against the backdrop of the activity of the Polish Catholic Mission (Polska Misja Katolicka or PMK).49

The Polish Catholic Society and Its Statute

The intersection of religious50 and ethnic activity can be traced in many Polish organizations operating in the Netherlands. As Leska-Ślęzak observes, “[n]ewly arrived emigrants from Poland began their Polish lives with a visit to the Polish church in the Netherlands.”51 The profound Catholic dimension of their national identity fostered the belief among Poles that a loss of faith meant a loss of identity. Consequently, priests responsible for immigrants took on the duty of nurturing a sense of belonging to the Polish nation. The Polish pastoral ministry in the Netherlands was founded in 1910 in Rotterdam and was initially part of the Polish Catholic Mission in Belgium from 1928 to 1946. Subsequently, in 1947, a distinct rectorate was established in Breda, sealing its importance as a point on the map of the Polish diaspora. In 1973, a Polish Catholic Mission was founded for the Benelux region, encompassing the Netherlands among its areas of focus. Around 2009, the ministry in the Netherlands was organized into three districts: Limburg and Brabant, the northeastern areas, and the western areas. In addition to their pastoral duties, the priests actively engaged in social, educational, and journalistic endeavors, as well as commemorations of significant Polish national events.

One of the main organizations associated with the Polish migrant community in general and with the life of Franciszek Łyskawa in particular was the aforementioned PTK, especially its branch in Eindhoven. The PTK was established on December 28, 1946, originally for a period of 29 years (until December 27, 1975), and on September 17, 1975, it was extended for another 29 years. The main goal of the PTK was defined as “supporting the religious-spiritual, cultural, social and financial needs of the members of the Society” (article 3, point 1; PTK statute 1). The organization was non-political in nature (article 3, point 2; PTK statute 1). In article 3, point 3, a handwritten amendment by Franciszek Łyskawa was made that erased the statement, “[i]n its actions, the Society will be guided by Catholic principles” and changed it to, “[i]n addition, the Society commits itself as far as possible [to] the cooperation with the Polish pastoral workers of the Polish Catholic Mission in the Netherlands” (article 3, point 3; PTK statute 1). The reason for this change is unclear, but it may simply reflect changes in the community outlook. It could be considered an attempt to initiate or confirm changes occurring in the migrant community, such as growing inclusiveness, while still safeguarding the community’s relations with the Church. On the other hand, the status and authority of priests among the diaspora also changed over time, as further sources will reveal.

Changing Organizational Structures and Changing Community: Main Sources Analysis

Below, I present migrant community activities and their evolution in the light of the archival records. One of the oldest sources in the collection dates from 1954.52 It can be classified as a general annual report of the PTK Eindhoven issued by the leadership and addressed to the members. The source reveals changes in attitudes within the migrant community. According to it, repeated celebrations of national and religious holidays for about a decade caused a sense of increased reluctance to organize the community around these occasions and reduced enthusiasm for them. Moreover, the author of the report contends that some members of the Polish community were less able to take active part in the life of the migrant organizations because they were living as members of mixed marriages. Some statements concerning this issue are presented in a rather harsh manner, for instance, “[t]here are some among us who have a wife, a fiancée, or a Dutch husband and who shamefully neglect their moral duties in relation to compatriots.”53 The author claims that the remedy for the revival of the immigrant community and its organizational life was a balance between private involvement (life as a member of a binational family or plans to establish one54) and public involvement (sociopolitical actions). These comments about visible changes in the private lives of migrants coincide with the crisis faced by various organizations across the country, which manifested itself in reduced organizational activity. Acknowledgment of these difficulties was a stimulus for change in organizational activity and an occasion to modify methods of operation. This can be viewed as an important reflection from the perspective of social change and the adaptation to more settled and integrative circumstances after nearly a decade of migrant life in the Netherlands. The PTK board was fully aware of everyday dynamics in the migrant community and tried to adjust to the new situation.

Adaptation to the new reality unfolded gradually, and with the passage of time, the community members began to have a grim view of the prevailing circumstances: “Probably no one saw this coming, and yet we are still here, with no sign of any change that this state of affairs will end any time soon.”55 The document cited,56 which was signed by the head of the PTK (K. W. Szczubiałko), provides an interesting comment on organizational and community affairs. The author stated that there was a need to give up unrealistic hopes among the Polish migrant community. This meant that the priorities of the community were shifting from the needs of the first generation of migrants to the needs of the second. This is understood as a need to make efforts to introduce the younger generation to the culture of their parents by organizing and supporting the celebration of Polish national holidays and various cultural activities. The document pointed to the main problems of the organization’s functioning, namely a lack of sufficient financial resources and a small group of members. In terms of membership, there had been a slight increase, and a firm statement had been made that the acquisition of Dutch citizenship did not preclude PTK membership. In other words, all were welcome as members of the organization.

In general, cooperation among Polish organizations in the Benelux countries was common, albeit in some cases turbulent. In preparation for the Polish Millennium commemoration in 1966, the main Polish organizations in the Netherlands were able to find common ground, and they established the Council of the United Polish Diaspora in the Netherlands.57 The Council was formed by the chairmen of the PTK, the Union of Catholic-Polish Societies (Zjednoczenie Katolicko-Polskich Towarzystw or ZKPT), the (noncommunist) Polish People’s Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe or PSL), the Polish Veterans’ Association (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów or SPK), and a delegate from the Polish Catholic Mission. It was declared that the Council and its activities should be democratic, respecting the independence of each association and the apolitical nature of the union. This can be seen as an example of unity finding expression in the preparations for a symbolic occasion for the Polish migrant community.

However, fruitful and long-term cooperation was often difficult to achieve. A circular issued probably around 1972 and authored by Franciszek Łyskawa dealt with the question of the younger generation of migrants.58 The head of the PTK Eindhoven presented the issue of a proposed meeting organized for the migrants’ children in Jeugdherberg, Ockenburg te ‘s-Gravenhage (The Hague) in the middle of October 1972. The goals of this event were as follows: “a) establishing contact between Polish youths and youths of other nationalities; b) exchange of views and discussions; c) learning about the cultures of other nationalities.” While not erasing the previous goals of maintaining attachment to and continuity with Polish cultural identity, this constituted a visible change of attitudes in relation to the aforementioned document of 1958, in which the goal of cultural unity was clearly outlined. More than two decades after the war, the orientation had shifted, and the mobilization process took another (external) goal: to represent the community outside in a multicultural environment.

The next document under scrutiny is the PTK Eindhoven Christmas circular issued in December 1979.59 In the initial part, the author expresses the community’s concern about the decreasing number of Poles in Eindhoven. This was part of the demographic process caused by the deaths of older members of the migrant community, both from the prewar migration wave and war refugees. A typical circular of the time reported the death of one or more members of the local migrant community. Other records show that the PTK meetings took place just once or twice a year in the middle of the 1980s.60 Nevertheless, the “Cracovia” song and dance ensemble, formally part of the PTK, remained more active in that period, and it had both senior and junior performers. The pessimistic conclusions were counterbalanced by the election of the Polish citizen Karol Wojtyła to the Papal throne in the Vatican in 1978. When the circular was issued (December 1979), the election still resonated in the community and inspired pride among Polish migrants, whom the PTK encouraged to call attention to the fact that a fellow citizen had become the new pope. The author used this fact to strengthen the call on fellow migrants to participate in religious events as an opportunity to preserve and maybe even revive strong ethnonational ties and identity. It should be noted that this was the only document regarding the PTK Eindhoven, apart from occasional Christmas or Easter addresses, in which religious piety was strongly and straightforwardly encouraged. It also marked a change of orientation, as it placed emphasis on issues related to factors external to the community in the home country.

Some actions undertaken by the PTK clearly correspond to the challenges and economic and sociopolitical hardships of the situation back in Poland, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. A noteworthy form of activity among the Polish migrant community in the Netherlands was the establishment of the aforementioned Action of Mercy. This was a charity organization which addressed needs and concerns in the old country. The charity work involved collecting donations, and these efforts were coordinated by the PTK. The main aim of the Action of Mercy was to provide medications to the people of Poland at a time when many medicines were not widely available in the country. The activity required mobilization in the immigrant community, as the numbers of requests for medication were significant. The extent of this need became particularly clear in times of economic collapse in Poland, when shortages in medical and other supplies soared. It is an example of a group mobilizing for two different purposes, for purposes related to the immigrant community itself and the host country, but also to the country of origin. In the Netherlands, the action helped strengthen the local immigrant community, which meant contributing to the creation of bonding social capital. Activities focused on Poland helped create a lasting transnational space where particular goods were transferred as well as personal ties involving particular people were established. One of the documents related to the mission is the official thanks from Archbishop Stefan Wyszyński, a cardinal and primate of Poland at the time (the thanks was issued on December 17, 1973).61 This expression of gratitude was addressed to Dr. Narcyz W. Komar, vice-chair of the PTK and an active member of the Polish community. The letter noted the charity’s fifteenth anniversary. This means that charity work was a long-term and successful venture and met with great interest in Poland. After the death of Dr. Komar, Franciszek Łyskawa coordinated the charity. The funds to buy medications were provided by the PTK.62 Around 1983, the charity suffered from a lack of financial resources, which was particularly acute in the time of crisis in the early 1980s in Poland.63 The very same document offers information about internal conflicts in the wider Polish immigrant community in the Netherlands. We learn from it that the Dutch Polish Council (Rada Polonii Holenderskiej)64 was dissolved, which meant the disintegration of national organizational structures among Polish migrants in the Netherlands. The immediate cause has not been revealed, with the only direct indication being the contention that “we do not yet share a common language.”65 One may speculate that the turbulent political situation in the home country had spread to the diaspora. It was a difficult time (the Solidarity movement, the introduction of martial law) of conflicting loyalties and competing aid programs for the anticommunist opposition in Poland. This also shows that attempts to build bonding social capital were not always successful.

Another crisis related to the relationships and activities of some Polish priests working within the Polish diaspora in the Netherlands was added to the general, rather gloomy picture reflected in the files.66 This is probably the same crisis that is described in the official correspondence from the Church authorities in Rome sent by Bishop Szczepan Wesoły (dated June 27, 1982).67 Bishop Wesoły, “the chaplain of Polish emigres,” stated that the problems mentioned by the Polish community members were of a minor character. He also stated that personal problems related to the priestly ministry reported to him by the Polish migrants were exaggerated. In response, he contended that the activities of the PTK differed in quality from the activities of similar organizations in Belgium, France, and England, and, in general, are not sufficient.

It is worth mentioning that a Dutch priest, Rijk, who held an official position related to the pastoral care68 of Catholic minorities, was asked to mediate in this matter.69 This situation demonstrates how the functioning within the broader structures of the host society proceeded (the local structures of the Roman Catholic Church). In cases of internal misunderstanding or dissatisfaction, there was an instance offering a positive solution. In addition, acceptance of an outsider as a mediator was a sign of good relations with Dutch society and reflected the general trust placed in the Dutch Catholic Church. It was also an example of a civic engagement procedure aimed at relieving tensions and alleviating problems inside the migrant community, especially when internal conflicts could have been detrimental to it. Unfortunately, the available documents do not provide information on the course and outcome of this mediation or on the exact formal or informal status of this attempt. It should be added that in many cases, immigrants used the local religious infrastructure of the host society, such as a church or a gathering room.

Sources from the 1980s also focus on the economic situation in Poland and the need to help fellow citizens in the home country (the PTK Eindhoven Easter circular dated April 12, 1981).70 This attitude persisted into the early 1990s (PTK Eindhoven Easter circular dated April 8, 1990),71 when the newly elected first non-communist government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki was named as the beneficiary of the donations (Mazowiecki Fonds). Moreover, notable initiatives, such as the launch of the Polish Shipping House (Polski Dom Wysyłkowy), which specialized in the sale of a wide range of Polish books, aimed to draw attention to Polish issues at home by increasing the number of readers abroad (PTK Eindhoven Easter circular dated April 8, 1990).72

Conclusions

The case presented above shows the evolution of a migrant organization in the postwar decades. The main issues raised in the documents are dilemmas surrounding integration, the issue of the cultural identity of the younger generation, cooperation among organizations, manners of dealing with crises, actions aimed at Poland, the decreasing number of members of the migrant community, and accounts of religious life. The case also offers a clear example of the importance of the contributions made by a committed member of the migrant community to the community itself, who was both a witness to and active part of the organizational changes which took place in the postwar era. Mobilization efforts among the local Polish migrant community in Eindhoven manifested itself in various forms. First, they included activities directed towards the sense of belonging among members of the community itself (i.e. the function of the mobilization process as an internal affair). Second, they placed emphasis on the importance of creating an image of the immigrant community and presenting this image to the host society (mainly indirect evidence; actions directed to the external environment). Last, but not least, they consider the situation in the country of origin and changes taking place in it (i.e. actions targeted at the home country and fellow citizens there). Thus, the social network links were internal and uni-cultural on the one hand and external and cross-cultural on the other. They embodied two forms of social capital: bonding and bridging. The general transformation of the immigrant community led from the initial state of provisional existence in the host country to being a part of a multicultural society and gradually withdrawing from organized diaspora life, which eventually meant the cessation of community activities. Taking into consideration the importance of religion as a mobilization factor, the case of the PTK offers clear support for the notion of the vital role of religion in safeguarding ethnic identity. Many of the efforts described in the sources explicitly use religious devotion as a cornerstone for the activities of the members of the community, alongside the celebration of Polish national symbols, holidays, etc. Descriptions of internal and external affairs (e.g. the situation back in Poland) are at times expressed in terms which suggest concern about the future. Moreover, there are instances where the diaspora engages in both bottom-up and “hot” models of decision-making. These approaches, however, did not always lead to successful outcomes.

The example of the PTK demonstrates that the formation of cross-cultural bonds can prevent the tendency towards one-sided, intra-group exclusivity among immigrants. This refers to situations where members of the migrant community engage solely within their distinct, isolated diaspora group. From the perspective of mobilization and civil engagement transfers, it is useful to point out that there are circumstances in which the community was more ready to engage in this form of activity. Cooperation with a Dutch Catholic priest was only possible when the outlook of the community formed around the PTK became more cross-cultural. His role was to mediate and mitigate an internal crisis within the migrant community. Based on the case study presented here, one can formulate a working hypothesis which would require additional evidence for validation. According to this hypothesis, the migrant community would benefit from an external orientation if it sought to facilitate successful transfers. Within the organizational sources examined here, discernible indications of civic engagement activities can be observed. This particular case serves as an illustrative example of cooperation within the immigrant community. However, an overarching perspective that emerges from these sources emphasizes the significance of engagement and agency among proactive members as the fundamental bedrock of organizational life within the immigrant community.

