Kazimierz Odrobny

„Należy szukać Niemców przyjaciół” (We should seek friends amongst the Germans). The life and work of Kazimierz Odrobny (1904–1981).
 

Kazimierz Odrobny was born on 8th May 1904 in Kłodzisko (Klodzisk) in the district of Szamotuły (Samter) in the province of Poznań. His parents were Stanisław Odrobny and Łucja Ławida. He had five siblings: three sisters Kunegunda, Helena and Anna, and two brothers Stanisław and Antoni. He spent his childhood in the care of his parents. After finishing secondary school in the mid-twenties, he became interested in social and political activities, including those of the Stronnictwo Narodowe (SN), the National Party that he joined in 1925. In 1925 he also joined the nationalist Endecja movement in the district of Samter. A year later he took the party oath in Poznan, where he began his studies at the Wyższa Szkoła Handlowa (Higher Business School). Unfortunately, little is known about his political life between the two wars. However, a number of sources indicate that he was a delegate, educational worker and secretary on the district executive committee of the Praca Polska (Polish Work) union and organized lectures in SN party districts throughout the country. His great commitment to trade union work was a fundamental feature of his work. Besides his socio-political activity he also took part in the activities of the student fraternity K! Gedania Posnaniensis, which he co-founded and whose "elder statesman" he was from 1935 to 1937. It appears that he did not finish his studies. Nevertheless his remarkable foreign language skills helped him to survive the Second World War.

After the outbreak of the war he decided to remain in his occupied homeland, although it is not known whether he took part in the 1939 Polish Defense War. When this war came to end he worked conspiratorily for the SN in Greater Poland. As a result, it was not long before he was arrested by the Germans and interned at Fort VII in Poznan. During his imprisonment he was brought before the Gestapo for several interrogations. During one of these transports he managed to escape in 1940, upon which he contacted the SN in the underground once more. During this time he was appointed as a liaison officer to the "Three" (A. Bniński, S. Piotrowski and the prelate J. Prądzyński). Shortly after, the Gestapo tracked down the liaison officers, including Kazimierz Odrobny, who was subsequently sent back to prison. In April 1940 he was taken to the Dachau concentration camp (prisoner number: 5334), where he spent about 30 days. At the beginning of June 1940 he was assigned to a group of prisoners to be deported to the Mauthausen/Gusen I camp. There he was given the prisoner numbers 6742 [4267] and 45553 and taken to block 17. At the end of 1944 he was moved to Block 2 by the camp administration. In the almost five years he spent in the German camps he not only fought against terror in many areas, but also against exhaustion and epidemics (he fell ill with typhoid fever in the camp). In this battle he used his knowledge and skills – as he himself said – to survive the "camp hell". Thanks to his broad range of interests before the war and his command of several foreign languages, he took on the role of interpreter in the camp. He later recalled: "Because of my knowledge of foreign languages I often had to act as an interpreter and while doing my job even the SS-handmen envied me for being able to translate into almost 17 languages and dialects. But even that did not protect me from being tortured." During his imprisonment Kazimierz Odrobny witnessed many crimes behind the barbed wire of the Gusen camp. Among them were: drowning prisoners in the sewers, the killing of old people by the SS and Hitler Youth (14-15 year old boys), the drowning of prisoners in water barrels in the laundry rooms, the murder of Jews, the gassing of whole groups of people and the fatal phenoline injections given to inmates and disabled prisoners.

From 1943 onwards he worked as an interpreter in the Political Department of the Mauthausen concentration camp, then at the Linz Police Headquarters. He also acted as an interpreter in various court proceedings in Linz. He used his position to help his fellow prisoners and those arrested by using his circulated texts to try to save them from maximum punishment. As time went by, he took on the task of organising increased food rations for the Poles, the French and the Serbs in the camp. Starting in 1943 he gave secret foreign language lessons (mainly French) and educated his fellow prisoners in grammar school subjects. In their recollections, his fellow prisoners judged him to be an indomitable personality who never yielded to German terror. He himself recalled that he had many opportunities to save the fellow prisoners whom he served as the camp interpreter.

