Hunger in Warsaw and Łódź

On 9 October 1915 the Imperial German police president in Warsaw, Ernst von Glasenapp, issued a large announcement printed as a poster. It contained an ordinance on supplying the population with flour and bread, and set maximum prices and rules for issuing identity papers and food cards. Anyone breaking the rules risked a fine, confiscation of goods and even prison. According to a study by the Institute of National Remembrance, the food cards came into use on 19 October. Two months after the Germans marched in, the people of Warsaw received bread cards. In Łódź, occupied for almost a year, hunger had reigned since the first winter of the war.

Warsaw

The city’s food troubles had begun long before the occupation. From the first weeks of the war the poor were helped by the Warsaw Citizens’ Committee, headed by Prince Zdzisław Lubomirski. In October 1914 its kitchens and tea rooms served 12,000 full portions, in November 59,000, and in January 1915 as many as 209,000. A dinner in a people’s kitchen consisted of a litre of meat soup and half a pound of bread, and the kitchens for children served meals free of charge.

In the summer of 1915 the retreating Russians took away offices and factory machinery from Warsaw, and the new occupiers at once began taking what was left. On 13 August the Germans ordered the requisitioning of cars, metals, leather, wool, cotton and chemicals, and on 19 August they announced a monopoly on the sale of flour, meat and sausage. In the Government General of Warsaw, created on 24 August under General Hans von Beseler, the occupiers treated the country as a source of raw materials and a granary for Germany, cut off by the blockade. Requisitions amounting to plunder deepened the poverty. As the American historian Robert Blobaum writes, requisitioning and strict control of supplies entering the city brought scarcity, corruption and a rapid fall in living standards.

Łódź

Łódź was hit hardest. The great textile centre, which the Germans had taken in December 1914, was cut off from the Russian market and from raw materials. The occupiers requisitioned machinery and raw materials, and there was a shortage of coal and firewood. Workers lost their jobs and their means of living. From the start of the war potatoes grew dearer and scarcer, and traders speculated in them.

The people of Łódź tried to help themselves. In February 1915 the agricultural section of the Main Citizens’ Committee began marking out small plots for poor residents, known as zagonki. A doctor, Józef Maybaum, even proposed planting potatoes in the city parks. The first plots were laid out at Polesie Konstantynowskie and Sikawa, and the lease cost from one to three kopecks per rod. By April 1915 the section had 594 morgen of land at its disposal. The plots were planted mainly with potatoes, and also with carrots, broad beans and peas. Manure was hard to come by, because German soldiers requisitioned and sold horse dung, so silt, rubbish and faeces were composted.

What came next

The cards did not prevent hunger. In October 1916 Łódź introduced potato cards for 10.5 funts (about 4.25 kilograms) of potatoes a week per person, and by the end of the year the ration had fallen to 6 funts. According to estimates, the cards gave the people of Łódź between 750 and 1,000 calories a day in 1916, while doctors believed that about 2,400 were needed to protect against tuberculosis. During the war potato prices in Łódź rose by about 1,300 per cent. The city’s population, including the suburbs, fell from about 600,000 to about 370,000. In Warsaw in September 1916 aid to the population was taken over by the newly created Central Welfare Council (PL), which ran shelters and nurseries and distributed food.