Archival Sources

Główny Urząnd Statystyczny [Statistics Poland] (GUS)

Baza organizacji i instytucji polskich i polonijnych za granicą [The Polish Organizations and Institutions Abroad and Polish Diaspora Organizations and Institutions Database]

https://stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/ludnosc/polonia-i-polacy-w-swiecie/

Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis [International Institute of Social History], Amsterdam (IISG archief)

Franciszek Łyskawa archive

Interviews with Ludka Łyskawa

PTK statuten [Polish Catholic Society statute] (provided by Ludka Łyskawa)

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Migration as Mission: Alojz-Alexis Strýček SJ in Belgium (1938–1945)

This article presents a case study of Alojz-Alexis Strýček SJ, a Slovak Jesuit in Belgium during World War II, to examine the complexities of migration, identity, and religious mission within turbulent historical contexts. Strýček’s experiences challenge conventional categorizations in migration studies, demonstrating how individual narratives can intersect with and transcend national and religious boundaries. The study employs social network analysis and philological-historical methods, offering insights into the dynamic roles migrants play in the circulation of knowledge and in shaping transnational connections. Strýček’s case highlights the importance of considering non-national factors, such as religious affiliations, in understanding migration patterns and migrant identities. This research contributes to the emerging field of “migrant knowledge,” which focuses on the role of migrants in global knowledge exchange and the redefinition of identities in times of crisis, thereby enriching our understanding of the multifaceted nature of migration.

Keywords: Jesuit mission, World War II, Belgium, migration, identity, transnationalism, religious mission, Russian emigration, Soviet Union

Introduction

The emergence of new independent nation states in Central and Eastern Europe after World War I challenged the categorization of the inhabitants of the region. People who were born in Warsaw or Prague before 1918 and had been registered as Russian or Austrian citizens all of a sudden became Poles or Czechoslovaks. This was not only reflected in the paperwork documenting individual identities1 but also in official statistics. Whether a person identified with his or her new categorization was of little or no concern to the administration managing the documents or to the statisticians who processed data on behalf of governments.2 This has serious consequences for migration studies, which usually build on these individual and collective data to define their object of study. These categories often fail to capture identifying features or circumstances that drive individuals to migrate, and individuals do not necessary identify with the migrant community to which they are documentarily and statistically assigned.3 Nor does this paperwork take into account non-national, e.g. religious or transnational migrant communities, the non-binary character of individuals who play different roles in different (migrant) settings, or the possibility that an individual, through his or her actions, may change the outlook of a migrant community (e.g. among nationals without a fatherland) or serve as a catalyst for the emergence of hitherto unknown (migrant) constellations.

This contribution focuses on an individual who at the time of his arrival in Belgium in 1938 was registered as a Czechoslovak citizen but who himself did not identify with that country’s migrant community (if one existed at all). Moreover, his time spent as a migrant in Belgium was guided by a religious mission that barely acknowledged national identities.4 However, the fact that this individual did not fit the existing (formal) categories does not mean that he was not a migrant. He effectively built his own network, which constantly shifted and grew and which was religious and transnational by definition, and he ignored the (politically) imposed barriers between local and foreign. Not only do the circumstances of this individual’s life challenge the usual categories of migration history, but the shift of focus to an individual is also unlikely to provide direct insights into the concerns or cultural identity of the migrant community as a whole. On the contrary, this case risks being downplayed as a case study, biography, microhistory, or, even worse, hagiography or petite histoire. Last but not least, there is the additional peril of blind spots, as the absence or elusiveness of sources cannot be papered over by massive data and general tendencies.

To tackle these challenges, I use a methodology that has proven effective in my previous biographical and prosopographical research.5 It essentially combines social network analysis with the philological-historical method, with texts (sources) themselves as evidence and products of networks of authors, readers (addressees), themes and topics (hi-stories), references, and forms of intertextuality. Texts can always be read as 1) products and tools of the social networks from which they emerge and 2) references to other texts. The lack of sources imposes limits on what can be known, but insights into textual interconnections may yield additional information concerning social interconnections. This approach is particularly appropriate within the field of Migrant knowledge, a new paradigm on the crossroads of migrant studies and the history of knowledge that focuses on the roles of migrants in the circulation of knowledge.6 This is exemplified by the present case of Alojz or Alexis (Aleksei) Strýček in Belgium.

Alojz Strýček

In 2009, Alexis (Alozj) Strýček (1916–2013), a French Jesuit of Slovak origin, committed his memories to paper. For ages, he had been entertaining friends, colleagues, and visitors with numerous stories about his adventurous life, and he finally gave in to their urgings to put the story of his life in writing. His autobiography in Russian (his Russian was allegedly better than his native Slovak, even if it was not his first language)7 opens with a passage in which he identifies himself: he was born to a Slovak-speaking family in the Austrian-Hungarian village of Cserne (now Čierne, on the Slovak-Polish border), but only after the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and the ousting of the Hungarian administration did the Strýčeks acknowledge their Slavic, i.e. Slovak identity. First and foremost, the Strýčeks were Roman Catholics. Alojz was named after the saint of his birthday (Aloysius Gonzaga, June 21), and he regularly attended mass, served as an altar boy, said his bedtime prayers, read religious literature, and saw how his (well-to-do) parents engaged in charity.8 In the French (adapted) edition of his memoirs (2013), however, the stress is on Strýček being multilingual (Slovak, Czech, German, Latin, French) and well-travelled from a very young age.9 The differences between the two editions can be explained by the difference in the target readership: the Russian version addressed the tiny community of Catholics in Novosibirsk, where Strýček was living at the time of publication, whereas the French version, edited by Strýček’s former language teaching assistant after his death, was meant for a larger, non-religious French readership. Both editions agree that languages, mobility, and Catholicism indeed defined Strýček’s life.

In 1926, at the age of ten, Alojz was sent to the gymnasium in Trnava and later to the schools in Nitra and Trenčin, where he graduated in 1934. As he noted in his autobiography,

During his last class, the priest read us a letter from the Pope. It said that the Soviets were destroying the Catholic clergy, and that we had to prepare for the moment “when Russia would open up,” and that in Rome a seminary had been founded, the “Russicum,” to train future priests. In Slovakia, we were “panslavists” and saw in Russia the future of the Slavs.

During the graduation party, I declared that I would go to Rome. To give it a try. If I didn’t like it, I’d come back. To non-Catholics, you have to explain that priesthood is considered the ideal in the life of a Catholic. In Sunday homilies there was always talk about “vocation,” i.e. the call to follow Jesus Christ. Celibacy, the unmarried status, is obligatory if you want to take up the priestly status, but at the same time it also gives it its aura. Five of my classmates ended up becoming priests.10

The Russicum, a preparatory college for Catholic priests destined for missionary work in Russia and among Russians abroad, had been established in 1929 by the papal encyclical Quam curam, the very “letter” the priest had read to his pupils in the gymnasium in Trenčin.11 It was the latest instalment in the “Russia policy” of the Holy See.12 This policy was part of the Church’s battle against modernism, which found form, for instance, in the secular nation state as the nucleus of international relations. To counter the demise of religion in public life as of the end of the nineteenth century the Catholic Church increasingly stressed its divine and universal character, which was epitomized by a steep increase in missionary work and the idea that Christians should unite against secularism.13 From the Roman Catholic point of view, the latter implied the “reunion” of the Christian Churches, notably the Oriental ones, with Catholicism, i.e. their conversion and submission to the Church of Rome.14 The first step in this process had been Leo XIII’s papal encyclical Orientalium Dignitas (1893), which proclaimed that the Oriental rites of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Latin rite were equally valid and should be maintained. The latter implied the prohibition of Latinization, the creation of Eastern rite seminaries, and the study of Eastern theology.15 To further this eastern policy, on May 1, 1917, Benedict XV created the Congregation for the Eastern Church and on October 15, 1917 the Pontifical Oriental Institute. With regards to Russia, the Vatican seized the opportunity offered by the freedom of religion in the Russian Empire (1905–1906, reconfirmed after the February revolution of 1917)16 to (re-)establish Catholic dioceses in Russia, both of the Latin and Eastern rite (Greek Catholics, i.e. Uniates). Even after the Bolshevik takeover, the Holy See attempted to secure Catholic interests in Soviet Russia. Its efforts were in vain, however. As an alternative, the Catholic Church heavily invested in charity to gain sympathy among the (traditionally hostile) Russian Orthodox, either in Russia itself through food relief during the famine of 1921–22 or among Russian refugees (émigrés) by providing material, educational, and spiritual support. Especially during the pontificate of Pius XI (1922–1939), Russia and the relationship with Russian Orthodoxy became a hot topic, with the creation of the Pontifical Commission Pro Russia (1925) within the Congregation for the Eastern Church and further encyclicals stressing the importance of unity among the Christian Churches and the primacy of the Catholic Church therein (Mortalium Animos, 1928), as well as the importance of the teaching of Oriental liturgy and culture in Catholic universities and seminars (Rerum Orientalium, 1928). The latter led to the creation of the Collegium Russicum, the management of which was entrusted to the Jesuit Order.17

The 18-year old Alojz Strýček arrived in Rome on October 17, 1934. By that time, the Russicum had more or less established itself. It provided lodging for some 30 students and trained them in Russian culture and the Eastern rite, as these were considered the shortest way to the hearts of the Russians. Moreover, the Russicum’s first rector, the Slovak Vendelín Javorka (1882–1966), who probably had been responsible for the promotion of the Russicum in Slovakia, had been succeeded by the Frenchman Philippe de Régis (1897–1954). Notwithstanding his good relationship with the Slovak Jesuit Province (Provincial Rudolf Mikuš, 1884–1972) and the Slovak dioceses (Bishop Karel Kmetko of Nitra, 1875–1948), de Régis was not keen on “too large a group of Slovaks (or for that matter any group of non-Russian foreigners gaining a majority).”18 Strýček became one of the twelve Slovaks who studied at the Russicum in the interwar period,19 and he liked it there: “I never returned home. However much I loved my father, mother, and sister and however much I was loved by them, I followed the often repeated words of Christ that I now heard inside me: ‘follow thou me’ (Matthew 8:22).”20 On September 8, 1936, after two years in the Russicum (and two years of philosophy at the Gregorian University), Strýček entered the Jesuit Order.21 De Régis was delighted:

Regarding the religious spirit [in the college], we thank God that everything seems to be going well. On the occasion of F. Wetter [Gustav Wetter, 1911–1991] and F. Strýček entering the novitiate, we could note how well and sympathetically the students were disposed towards the Society. Certainly nothing remained of the former distrust which could be observed in the first students. The silent student A. Strýček will enter the Society. Two others, however, leave the college this year; one, a Frenchman, is destined for the Capuchin novitiate for missionary work among the negroes, while the other, a German, having experienced difficulties in the Eastern rite, wanted to join a seminary in his own country.22

Strýček was sent to the Eastern rite novitiate of Zagreb, but a year later the Yugoslav government stopped granting visas to Catholic seminarists of the Eastern rite. Strýček returned to Italy, to the novitiate of Ariccia, where on September 8, 1938 he took his first vows.23

For the next phase of his training period (the so-called Regency, which was an internship which lasted two to three years), the young Jesuit was sent to the Russian Collège Saint-Georges in Namur to serve as a praefectus disciplinae (discipline master) and “to study Russian.”24 According to his personal file, his performance as a praefectus was “cum mediocri satisfactione.” As a language teacher, however, he qualified “cum optima satisfactione.”25 The Collège Saint-Georges had been founded in 1921 in Constantinople by French Jesuits to provide schooling for the sons of the thousands of Russian families that had fled Russia after the defeat of the White Armies at the end of 1920. In March 1923, the institute, its staff, and 38 pupils were transferred to Namur, where it was attached to the Jesuit Collège Notre-Dame de la Paix. During the day, the children went to school at the Jesuit Collège or other Catholic institutions in the neighborhood. Saint-Georges itself provided boarding, effectively creating an entirely Russian environment with Russian as the language of communication, Russian language classes, and Russian culture and religious instruction (Catholicism of the Eastern rite). It thus served as a model for the future Russicum. Saint-Georges was also directly funded by the Vatican and run by the Jesuits. Although some of its graduates would later enter the Russicum, the conversion of Russians was not the primary goal of the Jesuits. Gaining sympathy among Russia’s future elites (or the people who, it was believed at the time, would later emerge as the elites) was much higher on their agenda. And many Russians who were also Orthodox were happy to send their children to Namur. Unlike in other Catholic countries, the Catholic Church in Belgium and especially its primate, Cardinal Mercier (1851–1926), were reputed to refrain from proselytism.26 In reality, however, conversion was part of the deal. In exchange for a good education at a moderate cost, many parents turned a blind eye to Catholic pressure as long as it did not affect the family’s standing in the Russian émigré community. The children themselves wanted to fit in with their Catholic environment (and please their teachers), and as many of them even spent their holidays at the college at the behest of the Jesuits, few parents were in a position to counter Catholic pressure.27 Meanwhile, the sponsors of the collège measured their return on investment on the basis of the number of conversions. In his report to Rome of April 20, 1939, Paul Mailleux (1905–1983), the director of Saint-Georges, stressed that he himself refrained from converting pupils under his care to avoid direct conflicts with the Orthodox community, but he was adamant that his little Russians were so well-embedded in their Belgian Catholic environment that as many as half of them eventually converted.28 This met with the approval of Włodzimierz Ledóchowski (1868–1942), the superior general of the Society of Jesus in Rome.29 In his memoirs, Strýček describes Saint-Georges as an experiment on the fringes of what was achievable within the Catholic Church at that time:

For the pupils of the college [Notre-Dame de la Paix] attending mass was obligatory. There could be no exception for the boarders at Saint-Georges! Let them pray according to their own rite! It goes without saying that at that time inviting an Orthodox priest for that purpose was out of the question. Some of the boys were Russian Catholics, and in the collège there were Catholic priests of the Eastern rite.30