On the day the camp was liberated Kazimierz Odrobny set off for Holland, but he never arrived there. Indeed, he remained for a long time in the British occupation zone of Germany, from where the administrative authorities moved him to the camp for DPs in Cologne-Mülheim along with other fellow victims. Here, too, he integrated rapidly into the surrounding environment. He was involved in the work in the camp and in the development of the school system for Polish DPs. There he met his later wife, Zofia Ogonowska (1917-1960). The two were united by a shared passion to provide education for Polish children. When Polish educational facilities were established in the Cologne-Mülheim camp, he was one of the fathers of the Polish school where he taught English. As a result, in June 1946, the teaching staff elected him as the new school director to succeed Wacław Dudziński. In early October 1946 Kazimierz Odrobny began the task of moving the Polish school from the camp in Cologne-Mülheim to Lippstadt, where the occupying powers had made the building of a former German high school available to the Polski Okręg Szkolny(Polish School District). After the move he continued his teaching activities and finally became director of the newly founded Polski Ośrodek Szkolny (Polish School Centre) in Lippstadt. He held this office for almost a year until the institution was dissolved in 1947 by the Komitet dla Spraw Szkolnych i Oświatowych przy Zjednoczeniu Polskim w Niemczech (Central Committee for School and Education Affairs at the Association of Polish Refugees in Germany). However, his work was so appreciated by his fellow teachers that they  continued to regard him unofficially as their head and representative. In addition to his school duties he also published numerous textbooks for Polish DPs, something he continued to do for most of his life. He also worked as a foreign correspondent in the western occupation zones of Germany and completed a large number of translations.

As early as 1946 he was involved in the Centralny Komitet byłych Więźniów Niemieckich Więzień i Obozów Koncentracyjnych (Central Committee for former prisoners of German prisons and concentration camps) in the British occupation zone, where he became head of the verification commission. Previously, he himself had been examined by the district commission in Göttingen and granted the status of a former prisoner. With the establishment of Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech (ZPU), the Association of Polish Refugees in Germany and central organisation of Polish DPs, he joined the management and took over the deputy chairmanship of the board.

The war had not changed his political convictions. Beginning in July 1948, but probably earlier, he participated in building up the exile structures of the SN in the British occupation zone in order to resume their political work. In 1949 and 1950 he chaired the SN Committee in the former British occupation zone. During this time he made contact with Kazimierz Tychota and other representatives of the Endecja movement who had been active before the war. Odrobny's political work coincided with the consultations between the Americans, British and Poles about the secret service activities of the Political Council (Rada Polityczna), the central body of the SN in West Germany. These activities behind the Iron Curtain are known today, especially in Poland, as the "Berg affair " (the name is taken from the Bavarian town of Berg, where the secret service centre "South" was located). Everything points to the fact that Kazimierz Odrobny was involved in these activities as a member of the secret service centre "Nord", which was based in Oerlinghausen and Quackenbrück. During this time he reported to his friend Kazimierz Tychota. When the intelligence work came to light he was able to clear himself of the accusation of being an agent by portraying himself as simply a follower. In connection with these events, he was able to recruit many new party members from the Endecjacamp, including Andrzej Dalkowski (code name"Jędrek").

At the end of 1949 Kazimierz Odrobny married his chosen one, Zofia Ogonowska. The wedding was probably the deciding factor for his moving house. From the Lippstadt camp at Kolpingstraße 8 (DP Camp AR419) he moved to Höferstraße 58 in Velbert, where a new settlement for political refugees had been established at the instigation of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. According to some sources, Kazimierz stayed in Oerlinghausen and the Höxter camp in 1949 and 1950. At any rate he was planning to leave the Federal Republic of Germany with his wife. Both wanted to leave for a country that was recognised by the Polish government in exile in London. Nor did Kazimierz rule out the possibility of further emigration to Spain or South America. But the two were unable to realize these plans and spent the rest of their lives in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Kazimierz Odrobny was one of many social-political activists, first among Polish DPs and later as a Polish refugee in the British occupation zone. After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, he continued his commitment by participating in numerous initiatives and taking on organisational tasks that included work in the Organising Commission for the ZPU convened in Brussels by the Executive Committee of the Zjednoczenie Polskiego Uchodźstwa Wojennego (ZPUW), the Association of Polish War Refugees. From 28th to 30th July 1951 as a founding member of the new organisation he took part in the constituent meeting of the ZPU in Höxter, which was also recorded in the statutes of the association. At the first meeting of the ZPU Council he was elected vice-chairman of the board. In the following years he continued to devote his life to the interests of Polish refugees and the organisational issues of the ZPU. One of his main tasks on the board of the association was to supervise the work of the schools for Polish refugees, since he was probably the most experienced person in this field and a member of the Centralny Komitet dla Spraw Szkolnych i Oświatowych (Central Committee for School and Education Affairs) at the ZPU. He also campaigned for war reparations for Polish citizens, a cause that occupied him for years.

