Qualla: Haren, Germany https://qualla.com/haren-germany en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Haren, Germany https://qualla.com/haren-germany Haren, Germany: Introduction https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Barney J. Gloster, Public domain. On 19 May 1945, eleven days after the German surrender, every German family in the small Emsland port town of Haren was given a few hours to pack and leave. The Polish 1st Armoured Division, attached to the British Army, moved them out to surrounding villages and moved roughly four thousand Polish displaced persons in. By the end of the day, the streets had been renamed in Polish, the town had a Polish mayor, and the welcome sign read Lwów — the name of a Polish city far to the southeast that Stalin had just annexed. Within a few months, under Soviet pressure, the name was changed to Maczków, in honor of the Polish general whose troops now occupied the place. For three and a half years, Haren was not Haren. It was a Polish town in northern Germany, occupied by people who had nowhere else they were allowed to go.

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Image: Barney J. Gloster | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Haren, Germany: A Thousand Years on the Ems https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. Haren first appears in writing around the year 890, in a register of properties belonging to Corvey Abbey in faraway Westphalia. By 1150 there were two settlements — Neuharen and Altharen, New Haren and Old Haren — clustered on opposite sides of a castle that the Bishop of Münste...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-a-thousand-years-on-the-ems.mp3 0:06 2 full Haren, Germany: The People Who Needed Somewhere https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the end of the war, more than three million Polish citizens were stranded in occupied Germany. Most were displaced persons — DPs in the bureaucratic shorthand — and most had been brought to Germany against their will. Some had been forced laborers in German factories and farms...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-the-people-who-needed-somewhere.mp3 0:06 3 full Haren, Germany: Evicting Haren https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. Haren happened to lie inside the British occupation zone, in a sub-sector administered by General Stanisław Maczek's Polish 1st Armoured Division. That made it the most convenient place to set up a Polish civilian enclave. The order to clear the town came down to the German resid...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-evicting-haren.mp3 0:06 4 full Haren, Germany: Maczków: A Polish Town in Germany https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. The new arrivals named the town Lwów at first, after the city in southeastern Poland that the Soviet Union had just absorbed. The name was a quiet protest. Under Soviet diplomatic pressure, it was changed to Maczków, after General Maczek, whose troops were physically responsible ...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-maczk-w-a-polish-town-in-germany.mp3 0:06 5 full Haren, Germany: Britten and Menuhin in the Concert Hall https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. Maczków was not only a refugee processing center. It became, briefly, one of the most vital Polish cultural centers in Europe. With hundreds of thousands of Poles administered by the 1st Armoured Division in northwestern Germany, the enclave published daily newspapers — Dziennik ...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-britten-and-menuhin-in-the-concert-hall.mp3 0:06 6 full Haren, Germany: Going Home, On Both Sides https://qualla.com/haren-germany/ Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. By autumn 1946 the Polish soldiers of the 1st Armoured Division were being demobilized and shipped to the United Kingdom, which had agreed to take them in rather than return them to a Soviet-aligned Poland. The civilian DPs of Maczków began making their own decisions — some retur...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/h/haren-germany-wp/u1mh-haren-germany-going-home-on-both-sides.mp3 0:06 7 full