Every day, Father Victor [Richter, 1899–1976] and Father Dimitri [Kuz’min-Karavaev, 1886–1959] celebrated liturgy for the pupils of Saint-Georges. Usually, a [Eastern rite] liturgy is sung and lasts longer than a Latin mass. To gain time before the beginning of the classes at the college, the pupils attended a spoken liturgy, which is completely unacceptable for Russians. Like it or not, the Orthodox children had to accept the order of things.31

In April 1939, Strýček took his protégés to the Easter service in the Russian Orthodox Church in Charleroi,32 where he encouraged them to participate in the liturgy and sing along with the choir: “I had neglected the ban on communicatio in sacris [participation in a non-Catholic service]. Back in Namur, I got an earful.”33 This, perhaps, gained him the qualification of being a mediocre praefectus, but there is no concrete reference to this incident either in the archives of Saint-Georges, or in Strýček’s personal file in the Jesuit archives. As a matter of fact, apart from some administrative notes, there are no references at all to Strýček during that period, let alone sources that corroborate his memoirs. This is probably due to Strýček’s extremely young age. He was only 22 when he arrived in Namur in late September 1938, and he was still in the early stages of his probatio. Moreover, one can wonder about the accuracy of Strýček’s memoirs. They largely coincide with and sometimes almost seem to be based on the official history of Saint-Georges, published in 1993. Did Strýček use this account as a source, or did the authors of this history build on his stories? And last but not least, Strýček’s memories were probably colored by the more ecumenical attitudes that Saint-Georges and, for that matter, the whole of the Catholic Church would adopt in later years and of which Strýček himself was an adept.34

When Strýček arrived in Namur in September 1938, Saint-Georges was more or less regaining momentum after years of financial and organizational turmoil.35 It was now led by a dynamic, Russian-speaking director (Paul Mailleux) and was part of a broader Jesuit structure, which also included the Foyer Universitaire Slave, the Russian student home at the University of Louvain (Leuven).36 Moreover, thanks to the new influx of financial means and personnel from Rome (“I wish all my colleges were as well provided for by Rome as yours is,” the Provincial wrote to Mailleux37), there were even plans to diversify the trajectories offered to Saint-Georges’ boarders. As the materially and psychologically deprived Russian émigrés were not always up to the high academic standards of Notre-Dame de la Paix, it was considered potentially worthwhile to send them to technical or vocational schools as well.38 And thanks to the arrival of the English Jesuit Paul Dickinson (1914–2002) and a flaw in the Belgian legislation, the (obligatory) Flemish classes at Notre-Dame de la Paix (“many parents feel (correctly) that too much emphasis is put on the study of a language of primarily local interest”), were replaced by English classes in Saint-Georges itself.39 A year later, however, things were changing dramatically as events on the international political stage were becoming increasingly ominous. In August 1939, part of the collège’s premises at Namur were requisitioned by the Belgian army in view of the threat of war.40 In September, F. Mailleux was mobilized. On October 31, the Sœurs de la Charité de Namur announced that they would not be able to provide bread for free anymore.41 Meanwhile, developments in the East, notably the Soviet-Finnish war, put the Russian apostolate in a new, complicated perspective. Who would sympathize with the Russians now that the Soviets had attacked a neighboring country?42 When war broke out in Belgium on May 10, 1940, 45 of the 60 pupils returned to their parents in Brussels and Paris. The other 15 fled to France under the guidance of Victor Richter. Alojz Strýček, Dmitrii Kuzmin-Karavaev, and Frantiszek Przewlekły (1884–1957) stayed behind in Namur. Unlike the rest of the (garrison) town, Saint-Georges remained relatively unscathed by the bombardments of May 1940. Within days, the refugees returned to Namur.43 Soon afterwards, however, it was decided to move the college to Paris, as most of the pupils were living in the French capital.44 In 1941, Mailleux, Kuzmin-Karavaev, and Przewlekły were permitted to leave Belgium, and Richter was allowed to leave in 1942. Strýček remained in Belgium to pursue his Jesuit training.45

In 1940, Strýček had resumed his philosophy studies (he was in his third year) at the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine Novitiate of Wépion, just outside of Namur, but he failed his exams. In his memoirs, he acknowledged that his Roman training had not prepared him for the exacting standards of Belgian higher education, but he also blamed his professors for being too rigid and blind to the social concerns of the younger generation.46 The following year, he enrolled in the “minor” theology program at the Jesuit Collegium Maximum in Louvain, destined for future missionaries and priests without degrees in philosophy. This Jesuit institution in the rue des Récollets (Minderbroederstraat), which should not be confounded with the Faculty of Theology at the University of Louvain, was renowned for its internationalism and modern spirit (“the spirit of Louvain”, as one author put it).47

In his memoirs, Strýček claims that in Louvain, he took his Russian interests to a new level. The Louvain library provided plenty of reading materials, and there was ample opportunity to connect with Russian émigrés, either students at the Foyer Universitaire Slave in de rue de Malines (Mechelsestraat) or Russians living in Louvain.48 Many of them had become Catholics. Irina Posnova (1914–1997), a Louvain graduate and future founder of the Russian Catholic publishing house Zhizn’ s Bogom (La Vie avec Dieu);49 Ilia Denisov (1893–1971), who in 1943 defended a groundbreaking dissertation on Maximus the Greek (Maksim Grek, 1470–1556);50 Vera Naryshkina-Witte (1883–1963), the adopted daughter of the former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Witte (1849–1915) and a sponsor of schooling programs for Russian émigré children.51 But he allegedly was also in touch with Orthodox émigrés, such as F. Georgii Tarasov (1893–1963), the priest of the Russian Orthodox churches in Brussels, Louvain, and Ghent and the future archbishop of the Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes in Western Europe (Paris).52 However, as the Nazis only recognized the authority of the competing (and collaborating) Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Tarasov (and many émigrés) was rather restricted in his movements.53 This was the context (described vaguely and misleadingly in Strýček’s memoirs)54 in which a new (and adventurous) phase began in the life of the young Jesuit.

Alexis Strýček

In 1942, the Germans started to transfer labor force from the Eastern Front to the coal mines in Belgium. Initially, these forced laborers were (Ukrainian) civilians (Ostarbeiter), but as of the summer of 1942, the supply consisted mainly of Soviet prisoners of war. This was particularly the case in the province of Limburg, where the first POWs arrived in September 1942.55 Many of these POWs fled when they got a chance. By the spring of 1943, the number of Soviet POWs had risen to some 250, about 5 percent of the total.56 According to Strýček, in late 1942, he was approached by Limburg youngsters on behalf of the Resistance. A Russian refugee was hiding in their barn, and they needed an interpreter. They did not trust the Russian translators in the coal mines, as they had been recruited from among (collaborating) Russian émigrés.57 Whatever the case, in November 1942 the Louvain seminarian established contacts at the camp hospital of Waterschei. His first “protégé” was the Ukrainian Ostarbeiter Arsen’ Feshchenko, who was a regular patient of the camp hospital. Together with his comrades Adam and Nikola, Feshchenko complained about the working conditions (they had not been miners back home), the lack of food, and the cold. And they were happy to receive cigarettes, bread, fruit, clothing, and books (including a Bible) from the future priest.58 By the end of December, Strýček had made arrangements to visit the Waterschei patients,59 and he had even found others who delivered parcels on his behalf.60 Strýček’s superiors gave their blessing to this “fruitful work among the prisoners,” and they reckoned that through Strýček, “the Lord will increasingly show mercy for these poor people.”61 The visits and the parcel service served as an ideal cover to rove the area between Louvain and the Limburg coal basin and even further afield, in the Ardennes.62 By the summer of 1943, Strýček’s services extended to the escaped prisoners who had gone into hiding in the woods of East-Brabant and Limburg.63 One of the escapees was Anton Osip, a medical student at the University of Kiev who in July 1943 had been put in charge of the Waterschei camp hospital, two months before he himself had fled.64 Osip’s fate was often the subject of letters by Maria Indestege (1912–1975), a nurse at the hospital who was at the heart of the escape network. More than once, she had to urge Strýček to keep a low profile so as not to give away the network.65 A similar warning was issued by Anatolii Khrustalov, a friend of Osip’s, who worried that too many of the prisoners knew Strýček: “It would be better if you stopped coming, because we are suspicious of the émigrés [the interpreters].”66 Strýček’s reputation eventually reached a group of Russian émigrés who themselves were organizing a Russian resistance group, “Partisans Russes en Belgique,” with strong links to the Limburg coal mines.67 Although these émigrés would later claim that the Limburg escape route was an integral part of their network,68 there are strong indications that this was not exactly the case.69 The escaped Soviet POWs created their own ring “For the Motherland” (Za rodinu), which was organized as a Soviet partisan division and consisted by the end of the war of some 400 fighters. There was not much love lost between these two movements, and Strýček himself did not really warm to the émigrés. He preferred the company of the Soviets.70

His contacts with Soviet citizens and POWs also offered the aspiring missionary an opportunity to gain second-hand information about Soviet Russia. Some inmates seem to have been happy to oblige Father Aleksei (Alexis), the name they used for him, as it was far easier to pronounce and remember than Alojz. Ostarbeiter Andrei Netripailo, for instance, eagerly received parcels and visits by Alojz, and in exchange, he tried to convince his benefactor of his religious zeal. He made inquiries about Orthodox émigrés who might help and wrote about a visit of an Orthodox priest to the camp, icons, Easter, the danger of atheist co-prisoners, and Jews (allegedly Feshchenko was one). “Thank you for your concern,” he wrote in a letter to Alojz, “you are a well-loved man and a good soul who does not forget us Orthodox; for these good deeds, the merciful Lord will remember you.”71 The religious theme would surface in many a letter, and this was clearly the kind of information Strýček was seeking. Some three weeks after their first meeting, presumably in late 1943, another refugee, the 20-year old chemistry student and second lieutenant Pavel, wrote the following in a letter to Strýček:

I thought that after our first meeting, you must have thought that this is a man with Soviet schooling and is therefore no comrade (tovarishch) of mine, but you are mistaken, I have always prayed and gone to church with my grandmother, admittedly not often, and when I finished school and went for my lieutenant’s training, the last words of my grandmother were: “Pray, and god [sic] will always assist.” And I always prayed and honored her will.72

In other letters, Pavel gave in to Strýček’s probing and further expanded on his religious upbringing. He stressed that, the anti-religious propaganda in the Soviet Union notwithstanding, many people had kept their faith, wore crosses, had their children baptized, and many young people still knew the Lord’s Prayer and dodged anti-religious courses. “Foreigners, as well as Russians,” he claimed, “exaggerate the importance of atheism among Russians.”73 Pavel increasingly saw Strýček as a “friend to whom I can write everything and [from whom] I receive true instruction and good advice.” And he continued:

I would like to know your opinion about Russia, how such a deeply religious people has a government that rejects god [sic]; I think that this cannot continue for much longer. Because only the biggest idiot can say that he was born without a father. For that reason, my grandfather called Stalin a “wise donkey,” but please don’t tell this to anyone.74

Pavel asked Strýček not to share his contentions with other Soviets and even to burn his letters. As his letters reveal, not all his comrades shared his religious interests. Many of them radiated the skepticism of their Soviet upbringing and commented on the apparent contradictions in the Bible. One anonymous letter writer claimed that, “There is no truth there, deceit upon deception, everywhere slaughtering of children and adults, all done with the blessing of God,” and the author agreed with Marx that religion is “the opium of the people.”75 On March 21, 1944, one of them openly countered Strýček, who three months previously had been (secretly) ordained as a deacon in Paris:76

I will be frank. In my previous letter, I consciously did not congratulate you on your ecclesiastical promotion. There is no need to pretend in front of you, share niceties, when it is not sincere, or as they say, “from the heart.” You have sown confusion in my head. Until now, I have rejected God’s existence on the basis of the evidence I had, but since I met you, it proved insufficient; the question of whether God exists, is far deeper than I imagined. I had to reconsider everything and ponder again. […] And meanwhile I remain an atheist.77

The author of the letter repeated traditional arguments: the contradictions in the Holy Scripture (how could an educated man like Strýček put his faith in texts riddled with contradictions?), Strýček’s alleged disrespect for Russia (how dare he call the Russian people “poor”?), the notion of papal infallibility (why was the head of the Catholic Church infallible and not the head of the Orthodox Church?), the (Catholic) allegorical interpretation of the Bible versus the literal interpretation widespread among Orthodox émigrés, the claims of both Catholics and Orthodox to primacy among the Churches, and the notion of a perfect God as creator of an imperfect world. The letter left its mark, as Strýček copied it several times.