Irrespective of this, he was actively involved in establishing contacts and relations with international refugee organisations in the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, the chairman of the association, Dr. Bolesław Zawalicz-Mowiński, entrusted him with tasks arising from the work of the ZPU's board. To this end, he represented, among others, the chairmen in districts I and II of the ZPU. Together with Witold Szwabowicz, the secretary of the board, he also took over the supervision of the organisation's finances. In addition to these commitments, Kazimierz Odrobny continued to teach the children of Polish refugees, but not as regularly as before. The supervision of the Polish school system in Germany gave him the opportunity not only to work as a teacher, but also to determine the educational orientation of Polish refugees, particularly with regard to the patriotic content of the courses.

Whenever he could, he tried to help those in need, often beyond his powers. In 1953, when the chairman, Bolesław Zawalicz-Mowiński, resigned, Kazimierz Odrobny provisionally took over the leadership of the organisation for almost a year without a deputy, until he was elected chairman of the association by the delegates at the third meeting of the ZPU Council in 1954. From then on he was in charge of the organisation for almost 30 years. This enabled him to implement his idea of bundling all activities of Polish refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany under the umbrella of the ZPU.

In all this he was often concerned about the situation of Polish refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany. With regard to war reparations, he deplored the impetuous nature of former prisoners, their lack of prudence and the limited thinking of those who believed they were entitled to everything, regardless of the existing German laws. He was like a "father" for whom the fate of Polish refugees was close to his heart. However, he considered these destinies very rationally and always tried to keep his activities within the framework of German law. This feeling for the realities provoked widespread rejection among refugee circles. On the surface he simply shrugged off the many personal attacks, but behind the scenes he often complained about the attitudes of his compatriots in Germany. In one of his letters describing what he felt about these hostilities, he recalled: "Anyone who has been socially committed has certainly come across people on several occasions who do not measure their claims and demands against existing regulations, but rather measure the regulations against their demands. Other people believe that they are being persecuted. But when asked to name the precise persecution, they are unable to provide any concrete evidence other than exaggerated assurances that they are being wrongly persecuted. And heaven help anyone who disagrees with them. They will hate him and may even regard him as an "opponent". There are also people who are advised from the outset that their demands are unfounded, which they then refuse to believe. But when the predictions are confirmed and their claim is justifiably rejected, they imagine an enemy behind the scenes has harmed their whole case."[1]

Kazimierz Odrobny believed that the situation of refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany could only be improved by an international, central refugee organisation. That is why, in the second half of the 1950s, he supported the expansion of the Central Association of Foreign Refugees, an umbrella organisation intended to include all refugee representations. In time this resulted in the Central Association for Foreign Refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany (ZAF). This development was primarily intended to support the focus of all efforts for war reparations from the Bonn government. Odrobny was appointed Secretary General in the new institution. This meant that he was now active on a voluntary basis in two associations, the ZPU and the ZAF. This was also the period in which he made considerable efforts to obtain compensation for the former prisoners of German concentration camps. In these proceedings, both organisations cooperated closely with the lawyer Mieczysław Chmielewski, the most important representative of refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany.

As chairman of the ZPU, he politicized the association, in violation of the political consensus established in 1951. By inserting his familiar employees, who were part of the SN environment, in the central and regional association structures, he increased his influence on the orientation of the ZPU and on the association's staff. His involvement brought into the organisation the SN party activists who were associated with the "Berg affair", i.e. with the events in the "North" and "South" centres of the Political Council in Germany. Many of them soon took on tasks in the central ZPU bodies: in the Association Court, in the Audit Commission, in the Executive Board and in the District Boards. For years he surrounded himself with people who shared and implemented his ideas in the association, not to mention his political ambitions.