Strýček’s religious zeal and growing expertise on Russia also affected his Belgian surroundings. In the summer of 1943, F. Etienne (Stefaan) Gervais (1912–1982) of the Franciscans in Rekem (Limburg) made inquiries about a Russian language course.78 Were the Rekem Fransciscans also dealing with Russian escapees? In February 1944, Henri De Visscher (1913–1994), a former student at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome who had been forced to return to Belgium at the outbreak of war and was now biding his time in Châtelineau (Hainaut), had heard from a Limburg seminarian about Strýček’s Russian interests and confessed that he also wanted to dedicate his life to the Russian cause.79 As of late spring or early summer 1944, Soeur Cecilia (Evgeniia Morozova, 1912–2011), a Russian Catholic nun of the Eastern rite who was working as a nurse in the civilian hospital in Nivelles, started to brief him about the fate of Russian prisoners in her region (first POWs and, as of September 1944, Russian collaborators) and her strained relationship with the Russian Orthodox community. She also asked for advice on the publication of Catholic literature in Russian (the life of St. Vincent de Paul).80 In early 1945, by which time the Belgian territory had been completely liberated, Strýček advised a Russian friend of his (a woman) about the publication of a modest Russian-language catechism, as all the available religious literature had been seized by the Russian collaborators. Strýček advised her to contact Irina Posnova.81 Around the same time, Maria Indestege, the resistant and nurse with whom he had closely collaborated in Waterschei, complained about the quiet. “Strange,” she wrote, “after all the time we lived in danger.” She also complained about the boredom of the newly regained freedom: “Can I not be of any help in one of your undertakings? I’d do it with all my heart, even if it means going to Russia.”82

The latter was precisely what Strýček had in mind in the spring of 1945. Since the liberation of the larger part of the Belgian territory in September 1944, his “Russian career” had taken a sharp turn. The Soviet partisans of For the Motherland had assisted the Allies in cleansing Limburg of German stay-behinds and collaborators and in return had received some sort of (informal) recognition.83 By mid-September, the Belgian authorities had started to take control of the situation, which also implied that (uncontrolled) resistance groups were to be disarmed and disbanded. The Soviet partisans were instructed to assemble in Hasselt, but for political reasons (Belgium did not want to offend the Soviet ally) did not have to surrender their arms.84 All of a sudden, Father Strýček became the official liaison between For the Motherland and the Belgian and Allied authorities. He translated documents into Russian on behalf of the local authorities and also informed them on who had been assisting the Russian partisans and thus merited recognition as a Belgian patriot.85 And although the partisans had come to consider Strýček one of their own, the fact that he was a priest (he had been ordained in Louvain on June 27, 1944) complicated things. When he had been an intermediary between individuals and underground groups during the war, Strýček’s position as a member of the clergy had been of little importance (and an excellent cover). However, after the liberation, For the Motherland was organized and perceived as a military brigade, and a Catholic priest among Soviet soldiers was inconceivable, especially for Moscow. In late September, a Soviet military delegation had landed in Brussels to keep an eye on Soviet citizens in Belgium and organize their repatriation, if necessary with force.86 For the time being, however, Strýček was needed as an interpreter and a fixer, and it was agreed that he would accompany the brigade to Marseilles via Saint-Amand-les-Bains (in the French Department of Nord) and Mailly-le-Camp (in the Department of Aube). Strýček was walking a thin line. As a Catholic priest, he was supposed to keep away from military and political affairs, but his Russian friends expected him to join them in the euphoria of victory, which of course was presented in Soviet propaganda as a triumph of the new world power and its ideology.87 This ranged from a welcome to the US troops (“we are very happy to see our Allies in our home”) in early September 194488 to the organization of a Soviet dance and sing-along spectacle in Valenciennes in late 1944:

You have come here tonight to hear our songs and watch our dances; you have come to show your sympathy for that great people that has contributed so much to the liberation of Europe. You also have to come tonight to see the Red soldiers, to get to know the citizens of the new Russia. Watch and listen to our soldiers; the Soviet man is the spitting image of the land of the Soviets.89

The brigade was to embark from Marseille for Odessa on April 29, 1945, and apparently Strýček had planned to accompany them home. His hope to continue his mission in Soviet Russia, however, was thwarted by Cardinal Eugène Tisserant (1884–1972), head of the Congregation for the Eastern Church in Rome. In his memoirs, Strýček ascribed the interdiction to go to Soviet Russia to the emerging Cold War (a rather antedated concept) and the growing hostility between Moscow and Rome. And he admitted that it probably had saved him from being persecuted (and executed) as a “spy from the Vatican.”90 A short assessment in his Roman file, dating from 1950, characterized him as “religiously in unity with God, burning with the zeal of souls, energetic, sociable, and pleasant but nervous and therefore amiable and at times rough and implacable. Sometimes even a little vulgar in his manner of dealing with the ruder.”91 Was this the same Strýček whom de Régis had called “a silent student”?

In an (anonymous) report on wartime events in Limburg, it was stressed that the inhabitants of the region were “good Catholics” who

were happy to be of service to the unfortunates fleeing the Gestapo. To make themselves understood, they found help in the person of Jesuit Father A.S., who with the approval of his superiors abandoned his studies and followed his dear friends into the woods of Limburg. […] Some months later, the Brigade embarked with its wartime trophies to return to their fatherland. The heart of the Father was with his men on the boat, but Providence did not want him to accompany his friends to Russia. “Lord, thy will be done.”92

Antonina (Tonia) Ivanova, a female member of the Brigade and a fierce communist, wrote a farewell letter to Strýček:

Dear Father Aleksei, before I have to return to the Motherland, I have to say a few words to you. What’s done is done and won’t come back. But what has been, will never be forgotten. Personally, I’ll never forget the man with the little beard and moustache who so often helped me and who during all the time we’ve known each other was exclusively well-disposed towards me and tried to help me in every way he could. […] You probably won’t believe what I want to say, but I’ll tell you the truth: I’m saying farewell to you, dear Father Aleksei, with pain in my heart and tears in my eyes.93

Ivanova’s description of Strýček, it seems, was picked up in the 1960 Soviet documentary novel In a Foreign Country (V chuzhoi strane) about the Russian partisans in Limburg, in which Father Aleksei was presented as a Czech priest who “with his ginger goatee and pince-nez on a black cord very much resembled Chekhov.”94 The author of this novel, the military journalist Abram Vol’f (1916–1989), consciously downplayed the role Strýček had played, reducing him to an accomplice of white Russian émigrés.

Strýček remained in France, where he rejoined the Collège Saint-Georges, now established in Paris. He resumed his teaching and supervising position and continued to deepen his knowledge of Russia, “attaining a rare proficiency in the language, which he spoke and wrote like a native.”95 He wrote a manual on the nightmare of every student of Russian, the Russian accentuation (1966), a dissertation on the eighteenth-century Russian author Denis Fonvizin (1976), and a Russian textbook (1992).96 In 1993, at the advanced age of 78, he finally got the opportunity to accomplish his Russian mission. He traveled to the city of Novosobirsk. It was during this period that his wartime feats were recognized, first by the Russian authorities and then by the Belgian government, which in 2010 gave him the Order of Leopold.97 In 2011, Stýček returned to France, where shortly before his death in 2013, immobilized and losing his linguistic capacities, he dictated his Souvenirs (in French).98

Conclusion

In March 1993, Arthur Wollants and Jos Bouveroux interviewed Strýček, or Father Alexis, as he was known in France, for their book on the Russian partisans in Limburg. Having been misled by their main source, Vol’f’s aforementioned novel In a Foreign Country, they addressed Strýček as a Czech. An offended Strýček immediately put them right: “I’m Slovak, not Czech!”99 Undoubtedly, his insistence on his identity as a Slovak was influenced at least in part by the split, three months earlier, of Czechoslovakia into two independent nation states (or least better approximations of nation states). There are no indications, however, that during his stay in Belgium Strýček or his Belgian contacts ever identified him(self) as Slovak. He was a Jesuit novice with a vocation in the Russian apostolate who had come to Belgium to fulfill his “regency” (at Saint-Georges) and who, forced by the circumstances of war, continued his theological training in Louvain, where he eventually also received his ordination in June 1944. It was thanks to this religious identity that he was able to pursue activities as part of the resistance in Limburg, remain under the radar of the Gestapo, and effectively become part of the Catholic community. In Strýček’s case, this amounted to “blending in.” Everyone knew him, but they knew hardly anything about him, except, perhaps, that he had knowledge of Russian language and culture. He was hardly the only person to possess such knowledge. On the eve of World War II, some 10,000 Russian émigrés were living in Belgium, but they had remained foreign, not only as a (national) migrant community, but also as belonging to a different religion, i.e. (Russian) Orthodoxy. During his period at Saint-Georges in Namur, Strýček had come to know this Russian émigré community rather well, but as a Catholic, he had always remained on its fringes. And while some of these émigrés collaborated with the Germans (notably as interpreters in the POW-camps), Strýček remained unaffected by the collaborationist stain of being a Russian émigré or, for that matter, a Slovak national (the Germans had created a client Slovak State in 1939, led by clerical fascist and priest Jozef Tiso).100

Because of these unique qualities (his lack of any close connection with the Russian émigré community , his proficiency in Russian, and his knowledge of local languages, including French, German, and some Flemish), Strýček became the interlocutor for the Ostarbeiter, Soviet POWs, escapees, and partisans in the area between Louvain and the Limburg coal basin. His Catholic identity was taken for granted, for there was (probably) no alternative. And by the time of the liberation, which implied the return of Soviet discipline among the partisans, only trust (the trust of the partisans, the Belgians, and the Allies) and Strýček’s deep empathy with his Soviet protegees made it possible for him to accompany the Soviet brigade to Marseilles. It took a Roman interdiction to stop Strýček from departing for the Soviet Union and ultimately to save him from a fateful end as a “spy from the Vatican.”

Key to Strýček’s position, however, is his being an individual who occupied different positions or played different roles in different communities: as a Catholic cleric in his Belgian environment, as a Russianist among the Soviet partisans, all the while driven by his mission for the Russian apostolate. As such, the case of Alojz-Aleksei-Alexis Strýček challenges (traditional) migrant history, which builds on the category of nationality to map migration and describe the migrant communities that result from it. His example suggests that religion as an identity marker can be at least as powerful as nationality, thereby imposing borders between “them” and “us” that do not coincide with those implied by national or nation state identities. Strýček’s case therefore better fits in with the paradigm of “migrant knowledge,” which focuses on the circulation of knowledge in and through migration and on the intermediaries in this process. Strýček possessed a unique knowledge of Russia and Russian, first received at home (e.g. his claim that, “In Slovakia, we were ‘panslavists’ and saw in Russia the future of the Slavs”), as a Catholic of the Eastern rite (at the Russicum), a praefectus and teacher of Russian émigré children (in Saint-Georges), during the war (as a translator and fixer for the Russian partisans), and after the war in France (in Saint-Georges as an academic) and in Russia (as a missionary). Strýček’s case is also distinctive because his knowledge of Russian was not born of necessity but of chance. After all, as a Catholic novice and priest, he had direct access to Italy, Belgium, and France. The 1929 papal encyclical Quam curam, allegedly, had given him a Russian mission, and with that, a thirst for knowledge of Russian culture and the Russian language, in which he would excel.

From this point of view, Strýček can be seen as a catalyst figure whose specific competencies set a process in motion but who was not consumed by that process himself. Conversely, the same applies to his Slovak identity. Strýček was first and foremost a missionary of the Russian apostolate. That he was of Slovak (or Austro-Hungarian or Czechoslovak) origin was merely a coincidence.

Archival Sources

Archivum Romanorum Societatis Iesu (Rome), (ARSI)

VIII: Collegium Russicum

A. Epistolae 1001 (1928–1947)

De Régis to Anton Prešeren SJ (assistant to the Jesuit General for the Slavic

Provinces)

Archivio Storico Provincia Euro-Mediterranea della Compagnia di Gesù, Rome (ASPEMCG)

Fondi della Provincia Romana

Archives Françaises de la Compagnie de Jésus, Vanves (AFSI)

Rijksarchief in België [State Archives of Belgium] (BSA)

F 1650 (Police des Etrangérs), Personal File A313533 Strycek L.

F 1650, Personal File 1171591 Naryschkine C.

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“The Past Must Be Given a Place”: Migration, Intergenerational Transfer, and Cultural Memory Practices in Belgian Families of Hungarian Descent

This article investigates the intergenerational effects of migration on the memories of Belgian families of Hungarian origin, focusing specifically on how these effects can prompt the second and third generations of migrant families to bring their private memories and identity constructions into the public sphere. Their social participation becomes a crucial element in their quest to uncover their families’ histories. While the memory of the migration experience was initially contained in the “archive” (the private sphere), it eventually transitions into the “canon” (the public sphere), becoming accessible to those outside the family circle. Using published biographies of second-generation members about their immigrant parents, photographic images, texts of a theatre play, group conversations on social media (Facebook), and interviews with members of the second and third generations, this article offers a varied source material to explore these questions. By pushing the boundaries of historical research and memory studies, it demonstrates that the memories of migration can have long-lasting effects that connect people and families with larger communities and the social sphere.

Keywords: migration, identity, memory, memory work, family, intergenerational relations, cultural memory, archive and canon, Hungarian child relief project, Belgium

In the course of governmental negotiations in 2019, the Flemish government under the leadership of Prime Minister Jan Jambon reached an agreement to follow the Dutch example and develop a Flemish cultural canon. An independent committee of experts worked on the Canon of Flanders for almost three years before presenting it to the general public in May 2023. From more than five hundred possible subjects, they selected sixty Flemish “windows” focusing on politics, culture, archaeology, economy, science, ecology, and sports. The purpose of the governmental agreement on the Canon is to create anchor points in Flemish culture, history, and sciences which can be used for support and inspiration in three fields: education, integration processes, and the heritage and tourism sectors.1 A wide and controversial social discussion surrounded the preparation of the Canon in the course of which historians and other experts got into heated public debates on the question of how to canonize national history and whether it is desirable or even possible to do so. The fragmented Belgian cultural and political landscape made these debates even more intriguing and created a challenging problem. As a result of the public discussions, it was also necessary to refrain from generalizing the concept of Flemish identity, and the commission responsible for the project decided to separate the Canon of Flanders from Flemish identity. Following the principles of tolerance and diversity, the heritage and memories of the different migrant communities in Belgium also got a place in the Canon. Among them there is a photo and a short note on the history of the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project, which is a very interesting fact from the perspective of this paper.2 Its mention is surprising, as the migration of Hungarian children to Belgium in the mid-1920s was a largely forgotten episode of shared Belgian-Hungarian social history a few years ago. What happened in the meantime? How did a mostly privately shared history of a now small (a couple hundred families) group of people (Belgians and Hungarians) became part of the Canon of Flanders? How did this “forgotten” history of a once widely known event in the lives of the Catholic communities of Belgium again become a noted part of the public/national/regional canon? The aim of this paper is to venture answers to these questions by looking at the private and public activities of the second and third generations of descendants of the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project and the processes by which memories have been shared in this community across generations. I consider how these activities helped dislodge family memories from the private sphere and gave them a place in public knowledge. Three specific cases of transgenerational activities will be examined to uncover how memory of migration can define generational ties and how these memories in return become public heritage.

Short History of an Old Story and Its Consequences

The Belgian-Hungarian child relief project was a humanitarian transnational initiative between Hungary and Belgium. The idea of temporarily placing Hungarian children with foreign families where they could regain their strength after the devastation of World War I came from Dutch citizens who worked during the war as volunteers in Hungary, which was in a difficult situation economically and socially.3 The project started in 1920 in the Netherlands. Other European countries, such as Switzerland, England, and Denmark joined the Netherlands shortly thereafter, and in 1923, Belgium followed suit. The project was organized along denominational lines. Therefore, as Belgium was an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the organization of the project rested in the hands of the large Catholic community and its networks. The children were transported by trains from Hungary to Belgium, and they were distributed upon arrival among the volunteer host families. The original intention of the organizers was a so-called “holiday” of six months for children who were malnourished but not sick. They were supposed to be fed well, attend the local schools together with their Belgian peers, and follow the Catholic traditions of the local community. The Hungarian organizers took care that only Catholic Hungarian children were placed in Belgium. While the various aspects of the journey to a foreign country and the placement of the children with families once they had arrived were relatively well organized, the decision of which children would return and when remained flexible. This decision was left up to the Belgian and Hungarian families. They were able to discuss and decide among themselves or sometimes even unilaterally when the child would return to Hungary or whether, in some cases, he or she would remain in Belgium. This had serious and often unforeseen consequences later, not only for the ways these children came to understand their identities but also for their children’s and grandchildren’s perceptions of themselves.

Many Hungarian children remained in the care of their Belgian families longer than six months. Some of them stayed years with their host families, and some remained in Belgium forever. Altogether approximately 21.000 Hungarian children came to stay in Belgium in the framework of this project. Due to the scarcity of contemporary administrative data, we can only make a rough estimate of 4 percent concerning the number of children who never returned to Hungary or, after having returned, decided (or had the decision made for them) to travel back to Belgium and settled there for good.4 The children who remained in Belgium for good became immigrants, whether of their own decision or not. Their migration experience was unusual, in that it was shaped in no small part by the constraints of childhood. Like adult migrants, they experienced the cultural rupture that is an inevitable part of migration. They were separated from their native culture and from the environment and people they knew and, most importantly and most formatively, from their parents and other family members. As children, they quickly learned the language and the local habits, attended school, joined youth organizations, and thus, unlike adult migrants, they were socialized in Belgium rather than in Hungary. They did not differ, from the perspectives of religion and skin color, from the local population, and this contributed to their successful structural integration.5 Although they remained Hungarian citizens until marrying a Belgian man or woman or completing the process of naturalization, because of their integration and socialization into Belgian society as children, the question of citizenship remained a minor administrative factor in their lives.6 While their structural integration seems to have been very successful, their identificational integration, how they perceived themselves vis-à-vis the rest of the society, was more complex and problematic. Very often feelings which bordered on melancholy seem to have lingered, as well as some attachment to their country and culture of origin, at least to the extent that they either knew or imagined it. If they preserved transnational connections with Hungary (for instance with their Hungarian families), the two identities, Hungarian and Belgian, intermingled. Moreover, for many of them, separation from the early childhood environment and especially from their birth parents proved a traumatic experience. They sometimes developed traumatic disorders or depression. They were often unable to form healthy relationships with their partners and incapable of performing healthy parental roles.7 In their late life-testimonies, these people often shared the difficulties they faced while growing up and establishing their own families in Belgium.8

Why Memory Matters and How It is Transferred

The secondary literature on cultural memory has persuasively shown that movement and memory are closely intertwined. Memories are on the move.9 They travel with migrants as intangible possessions that migrants cannot and will not get rid of because memories connect places and help preserve existing social ties and build new ones.10 As the process of migration involves dislocation not only from people and social connections but also from biographically important places, remembering these places and people is a way for migrants to bridge the gap between their past and future lives. These memories, however, are not stable entities. They are also on the move, not just in space but also in time. They change together with the migrants and their circumstances. In general, memories change over time. We remember different aspects of the same event at different moments of our lives.11 The concept of moving memories in time can also refer to a generational transfer, when memories in the form of family stories, tacit knowledge, mnemonic objects, and even bodily habits are passed down to the offspring of the person who migrated.

While in the past, memory was often the most important or even only possible way migrants could maintain some form of psychological and emotional connection to the social networks and family in the home country, in recent years, technology has changed communication without necessarily dislodging memory from its crucial position. One of the main reasons for this is that memory is closely connected to our identity construction. If we look at the process of migration, we can see that both memory and identity are in an endangered position. The experience of migration causes rupture and alteration in both processes. This is why migrants often struggle with the reconstruction of both. This process of recovery, however, often takes a long time and might not be completed before the migrant dies. If this is the case, another generation may inherit the incomplete reconstruction of their family history and a fragmented personal identity.12 As Leo Lucassen very aptly put it, “integration, just like assimilation, is viewed as a non-linear, long-term, and thus intergenerational process.”13 The adults who had come from Hungary to Belgium as children and later took Belgian spouses established mixed families in which their children often shared the cultural heritages, identities, and personal memories of both parents. Moreover, the children and sometimes even the grandchildren of these families regularly struggled with the unfinished projects of their parents to resolve problematic integration from the perspective of personal identity. In other words, they had to figure out the most important questions faced by people who had undergone some cultural rupture in the past caused by movement. These questions included the issue of cultural belonging, how the cultural identities of members of the second and third generations in migrant families evolved, and most importantly, where the origins of their identities as people who had inherited more than one cultural tradition lay. They often faced the challenging necessity of reconstructing the stories of their parents. These reconstructions sometimes became very painful processes. This was particularly true when the parents had shared traumas or painful memories of their migration experiences, intentionally or unintentionally. In certain cases, we can talk about the concept of postmemory, when “the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their birth but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right.”14 However, within one family not every sibling necessarily experienced the need of reconstruction and the need to resolve traumatic legacies in the same way. Some felt compelled to research their parents’ past while others were content to know only what had been shared with them.

These descendants of the people who had come as children to Belgium through the Hungarian relief project mostly shared their memories within the limited circle of family and friends. In some cases, they maintained a connection with their Hungarian families and Hungary. In the 1960s, for example, when traveling between the two countries became easier, many families spent holidays in Hungary or in Belgium visiting relatives or old host families. As a natural consequence, after the death of the parents (the original participants in the migration experience), the children slowly started to lose their connections to the other country and to the memories of their parents. This was when they often realized that they needed to know, research, and talk more about these memories and this heritage. Until recently, with very few exceptions, these private memories remained within the family.15 They were talked about and showcased in the form of photographs, artifacts, and other mnemonic objects within the private family “archive.”16

The influential theories of Aleida Assmann on cultural memory draw a distinction between active and passive remembering. Assmann calls active remembering the canon, which is accessible to the wider audience in the form of books, articles, and other publications (published by mainstream publishing houses) or in exhibitions held by museums and other cultural institutes. Assmann refers to passive remembering as the archive, to which access is limited because the objects in the archive remain within the private spheres of individuals and families. Most interestingly, the elements of the two forms of remembering can change places. Memories of events that remained in the archive thus can suddenly appear in the public canon and vice versa.17 The second and third generation of the original participants of the Belgian-Hungarian relief project are increasingly engaged in the process of bringing family memories from the archive into the public canon. They remember and reimagine their childhood memories, deconstructing and recontextualizing them in the transfer process from archive to canon. These descendants are actually engaging in “memory work.” 18 In her fascinating book, Annette Kuhn actively stages, recontextualizes, and analyzes her memories of childhood. She also demonstrates how, while processing the raw material of personal memories through memory work, she produces new memories, and she shows how potentially therapeutic this process might prove. This therapeutic effect has been observed and experienced by the descendants during their memory work. It brings an additional sense of relief not only to confront painful personal family memories but also to share them with the larger public.

Over the course of the past ten or fifteen years, there has been an upsurge in public activities in the form of publications, theater performances, interviews, films, exhibitions, and online community building.19 These activities have played a major role in how the story of the relief project is becoming better known by the Belgian general public and how it found its way into the Flemish Canon. There are key participants, however, who regularly drive this process forward with their efforts. Their active memory work is being shared with the public through their publications, performances, and social media activities, so one can follow how family memories are gradually being transferred to the public sphere.

The Hermans Family

The members of the Hermans family are among the most ardent participants in the public memory work. They have been recreating and recontextualizing the story of their mother, Magda Horváth. Magda was the mother of ten children from two marriages. She was thirteen when she arrived in Belgium as part of the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project on March 14, 1927. She was not lucky with her Belgian host family. They did not treat her well. When she first went back to Hungary in 1929 and decided a year later to return to Belgium for good, she was only sixteen years old and did not know what a hard and emotionally lonely life was waiting for her. According to her son Edgar Hermans, his mother had “a very tough and at times tragic, but also a very courageous and meaningful life.”20 When she was only 23 and pregnant with her second child, she was tragically widowed. For eight long years, including the years of World War II, Magda supported her two young children entirely on her own, as well as her elderly parents-in-laws and her young sister, who arrived from Hungary to stay with her. As she wrote in one of her letters to her family, “I tried to earn some money: I sewed, I knitted stockings, and sheared sheep so that we would have enough to eat.”21 In 1945, she made another life-altering decision. At the recommendation of the local priest, she married the local baker Eugène Hermans, who “was also widowed and had three children, while I had two. It was very difficult to start afresh, but we promised each other to be good for the children’s sake.”22 It became a difficult and complicated marriage, and Eugène and Magda had five children of their own. They thus formed a household of twelve people, in which the mother and father ran their own bakery downstairs. Eugène showed little interest in or concern for Magda’s Hungarian roots, so she had to deal with the traumas and painful memories of migration and homesickness on her own.

The events of her life had a significant influence on her children, more specifically, her two youngest sons, Edgar and Rudi, who were the most receptive to their mother’s difficulties with her private memories of migration and integration and are still processing her legacy. Rudi Hermans is a well-known Flemish writer. His oeuvre is inspired by and touches closely on his knowledge and experience of his mother’s story.23 His narratives are fictionalized versions of her story. These works are part of the public canon, as they are available to the general public in print by well-known publishers.24 These widely disseminated literary works thus offer an opportunity for rereading and re-interpretation, which are fundamental conditions for cultural memory creation.25 Rudi’s brother Edgar also wrote a book about Magda. He too took a strong interest in her history and the nature of his connection to her and to her painful past. As Judit Gera states, while Rudi’s writings are widely disseminated and thus form part of the public canon, Edgar’s book is a non-fiction story based on historical facts which was privately published as part of an archive.26 However, Edgar’s publication, which resembles a detective story27 and intertwines the story of his own research and the biographical facts he discovered about his mother’s life, was just the beginning of his process of joining Rudi in bringing the story of Magda and with it the story of the relief project into the public canon. This is how Edgar describes the beginning of his research:

Initially, the book was intended for my family. My mother was 100 years old in 2014 and I stood there at that grave, and I thought, my children remember that she is from Hungary and that’s it. My brothers, some know something, some nothing. I thought, I’m going to write down what I know. Just like that, short. I thought five pages will be enough. By chance, I ended up with you [Vera Hajtó] through an ad in the newspaper […]. And that is how it started to come to life. That was unbelievable. And that search took almost two years, a year and a half and it was something different every week.28

Edgar started a journey to collect everything in the family archive:

I started talking to my brothers, who knew a bit, but that wasn’t really much. Then you [Vera Hajtó] found everything for me in Brussels. Then I accidentally came into contact with Zsuzsanna Bálint [a historian in Törökbálint]. I sent a message to the municipality in German, French, and English asking if someone would speak to me. […] One thing led to another. Then I started talking to old people, etc., etc.29

Edgar describes how, while he was collecting information within the family (i.e. as part of the private archive), he also started to build connections with the public sphere. He contacted me, a professional historian, and also the aforementioned Zsuzsanna Bálint, who is a local historian in Törökbálint, Hungary, the town from which Edgar’s mother Magda had come. That also proves that the archive of family memories is not entirely separated from the public canon.30 They are close to each other and feed off each other. Transfer between the two can take place at almost any point.

Edgar’s research and writing had an influence on the family across generations, as he himself mentioned. “After my book was published, one of Rudi’s sons, who was 30–35 years old, called me, I have had little contact with him. [He said,] I just called to thank you for making that book. […] the idea of what is in Rudi’s book. That is very heavy stuff.... […] When they read my book, it became completely different.”31 And at a certain moment, some of them joined Edgar’s efforts to share the story of the mother and grandmother with the public in the form of a play: “Then came my brother Jean Pierre, who is an actor, and he said to Rudi, the writer, couldn’t you do anything with that [Edgar’s book], couldn’t you write a play out of that.”32 Through the cooperative efforts of the different members of the second generation, the self-published book, which was meant for the limited circle of the family, became the source on which the script of the theater play Een bijzondere vrouw (A special woman) was based. The play was first staged during the annual Heritage Day of the Flemish community in the small church Kerkje van Laak in Houthalen-Helchteren on March 14, 2018. The Hermans brothers also organized a small exhibition dedicated to their mother in the church, which helped them establish many contacts with other families who shared similar memories of the parents’ histories.

There are often silences in painful family stories, and there is one such silenced memory in the case of the Hermans family as well. 33 Magda’s return to Hungary as a young girl in 1929 and her own choice to live her life in Belgium remained hidden from her children for decades. The decision to return was a crucial choice for her, since it altered her future. It also clearly had significant consequences for her children. Edgar and Rudi believed that their mother could not return to Hungary before 1964. They thought that her troubled family circumstances had not allowed her to return earlier and that these circumstances had decided her future and that she herself had been helpless in this matter. However, in the course of his research, Edgar discovered that she had had a choice. This came as a shock to Magda’s sons. This key fact stands in the middle of the story of the play. Magda has to answer this question, posed by Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven, who was played by her actor son Jean Pierre. Curiously, the play was staged in a church. Magda speaks with Saint Peter about her wonderous journey, much as her son, Edgar, spoke about his ongoing journey in his interview:

And just keep going. Moreover, I have discovered so much in the meantime, I am still busy. […] Moreover, the last time in Budapest, the two cineastes, I find that unbelievable. When I showed my first book to my cousin in Hasselt, he said Edgar that should be made into a movie. […] And now those people just come up to us and say, we want to make a movie. Unimaginable!34

Alongside the books, the play, and the plans for a film, the activities of Edgar and his family in the public sphere also extend to a place of remembrance in Belgium. As it so happens, Magda Horváth has a lieux de memoire in Belgium. In 1956, the old farmhouse where she lived as a young widow with her small children and her parents-in-laws was dismantled and placed in the Flemish openair folklore museum of Bokrijk due to its architectural value. Edgar and his family are currently working with the heritage experts at the museum on making the family story publicly visible in the museum.

Une Petite Hongroise

Like the Hermans brothers, Betty Leruitte also wrote a biographical book about her mother, Teréz or Terry Beck.35 Betty’s book is a narrative of Terry’s life story. As she puts it, “what I told in my book, everything is true, down to the smallest anecdotes, everything is true. She told me it all, and it seems a bit like a novel.”36

Betty describes the chain of events that led to her discovery of her mother’s childhood home in Belgium, but compared to Edgar’s book, she brings a new dimension to her writing. She intentionally goes into dialogue mostly with her mother and, at the end of the book, with her father as well. Betty Leruitte is concerned not simply with learning more about her mother’s past, including how and why she came to Belgium, how she grew up there, how she found work, and when she got married, had a child, and faced many difficult choices. Betty also seems eager to learn more about her own place in her mother’s life. She confronts her own fears and childhood traumas in the dialogues in her text, which she puts in italics. In certain cases, she also uses photos as a gateway to her mother’s past.37 Betty does not always provide the information that one would usually expect from a photo in her captions, such as the names of the people depicted or the occasion of the picture. Instead, she shares her own impressions or memories, and by doing so she brings past, present and future into a very close relationship. She also interrupts her narrative at times to make comments situated in the moment of narration rather than the narrated moment:

Freeze frame: I am looking at this photo where you are looking at me. I want to tell you that much later, in eighty years exactly, your daughter will find this photo at the neighbors’. But you’re there with your doll, you don’t know yet that you’ll have a girl. Many peripeteias await you before I show up. So I can only shut up, and let you live.38

Above this text we see a group photo of nine people. The photo was made on the occasion of a trip made by Terry’s Hungarian father to Habay-la-Neuve, a small Walloon village where Terry was placed by the relief project. She lived with two sisters in the Belgian Ardennes. Unlike Magda Horváth, she had a very happy, idyllic childhood with them. The picture, at least, gives this idyllic impression. Everybody and everything that presumably was dear to the little girl can be seen on the photo. Terry is sitting in the middle of the group with her doll in her hand, and the family dog is at her feet. Her father is next to her, as is her elder sister, who was also staying with a family in the neighborhood. Next to her Hungarian relatives, we see her Belgian family as well. They are all sitting in a line in front of the house in Habay. Sometimes Betty makes mention in her narrative of memories she has of a photograph that no longer exists, or a “memory of a memory,” to borrow a phrase from poet Maria Stepanova.39

Figure 1. Terry Beck with her father, her sister and her Belgian foster family around 1930, Habay-la-Neuve (Private collection of Betty Leruitte, Louvain-la-Neuve)

The main narrative of the book is written in the second person, which emphasizes the intimate relationship between the mother and daughter. In the excerpts attached to the photograph’s, on the other hand, Betty addresses her mother directly in the first-person. She asks her questions and pleads with her, especially in the second part of the book, in which these discussions and arguments are increasingly intense due to the childhood traumas Betty suffered because of her parents’ stormy relationship:

A comedy? I don’t understand what I’m hearing, but I’ve learned everything, and the day will come when I’ll ask you questions. I know it’s none of my business, but you shouldn’t tear yourself apart in front of me. What comedy is he talking about, mom? Tell me, you didn’t play comedy to make him believe that... no! ... Yes?40

Another important feature of Betty Leruitte’s book is how she incorporates the kaleidoscopic images and impressions of the many different national and regional identities of her family. Betty is Hungarian on her mother’s side and Belgian on her father’s side. Her father had a Dutch mother and a Belgian father. Moreover, Terry grew up in the French speaking part of Belgium, in Wallonia, and she acquired from her host family a strong sense of regional Walloon identity, which she passed on to her daughter. The folklore, legends, and habits of the region are prominent features of her story. And she notes, with a specific reference to place, “among the Ardennes, the pain is discreet, feelings do not spread out in the public square, one keeps one’s grief for oneself.”41 She also mentions how her mother, “an incorrigible romantic, told me more than once the story of Louise de Lambertye, last Marquise du Pont d’Oye where, according to legend, Voltaire sometimes came to rest.”42

Betty Leruitte’s use of imaginary dialogues with her mother and her references to Walloon identity suggest a great deal about her possible intentions. After the death of her own son, Betty wrote a book about his life, which was followed by Une Petite Hongroise, the book about her mother. She contended in Une Petite Hongroise that “those two books have been like therapy for me, I felt so good after writing those two books, […] I didn’t expect it to do so much good.”43

In an interview, Betty spoke about her intention to write a story of a Hungarian girl who ended up in Wallonia and not in Flanders:

I searched for information for five years before I could write my book, and it is thanks to your [Vera Hajtó’s] book that I could find my information, […] so I wrote my book and my intention was to make the case of the Hungarian children known because no one knew anything about it among the French speakers (Walloons).”44

Indeed, due to the smaller influence of the Catholic Church in Wallonia, far more Hungarian children were placed in Flanders during the relief project. The story of the child relief project is thus also more forgotten in Wallonia than in Flanders. Betty Leruitte’s book is the first attempt in this region to make the story part of public memory. As it was published by L’Harmattan (a well-known publishing house), the book is widely available to the public, which will increase its chances of becoming part of the public canon. It is also on permanent display in the MigratieMuseumMigration in Brussels. Betty is currently working with the cultural center of Habay-le-Neuve on a play based on the story of her mother and the other fourteen Hungarian children who were welcomed in the village in the 1920s. While Betty and the Herman brothers were authors of their creative endeavors, others choose social media to share, process, re-imagine and contextualize their family memories.

Facebook – Forming an Online Community

“Dear members of this group. This group is especially intended for (grand)children and those involved with children from Hungary who went to the Netherlands after World War I. Much is still unknown. With this group, I hope to collect stories and information, which may benefit everyone in his or her own way.” – These were the first welcoming words of the founder of the Facebook group Hongaarse Kindertreinen bestemming Nederland en België. The group was formed in October 2018, and it now has 181 members. It was established by a Dutch woman whose grandmother participated in the Dutch part of the Hungarian child relief project and who remained in the host country for the rest of her life. Although in her introductory words she only mentions the Netherlands and indicates that the group is meant to be open to the descendants of the children who went there, the group was from the outset open to people whose parents or grandparents had come to Belgium. By organizing an online community, they became publicly visible, even if this Facebook group is a closed group, which means that if someone wants to join, he or she needs the permission of the host. One can only post to the page and read the comments posted by others after having obtained the permission of the host. The group is supposed to provide a safe place to share private information. Still, it remains a relatively small community the members of which are sporadically active. There are very different expectations regarding the purpose of the group among its members. For many of them, it is a forum to which they come primarily for information. They are looking for information on experts, books, genealogical sites, and other sources on the history of the relief projects. Some of them share photos and stories, but in spite of the organizers repeated requests that every new member share the history of their family and the relatively safe, private environment, many members remain reluctant. Willem Suys is the most active member of the group. He often coordinates among members and helps them find information, and he also shares his own family history as well as his own private quest for information.

I think there is still a lot of interest in the group in getting information and that people are also willing to comment in the group if the subject is not too private, but it is a bit of a difficult group. I am also in a number of other groups, mostly public, sometimes private, and there I see, if I compare it with the children’s trains, […] that this group also has a little information that would be of interest to others, or the information is too personal and they feel they cannot even share it with a private group.45

With the information he provides, Willem often triggers members to react and share more private experiences. Sometimes there are dialogues through which members of the group confront experiences of painful unresolved family memories. Anne Marie Himpe is one of the few members who very openly shares her struggles to come to terms with her mother’s past. For her, the Facebook group is a platform where she can join discussions and compare her experiences with the experiences of others who might share her struggles. She uses this public sphere to post her private family memories and confront them. In October 2016, Willem shared a Swiss online article on new research about the biological transmission of family traumas from parent to child.46 Eleven people posted comments concerning the article, including Anne Marie: “Interesting, but what can we do about it now? I really believe that acceptance of our body and those of our descendants sends good signals. Lett -ing- go.” She adds, “We cannot change or undo what happened, although we so often wish we could. I would like to believe that what was possible then would be unthinkable today. I consider it one big learning process.”

Anne Marie’s daughter Lieselotte, who is a member of the third generation, is part of the group but is not very active. She seems also to struggle with the memories of the migration experience of her mother and grandmother, but she tries to distance herself from the painful, ongoing memory reconstruction process. As she said in the course of an interview,

I understand that the past has happened and that this must be given a place […] You have been given a life, you must move forward. And I do think that people like me read messages on the Facebook page about the children’s trains. You cannot solve the pains of your mother, grandmother. You can’t, you can’t heal those wounds. I don’t want them to become my wounds.47

The Facebook group also offers Anne Marie a chance not only to see her memories echoed in other people’s work but at the same time to distance herself in order better to understand what particular memories might mean to her. As she commented in a post to the page,

Nice weather, ideal for retreating with Rudi Hermans’ De Troonpretendent. Not reading it at once, it came too close to me for that, too recognizable, which was pleasant on the one hand and quite difficult at times on the other. […] Because mother is always silent, the son interviews the mother. Come on, I did exactly the same thing, and when mother prompts him not to share her experience with strangers, then I know better than anyone what possesses the mother, but also what the son wants and needs to know. 48

Both Anne Marie and Liselotte testify that with the creation of the Facebook group, the history of the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project gained more visibility in the public space. There is one more source to which they can turn and where they have an opportunity to be heard, because, as Anne Marie commented, “that story, that story never comes up. There is no information about it. That is like it never happened.”49 And as Lieselotte puts it,

That [Facebook group] is indeed, together with you [Vera Hajtó], one of the two pillars on which we can finally relax a bit. Yes... Otherwise that’s exactly the same, I’m not going to say a secret, but an unknown piece of something that you couldn’t talk about with other people, or didn’t want to because you were convinced that no one knew anything about it anymore. […] to us that’s just a piece of family history, but it turns out to be a piece of family history for many other people as well.50

It is a family history that is being shared by many Belgian-Hungarian families so that the larger community of the country in which they live and to which they belong can acknowledge their existence and history: “I think that would be a great relief to many people. Somewhere an official recognition.”51

Conclusion

Memories of migration experiences, even if sometimes second-hand memories, are still very much part of the identities of the people who belong to the Belgian families whose parents or grandparents participated in the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project between 1923 and 1927. The transgenerational transfer of memories of migration and of the integration process and painful but healing memory work is actively being pursued by the children and grandchildren. While these children were born in and grew up in Belgium, their complete integration into Belgian society as people who identify exclusively as Belgians is an ongoing process from generation to generation. Their family stories and family heritages have found their way into the collective public memory of Belgian society as a result of the intense public activity of the descendants who belong to the second and third generations. One might think that these personal histories or elements of family heritage are relevant only in private circles, but in some cases they can become important for or interesting to the larger public as responses to external pressures. The histories and thus cultural identities of migrant communities are based on individual or family stories, and they are formed in the host society in symbiosis with mainstream histories. However, the story of migration seems to remain alive in different social forms and interactions, and it can resurface in public or in private unexpectedly. Migrant heritage, which is easily seen as fading with the arrival of younger generations, suddenly becomes visible with every new attempt to define, whether individually or collectively, who we are and where we come from.

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Challenging Systematization in Romania: Human Rights, Transnationalism, and Dissidents in Campaigns by Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR), 1989–1990

Keywords: Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR), cultural heritage preservation, human rights, transnationalism, dissidents, exiles

In the second half of the 1980s, the favorable reputation of Romania’s leader Nicolae Ceauşescu in Western Europe as an idiosyncratic leader who defied Soviet policy steadily crumbled. Notably, the juxtaposition between Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformist aura and Ceauşescu’s pertinacity accentuated the authoritarian character of the Romanian regime.1 Although international condemnation of Romanian repressive state policy steadily increased following the dispersal of worker demonstrations in Brasov by Romanian military forces in 1987, the country only became front-page news in Western media after the so-called project of systematization entered a new phase in March 1988.2 Systematization was a project by the Romanian state which had been launched in 1974. The aim of the project was to transform the rural areas of the country into large agro-industrial sites, while the urban centers underwent serious infrastructural changes. The project’s international and domestic notoriety stemmed from the destructive measures accompanying the restructuring. Historical centers in Bucharest were demolished, and rural villages were essentially demolished to make way for the industrialization of the local economy.3 Additionally, Hungarian minority groups in the Western part of the country (principally Transylvania) felt that the measures and the demolition campaigns were specifically targeted against them.4 Given the ecological, cultural, and humanitarian repercussions of systematization, Romanian critics (including some Romanians living in exile) dubbed it the “ghettoization of the Romanian countryside” or “Ceaushima.”5

As the pace of demolition steadily increased in Bucharest and Ceauşescu announced the restructuring of almost 8,000 villages,6 organizations concerned with the preservation of cultural heritage, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) started to raise awareness in Western Europe of the events taking place in Romania. Both UNESCO and ICOMOS had been alerted of these events by the Association for the Protection of Historic and Artistic Monuments and members of La Ligue pour la défense de Droits de l’Homme en Roumanie (LDHR), two Romanian exile organizations based in Paris. In spring 1988, the first demonstrations against the destruction of historic buildings and neighborhoods in Bucharest were held in Paris. In parallel, with the support of the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation based in New York, Hungarian dissidents from Transylvania organized protests abroad, lobbied the United Nations, and even held a march in Budapest.7 As the news of demolished cultural heritage and violations of minority rights spread across Western Europe, a group of Belgians who were active in the media sector became dissatisfied with the lack of interest their government and international bodies had shown in the situation. They decided to take action, and they established an organization that campaigned against the project of systematization. In February 1989, they organized their first press conference in Brussels as Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR) was born. OVR was founded in a basement in Brussels, but it rapidly grew into the most important voice against systematization. By the end of 1989, more than 2,000 local committees had been established in Belgium, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the UK.8

OVR differed from other organizations condemning the project of systematization in its scope, methods, and objectives. Whereas UNESCO, ICOMOS, and the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation focused on certain aspects of systematization (cultural heritage preservation in Bucharest or minority rights in Transylvania), OVR called attention to a myriad of distressing cultural, humanitarian, and ecological repercussions of the project. In particular, OVR sought to defy Ceauşescu’s totalitarian grip on society by mobilizing a multitude of local actors in its endeavors. Hence, OVR’s operations, initially coordinated out of a small basement in Brussels, were an outspoken challenge to state socialism that developed during the last months of the Cold War.9 OVR quickly grew into a transnational organization which drew support from groups residing in countries as far as Hungary, Canada, Finland, and Poland.10 The Fédération Internationale des Droits Humains (FIDH) played a key role in this process and provided OVR with what scholars have referred to as the infrastructure of solidarity.11 For example, the FIDH mediated OVR’s first contacts with the Romanian dissidents and exiles with whom it cooperated since its inception. Most importantly, OVR did not merely differ from the other organizations condemning systematization policy but significantly stood out from earlier campaigns denouncing state socialism in Western Europe.12

The literature on Western European opposition to state socialist regimes in the 1980s has tended to focus on the development and instrumentalization of a human rights discourse entangled with the rise of dissident opposition and transnational links.13 Much scholarly attention has been devoted to Poland and Czechoslovakia, where the emergence of an internationally acclaimed human rights discourse played a determining role in Western support for Solidarity and Charter 77 members. Academics have claimed that, following the fiercely debated Helsinki Accords, human rights were established as a lingua franca that provided a basis for denouncing the repression of Solidarity and Charter 77.14 How Western activists perceived and sought to assert these human rights has fueled academic debate ever since. While some authors stressed the apolitical nature of human rights, as if these notions were derived from some broad moral consensus, others have been keen to describe Western support for Solidarity or Charter 77 and the human rights vernacular in which this support was expressed and interpreted it as a vessel for domestic or international political objectives.15 Whatever the case, Western support for the Czechoslovak and Polish opposition seems to have played an instrumental role in the historiography on human rights. Furthermore, scholars have highlighted the transnational character of support for the highly divergent Central and Eastern European oppositions, who fostered close contacts across the Iron Curtain.16 During this period, human rights became entrenched in the operations and discourse of transnational activism. Alongside a set of (apolitical) moral values, human rights offered Western activists the necessary pieces to build a global puzzle of activism in which the East was connected to the South.17 In this regard, the “transnational” was trans-European and global at the same time. Finally, scholars have underlined how dissidents and exiles benefited, if in some cases quite unevenly, from these transnational links, which were simultaneously strengthened by the incorporation of a human rights discourse. These developments went hand in hand with the attention they received in the Western media.18

This burgeoning scholarship has played a key role in shaping notions of human rights, transnationalism, and dissident and exile activity in the East-West encounters of the late Cold War period. Nevertheless, it is the product of Western attention to a few causes célèbres situated in Central Europe. This contrasts with the heterogenic nature of Central and Eastern Europe.19 Additionally, the focus on Poland and Czechoslovakia has led to analyses of events which took place within a limited timeframe, principally between 1976 and 1982. Therefore, this article focuses on the Brussels-born challenge to the project of systematization in Romania issued by OVR in 1988–1990, while also assessing the infrastructure provided by the FIDH. The Romanian case differs in several ways from the circumstances in Central Europe. Ceauşescu’s plans to transform both the urban and rural environments of Romania received plenty of criticism from the West, but systematization never appeared on the global stage with the same prominence as Solidarity or Charter 77.20 Similarly, Romania’s authoritarian regime was not immune to the rise of dissident protest, although the actual number of dissidents never grew substantially and received little media coverage in the West. According to Dragoş Petrescu, many of the Romanian dissidents, such as Doina Cornea, Gabriel Andreescu, and Dan Petrescu, experienced the loneliness of radical dissidence.21 Furthermore, Romania enjoyed comparatively friendly relations with Western European governments which were characterized by détente efforts, continuous dialogue, and reciprocal state visits.22 Many of these contacts were of an economic nature, through which the Ceauşescu regime hoped to gain more independence from the Soviet Union and thus bolster its domestic legitimacy.23 Indeed, Romania and its Conductor, had a very different place in East-West relations than the Central European countries. Hence, the question: how does the Romanian case alter our understanding of Western European challenges to the practices related to state socialism?

By investigating OVR’s philosophy, objectives, and methods of mobiliza­tion, I argue that campaigns on behalf of Romania in the late 1980s reveal the flexibility and instrumentality of human rights, the extent and limits of transnational contacts, and the varying degree to which dissidents and exiles were integrated. Moreover, the case of OVR also explores how European imaginations and anti-totalitarian ideology interconnected with a multitude of Western European Ostpolitiks in the last decade of the Cold War and shaped the organization’s political activism.24 Finally, an inspection of OVR’s operations reveals how opposition to the project of systematization evolved and gathered strength over the course of the 1980s and was co-created by the networks of the FIDH, which in its turn accentuates the importance of the so-called Helsinki effect.25 Laura Demeter has already indicated the emergence and importance of transnational networks in campaigns on behalf of Romania. She has demonstrated how organizations such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, and the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation were often informed by Romanian and Hungarian dissidents, voiced opposition against systematization, and framed the destruction of cultural heritage as a human rights violation.26 While Demeter convincingly sketched the first traces of transnational resistance, this article offers insights into the proliferation of international condemnation produced by OVR, which in contrast with earlier voices of denouncement, vociferously challenged Ceauşescu’s totalitarian grip on society, of which systematization was the most prominent symptom.27 This also strengthens Demeter’s argument that the transnational networks concerned with cultural heritage preservation laid the foundations for international delegitimization of the Ceauşescu regime. All in all, this research perspective contributes to a broader understanding of the opposition that emerged against the project of systematization.

In the discussion below, I analyze OVR’s philosophy, objectives, and methods on the basis of its archival documents held at the Mundaneum in Mons. These materials have been supplemented by interviews with the founder of the organization, Paul Hermant, and the organization’s international coordinator, Daniel Wathelet. I focus explicitly on the period beginning with OVR’s establishment in December 1988 and concluding with the accomplishment of its founding goal: the abolishment of the project of systematization in Romania, one of the first decisions taken by Petre Roman in 1989–1990.28 This period has been referred to as the “adoption phase” by OVR members, and stands in contrast with the so-called “humanitarian phase,” which began shortly after the country’s 1989 transition.29 This humanitarian phase, which was characterized by Western European aid for Romania, has received the bulk of historiographical and societal attention due to the resonance it created across Western Europe, while the period before the implosion of the Ceauşescu regime has been largely overlooked. 30

The article is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on OVR’s strategies, objectives, and methods. It assesses the role and incorporation of human rights into the organization’s communication and discourse by examining how OVR framed the project of systematization as well as the challenge to it. The second part investigates the transnational dimension of OVR’s undertaking by taking a closer look at the self-proclaimed philosophy of the organization. It reveals how trans-European connections stood at the heart of OVR, which explicitly distanced itself from other global causes. Finally, the third part assesses the integration of Romanian dissidents and exiles who interacted with one another and within the organization. This framework reveals how a focus on Romania during the final Cold War years contributes to our understanding of human rights, transnational dimensions, and dissident and exile activities and how the incorporation of these three key elements differed from earlier protest campaigns against state socialist regimes.

Opérations Villages Roumains and the Evolving Role of Notions
of Human Rights

Apart from the denunciations by UNESCO, ICOMOS, and the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation, West European reactions to the project of systematization were fairly limited. Notably, West European governments remained awkwardly silent. Many West European politicians had continued to prioritize East-West dialogue throughout the 1980s and identified Ceauşescu as a partner in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).31 In Belgium, for example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reasoned that an untimely condemnation of systematization could hinder the diplomatic talks at the CSCE in Vienna between 1986 and 1989.32 Indeed, for several years, organizations concerned with cultural heritage preservation and minority rights in Transylvania were the only voices condemning the plans of the Romanian state. This steadily changed as rural systematization plans entered a new phase in March 1988 and Ceauşescu proclaimed, “We must radically reduce the number of villages from 13,000 at present to about 5000–6000 at most.”33 When he made this statement, a few Belgian journalists and television producers, who felt indignant at the lack of any appropriate international response, decided to take matters into their own hands.34 Paul Hermant and Eric Masquellier, two Belgians who were active in the media sector, launched their own initiative in December 1988.35 Together with ten other founding members, they established Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR). What all twelve had in common was their leftist, anti-totalitarian, anti-communist, and even anarchist inspirations.36 Their initiative emerged independently from the other organizations condemning systematization. UNESCO, ICOMOS, and the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation provided key information, however. The most important difference between earlier challenges to systematization and OVR was the fact that OVR was not merely concerned with the preservation of cultural heritage in Bucharest or violations of minority rights in Transylvania, but rather unambiguously condemned urban and rural systematization across the whole country. According to the founders, OVR was an anti-totalitarian political activist movement concerned with a myriad of cultural, ecological, and humanitarian causes in Europe.37

The very practical objective of the organization was to “save all Romanian villages under threat of destruction.” Given the state of European politics, the opaque positioning of the Ceauşescu regime, and the limited societal knowledge in Belgium about humanitarian problems in Romania (at least in comparison with knowledge concerning humanitarian causes in what was then called the third world), the OVR founders came up with the idea of disseminated opposition reinforced with permanent anti-totalitarian education.38 Practically, disseminated opposition meant that the agency of opposition was installed at the level of the local community (municipality) and the citizen. Inspired by Amnesty International’s methods of adopting a prisoner, the organization set up a framework in which Western European villages or towns could adopt a Romanian village.39 Adoption installed a symbolic bond between a Western European and Romanian village. The symbolic relation between the two villages would principally be represented by the local (Western European) committees founded on behalf of the Romanian villages. These committees included aldermen, representatives of the local center for public welfare, and engaged citizens. Their main task was to raise awareness concerning the project of systematization by organizing events, exhibitions, and fundraisers. These local committees were guided by the coordination team, which consisted of the twelve founding members. They encouraged the multitude of local OVR committees to write letters to the authorities in Romania in which they condemned systematization.40 Several committees also addressed Ceauşescu, and some even wrote to international politicians like Gorbachev.41

Because the organization initially had little information concerning which of the 13,000 villages would be demolished, they decided to adopt them all. This meant they had to find an equal number of villages willing to adopt a Romanian one. Hence, during the first months of 1989, the OVR coordination team had to raise awareness about the project of systematization and its sense of urgency. In order to do this, they framed their own initiative as an “urgent intervention on a European level” against what was seen as “a crime against memory, cultural genocide and a human scandal.”42 Moreover, systematization was framed as a plan “that eradicated all traces of the Romanian past, to root out culture and tradition, to rewrite history in order to fit the coming of ‘the new man.’” The plan was described in some detail:

Most of the time, the inhabitants are warned only the day before the arrival of bulldozers. A real cultural genocide is hidden behind the official justification (a gain of 3.3 percent farming land). Trees, churches, schools, houses, historic edifices, even graveyards must disappear. An important part of the European inheritance will disappear simultaneously.43

Indeed, the severity of systematization was illustrated first and foremost by the destruction of Romanian villages. Moreover, the destruction of these villages was presented as an attack on European cultural heritage, due to the fact that “Most of these villages are older than several hundred years, they bear the markings of successive invasions that swept through the country, they are proud of a ‘Baroque’ style architecture very often decorated with fresco paintings.”44 Incorporating cultural heritage preservation as a motive and concern made sense, since systematization had always been framed in these terms by its earliest denouncers.45 This attracted the support of architectural, rural, and cultural heritage groups such as ICOMOS, Ecovast, and Europa Nostra, which had already been challenging systematization in Romania.46 Somewhat striking, in comparison, was the absence of any appeals to human and minority rights, nor was there mention of Transylvania or German Saxons. This corresponds with Demeter’s conclusions, according to which a narrative touching on human rights concerns was only gradually incorporated into the appeals based on fears concerning the destruction of the built environment. It was only in late 1988, under the impetus of human rights activists focusing on Transylvania, that human rights gradually became part of the discourse used in the campaigns.47

When OVR attempted to convince local municipalities to support their efforts during their first months of operations, they often made a few suggestions concerning how letters could be sent to Ceauşescu and other Romanian authorities. For instance, they suggested the following phrasing: “I ask you to register my vigorous opposition to the projected annihilation of the village and the thousands of others considered. I intend to do anything possible to contribute to the preservation of the rural European inheritance and to the defense of the inhabitants.” Again, the emphasis was placed on the destruction of the village and the protection of European cultural heritage.48 The framing of systematization and communication with Belgian municipalities contained no real appeals to human rights issues. This also translated to the way Belgian municipalities framed their own solidarity. The town of Mons, for example, stated that “in Hainaut and due to our recent history we know the fragility of local agriculture.” They added that their initiative contributed to “the springtime of European relations”, referring to the self-perceived watershed momentum of pan-European affairs.49 Wathelet also observed that the image of a village on the verge of destruction had a tremendous effect on the public opinion.50 Only one month after the launch of the initiative, 220 Belgian villages had adopted a Romanian village.51 Indeed, the image of a village on the verge of destruction successfully encouraged a remarkably high percentage of Belgian, notably French-speaking municipalities to adopt a Romanian village.

Nonetheless, human rights were given a prominent role when the OVR coordination team addressed the European Parliament in March 1989. In order to gain support from the European Commission (EC), OVR contended that “the Romanian government aims to annihilate the societal tissue of the Romanian population, which is a major violation of human rights and the Helsinki Accords.”52 Along with the incorporation of references to human rights in its appeals, the OVR coordination team underlined the real reason behind the project of systematization, i.e. the restructuring of rural society with the ambition of dismantling the socio-cultural networks that could possibly harbor pockets of opposition.53 This was a very different discourse than encountered in the flyers and campaign letters directed to the Belgian municipalities.

Moreover, the international success of the organization prompted it to rethink and recraft its discourse. From the beginning, OVR’s initiative, objectives, and methods attracted a lot of international attention. Notably, in France and Switzerland, two countries particularly interested in the plight of Romanian villages for several reasons, curiosity swiftly transformed into mobilization, as national branches were established during the first half of March 1989. For OVR, the question remained how to internationalize their initiative without creating an unmanageable network of towns and villages all over Europe. In order to do this, the coordination team decided to cooperate with the FIDH, which functioned as an international umbrella organization for national human rights initiatives. The OVR executive committee decided that the establishment of a national OVR branch had to be in cooperation with a national human rights organization affiliated with the FIDH. Cooperation with the FIDH boosted and coordinated the proliferation of interested towns and villages all over Europe, but it also meant a more prominent role for appeals to human rights in the discourse. A wide range of members from national human rights organizations and Helsinki committees were increasingly incorporated, and they framed the project of systematization first and foremost as a violation of human rights and the principles of the Helsinki Accords.54 For example, an OVR committee from Switzerland argued that they felt a duty to make sure human rights were respected, especially by CSCE member states.55 Their emphasis on human rights was no coincidence, since the Swiss branch had been established and supported by Le Comité d’Appui, L’union genevoise contre l’intolérence and La Ligue Suisse de Droits de l’homme.56 OVR’s connections with these kinds of organizations and its modification of its own discourse better to echo the discourses of these organizations were a result of its integration in the networks of the FIDH. The latter became a key partner for the internationalization of OVR, but it also influenced the way in which systematization was framed, perceived, and denounced.

Partly as a consequence of OVR’s cooperation with the FIDH, human rights became more visible and increasingly instrumental. Yet, the cooperation also underlined the importance and existence of human rights networks established in the aftermath of the Helsinki Accords. Over the following months, national branches were established in the United Kingdom, Flanders, Norway, and the Netherlands, and contacts were also formed with human rights organizations and social movements, peace organizations, and activists in Hungary, Canada, Spain, the USA, Italy, Poland, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Luxemburg. By late 1989, over 2,000 Western European towns and villages had adopted a Romanian village.57 In retrospect, Romanian dissidents claimed this was a pivotal moment in which the opposition against the Ceauşescu regime finally broke its traditional boundaries delineated by the critical Romanian diaspora.58

In sum, appeals to human rights were used unevenly in OVR’s communication during the first months of operations. While systematization was strategically framed as a violation of human rights when addressing international institutions such as the European parliament, Belgian municipalities were more moved by images of villages on the verge of destruction. Here, the language of human rights was conspicuously absent. Framing systematization as a threat to European cultural heritage seemed to make more sense because it stressed the European dimension of the project and corresponded with the interests and worries of rural villagers in Belgium. Only after OVR had expanded through the networks of the FIDH and human rights activists had lobbied the networks of cultural heritage groups did the OVR coordination team frame the repercussions of systematization as a violation of human rights. The emphasis on the European scale and context of the issue, which was present in many of OVR’s promotional materials, underlined Romania’s European character and its geographical proximity. What happened in Romania, OVR proclaimed, “belonged to all of us, Europeans.”59

Local, Romanian, European, but not Global Activism

As the organization gained traction all over Europe, Paul Hermant was often asked by journalists and fellow activists, “why Romania, and not Chile or South Africa?”60 He repeatedly replied by asking “why not Romania, Czechoslovakia, or Bulgaria?”61 To the OVR founding committee this question depicted the stalemate of European relations characterized by what they called “peur de la proximité.” In other words, Western Europeans were eager to intervene in human rights affairs all over the world but refrained from doing so when humanitarian problems emerged in their neighboring countries.62 OVR was an explicitly European project. It differed in this significantly from the Western supporters of Solidarity or Charter 77, who sought to globalize their support by creating connections with causes in the global south.63 Conversely, OVR did not connect with the opposition against the Pinochet regime, nor was it allied with the anti-apartheid movement. OVR rejected these global transnational connections altogether and reasoned that Western Europe should be more concerned about the state of its own geographical sphere.64 OVR was a European movement.65

For the OVR coordination team, European identity was linked to the notion of “Europe of the Regions.” According to this ideologically divergent interpretation of European structures, which geographers and political thinkers from the French speaking world found particularly entertaining in the early 1990s, regions should replace nation states as the primary political units.66 OVR also held that European identity blossomed because of its regional diversity and local specificities. Romania and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe were unambiguously incorporated in OVR’s “Europe of the Regions.”67 The safeguarding of Romanian cultural heritage, which was always described as part of European cultural heritage, was part of these visions of European structure. The inclusion of Romania in this “Europe of the Regions” not only defied Cold War logic and détente mentalities but also drew attention to the precarious conditions of minority groups in Romania. Because the notion of “Europe of the Regions” was often linked to the ideas of ideologically separatist regions, such as Brest, Corsica, Sardinia, or Catalonia, it highlighted the political impact systematization would have on the two million Hungarians living in the northwestern part of the country, around the city of Cluj, and in the so-called Székely Land, roughly in the middle of Romania. Hence, Hungarian human rights organizations were extremely eager to adopt a (Hungarian) Romanian village.68

As different branches were established in several Western European countries, the OVR founders believed that the adoption of a Romanian village should also have a reciprocal transnational dimension. They therefore came up with what they called the aller-retour principle. The logo of OVR contained two arrows. One arrow pointed to the right and represented the mobilization of Western European activists on behalf of Romania. The other arrow pointed to the left and represented the reciprocal effect of the activism. The founders of the organization aimed to achieve a kind of boomerang effect through mobilization. In this regard, a Western European municipality’s commitment to a Romanian village was at the same time a tool with which local citizens or opposition figures could contest domestic deforestation projects, the demolition of cultural heritage, or anything endangering minority interests.69 It was an instrument designed for local (opposition) groups who could argue that their local governments had spoken out against the wide range of repercussions of the project of systematization in Romania but at the same time had neglected the values within this mobilization in their actions in Belgium or France. When a local government would chop down a local forest, demolish local cultural heritage, or endanger minority interests, these groups were equipped with a tool with which to challenge these acts.70 Indeed, the adoption of a Romanian village had a practical reciprocal dimension. The OVR founders also hoped, however, that the adoption of a Romanian village would enhance critical thinking on the level of policy making and democratic structures in Western Europe.71 Challenging systematization became a means with which the political ideas of the OVR founders resonated across a multitude of local branches across Western Europe. This corresponds with Brier’s analysis of American Labor’s support for Solidarity, in which the wider instrumentality did not jeopardize the sincerity of the initiative.72

In the words of the OVR founders, the adoption of a village consisted of three levels of activism: local, Romanian, and European. Firstly, the local level of activism was introduced by the aller-retour principle. Secondly, the letter-writing campaigns fueled the Romanian level of activism. And finally, the European level of activism was created by two elements, the unambiguous inclusion of Romania in any notion of Europe and cooperation among Western European towns and villages. Romanian municipalities often consisted of four or five different villages. Each village nevertheless had to be adopted by a municipality from a different country. This means that in one Romanian municipality you would have different Western European adopters who could cooperate, share experiences, and exchange information.73 OVR founders believed this cooperation would create a stronger sense of connectedness across Western Europe. Obviously, they also wanted to include Romanian villages in these cooperative efforts, but this was not possible, since the most of the country was still isolated and the Securitate had been Argus-eyeing the OVR founders ever since the letter-writing campaigns had begun.74 Before the revolution, in the case of Romania, the only real exchanges taking place across the Iron Curtain consisted of a few Western European activists who had traveled to Romania. After the revolution, which had not been anticipated by the OVR founders, contacts proliferated as a result of the tremendous wave of solidarity and humanitarian aid with which the dramatic changes were met. Western European towns and villages sent trucks filled with humanitarian goods to the village they had adopted. In a later stage, OVR members even attempted to set up tourist networks to continue contacts with Romania.75 In this regard, one of the remarkable achievements of OVR is that, despite its reorientation towards Yugoslavia from 1992 onwards, contacts have survived to the present day. In the Belgian town of Geel, for example, the activists involved in OVR still meet with their Romanian counterparts every two years.

Configuring the Roles of Exiles and Dissidents

Through its cooperation with the FIDH, OVR came into contact with La Ligue pour la défense de Droits de l’Homme en Roumanie (LDHR). This organization, which was based in Paris, had been founded in 1977 by Romanian exiles who saw new possibilities in the political infrastructure provided by the Helsinki Accords.76 The organization raised awareness concerning human rights violations in Romania.77 Their biggest challenge was to close and condemn the gap between the positive image Romania enjoyed in the West and the actual experiences of Romanian citizens.78 The vice-president and cofounder of the LDHR, Mihnea Berindei joined the OVR coordination team in January 1989. More importantly, Berindei had been a vocal critic of systematization since the early 1980s. He predominantly focused on the infrastructural changes in Bucharest.79 His role proved essential. Berindei’s exile and dissident networks provided OVR with important information on the situation in Romania. By skimming through the official Romanian press and other propaganda materials, the team at LDHR continuously provided the latest updates on the project of systematization. Translation work, which was essential for the functioning of OVR, was done by the LDHR team. To get the job done, they even took out advertisements in a Transylvanian newspaper calling on Romanians in France to help them. They also decided which villages would be up for adoption. Each of these villages needed a designated file containing information on the location of the village, the source that mentioned its imminent destruction, details concerning churches and monuments, demographic information, and information concerning local agricultural practices.80

The second part of their job was to inform the rural villages in Romania about the moral support they had been receiving from OVR. Again, LDHR’s network was immensely useful, as OVR’s operations were announced on Radio Free Europe. To what extent these radio emissions reached their destination remains unclear. However, Radio Free Europe received one letter in the summer 1989 from a group of farmers living in Iaşi County expressing their gratitude.81 In general, while the Iron Curtain was still intact, OVR’s endeavor was largely politically symbolic. Most of the villagers in Romania had no clue they were being adopted by West European towns and villages. Moreover, during the adoption phase, the lack of a Romanian response created uncertainties about the real value of the initiative. Exiles, however, helped explain the isolation and limited infrastructure in rural Romania, which was one of the main causes of the lack of responses.82 Furthermore, the writings of exiles were frequently published by OVR. Their accounts attempted to link the experiences of Romanians with the actions of OVR. For example, someone writing under the pseudonym Dinu Flamand authored a chapter titled “Un people adopté.” Someone using the pseudonym Pe(t)re Stroïca, wrote about how OVR offered new possibilities to oppose Ceauşescu.83

Some less established exiles, such as Dan Alexe, who had only recently fled Romania, were quickly integrated into OVR’s organizational practices. Alexe became the Romanian Brussels correspondent for Radio free Europe shortly after his arrival. In retrospect, Berindei’s team was small and certainly did not represent a large group of Romanian migrants. Yet those who wanted to be involved were given a crucial task in OVR’s functioning. Moreover, the unambiguous involvement in OVR’s practices of Berindei and other exiles, such as Ariadna Combes (the daughter of Doina Cornea who lived in Paris), Mariana Celac, Dinu Zamfirescu, Lia Constantinescu, Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Dan Alexe, and many others, is remarkable and shows the importance of exiles and their networks when challenging the Ceauşescu regime. This ties in with the important roles other scholars have attributed to Romanian exiles. Not only did Romanian and Hungarian exiles contribute to the incorporation of a human rights narrative into OVR’s discourses, they also filled in key positions in the organization and helped coordinate initiatives. This suggests that perhaps OVR should not be conceptualized as a solely Western initiative. Among the twelve founders, two had a Romanian background.

Unsurprisingly dissidents had a very different role in OVR’s campaigns. The writings by and interviews with dissidents were predominantly used and spread to underscore the severity of the situation in Romania. By providing a rostrum for dissidents such as Doina Cornea, Gabriel Andreescu, and Dan Petrescu, OVR furthered the struggle to destroy Ceauşescu’s positive image in the West once and for all. The British embassy in Bucharest, for example, persistently denied that villages were being demolished.84 The local branches in Belgium, France, and the UK managed to get the testimonies of dissidents broadcasted on national television.85 According to the president of OVR France, these broadcasts had an enormous impact on mobilization in France.86 Television coverage and recognition across Western Europe helped transform Doina Cornea and others into dissidents, as scholars have argued this was one of three prerequisites to be labeled a dissident.87

All in all, OVR’s relations with dissidents weren’t always easy. In the interview, Hermant clarified this by affirming that OVR was not just an organization that supported dissidents or trade unionists. What OVR envisaged was more complex, provocative, and effective. It aimed to rearrange European relations and connections starting at the most local level.88 When Ariadna Combes approached them in January 1989 and asked for humanitarian aid and financial support for Romanian dissidents, the OVR coordination team rejected this proposal and explained this was not OVR’s main objective.89 After the revolution, OVR had established contacts with Petre Roman to discuss OVR’s plans for the future. This infuriated Doina Cornea, because she felt Roman had always belonged to the Ceauşescu regime. Once again, Hermant and others explained that they had not been converted into puppets of Roman and continued to work on the local and rural level. This is remarkable, especially when juxtaposed with the ways in which exiles were incorporated into the organization.

Conclusion

By steering away from the more conventional Western European challenges to state socialism, both in chronological and geographical terms, this article highlights the very late integration and conscious incorporation of a human rights language, transnational perspectives, and dissident and exile perspectives into the opposition discourses crafted by OVR. The OVR coordination team was aware of the strategic uses of these three indispensable elements of any challenge to Ceauşescu’s totalitarian grip on society, but it also recognized their limits. Appeals to human rights were used strategically to condemn systematization in communications with the European parliament. Systematization was portrayed as the annihilation of small peaceful villages that were sites of European cultural heritage. These kinds of narratives corresponded with earlier denunciations coming from heritage preservation groups. Romanian villages were portrayed as part of a shared Europe and similar to their West European adopters. During its first months of operations, OVR specifically targeted rural Belgian villages with less than 15,000 inhabitants, or in other words, communities that could relate to the Romanian villages. Hence, a great deal of effort was put in by the LDHR to provide reliable, detailed information concerning the Romanian villages.

Secondly, the transnational dimension of OVR’s philosophy allows one to interpret the organization as a challenge to the stalemate in East-West relations characterized by détente mentalities. By decisively building links across Europe, that unambiguously included the world behind the Iron Curtain, and by not developing its support through centralized channels, OVR confronted the status quo of European relations, which had been epitomized by the persistently friendly ties towards the Ceauşescu regime. It is thus hardly surprising that OVR collided with the Belgian détente-prone government. In this sense, OVR was explicitly trans-European, but it declined to connect with causes in the global south. The OVR leaderships reasoned that the global south was already taken care of by numerous organizations with a north-south orientation. Moreover, OVR’s successful transnational development was clearly supported by a multitude of organizations that had been established in the aftermath of the Helsinki Accords. This contrasts with the tendency to deny the so-called Helsinki effect in the secondary literature. The accounts of OVR underlined how the Helsinki Accords created opportunities for activists, dissidents, and exiles who increasingly organized themselves. Notably, the crucial role played by the FIDH and its infrastructure clearly reveal the importance of these networks. Although organizations varied in size, their networks, operations, and willingness to participate all contributed to the success of OVR. Notably the unambiguous incorporation of the LDHR was remarkable. In contrast with many Western supporters of Solidarity and their exile offices abroad, OVR did not merely support or financially supply LDHR. They were given a precise task and even included at the decision making level. OVR’s relations with dissidents and exiles reveals how challenges to systematization were not merely driven by actors in the West but were also issued by Romanians themselves, which problematizes OVR’s conceptualization as Western-led.

OVR’s first year of operations reveals an unconventional challenge to a state socialist regime that was shaped by the Cold War logic of the late 1980s and characterized by elements researchers have only recently started to uncover, such as the long détente, the limited apolitical nature of human rights, and the importance of exile and dissident networks.

Archival Sources

Mundaneum, Mons

Diplomatique Archive, Brussels

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