Since his work in the two social organisations ZPU and ZAF placed a great deal of responsibility on him, he finally declined to participate in the Polish school system and limited himself to inspecting and supporting schools in their efforts to finance their future work. In the 1950s he was able to provide financial support to the ZPU, which was then financed by the Free Europe Citizens Service (FECS), the Freies Europa broadcasting station, the Oddziały Wartownicze (guard companies), of the Polonii Congress Amerykańskiej (Congress of American Polonia) and the Polski Komitet Imigracyjny (Polish Immigration Committee) headed by Pastor Burant. Kazimierz Odrobny worked closely with the local representatives of Związek Inwalidów Wojennych, members of the former Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army) and the Freies Europa broadcasting station in Munich. He was highly valued as an honorary activist in Polish refugee circles, and by the organizations that supported the ZPU at the time.

In his many years of work he never resisted contacts with Poland. He maintained constant correspondence with his close and distant relatives in Poznań and Katowice, with the Ogonowski and Zięba families in Przemyśl, with his colleagues from the SN in Greater Poland and Upper Silesia, whom he knew from the pre-war period, as well as his former fellow prisoners, who belonged to Związek Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację (ZBOWiD), the Association of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. He also made regular appearances at the conferences held by Polska Macierz Szkolna (Polish School Home) in London and participated in meetings of the SN Executive Committees in London and those of the Centralny Komitet byłych Więźniów Politycznych Niemieckich Więzień i Obozów Koncentracyjnych w Wolnym Świecie (Central Committee for former political prisoners of German prisons and concentration camps in the Free World).

In the mid-fifties Kazimierz Odrobny's activities sparked the interest of the secret services answerable to the Ministry of the Interior of the People's Republic of Poland, among them the civil intelligence and counter-espionage services. Their investigations are mainly documented as operations under the aliases "Odrobina" (Hint), "Krewni" (Relatives) and "Odrobina" (Spiders), which were carried out between the late 1950s and the end of the 1960s. Thus he became the target of the Polish security apparatus, which also spied on his family in Poland along with his wife's family and acquaintances who were connected with the Endecjamovement. At that time many "personal sources of information" of the Polish security service were to be found in his entourage, and they regularly exposed him to provocations and tests of opinion. In addition to the activities of the bodies under the Polish Ministry of the Interior, the Wojskowa Służba Wewnętrzna (WSW), i.e. the Military Counter-Intelligence Service, also dealt with Kazimierz Odrobny in the early 1960s. The information obtained was forwarded to the management of the WSW Department of the Śląski Okręg Wojskowy (Silesian Military District). However, this issue has still not been fully clarified, mainly because of limited access to the archives. Both the civilian and military security authorities of the People's Republic of Poland officially discontinued their observation of Kazimierz Odrobny at the end of the 1960s.

Meanwhile Zofia Odrobna had died in September 1960 after a long illness. Kazimierz suffered greatly from his wife's death. His activities in the organization steadily decreased and eventually he withdrew completely from the work of the ZPU in order to concentrate on the interests of the refugees within the framework of the ZAF international forum. In this regard, he often met representatives from the ministries in Bonn and the state governments responsible for refugee issues and organised meetings on issues that required the intervention of the High Commissioner for Refugees in Bad Godesberg. He maintained special relations with the office for homeless foreigners in Düsseldorf, which was headed in the 1950s by the well-known German Turkologist Professor Gerhard von Mende (1904-1963). After his death, Kazimierz Odrobny maintained his relations with the representatives of this institution, in particular with Walter Conradi, who gave financial support to the work of the ZPU's board, including funding for the magazine "Polak". His relations with Walter Conradi still raise doubts because of the latter's unclear connections to intelligence services in the Federal Republic of Germany, including the American CIA, the BND and the Federal Office for the Constitution (BfV). The sources indicate that Conradi was a leading member of a West German intelligence service. Kazimierz Odrobny also maintained closer relations with Wolfgang Müller, the coordinator for cooperation with various refugee groups at the Home Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the 1960s Kazimierz Odrobny still had a decisive influence on the personnel policy of the ZPU. Unfortunately, this weakened the organisation despite the number of people who enjoyed his confidence. In this respect, Odrobny had to face a serious crisis that erupted in the ZPU in 1967 and 1968 and which forced him to fight against the threatened collapse of the organization, following the departure of a group of functionaries around the chairman of the Second District, Dominik Marcol. Marcol and his followers turned against the board of the ZPU, especially against the policy of the association's chairman. Odrobny was faced with a dilemma that highlighted his worries about the future of the association. He had to decide either to tolerate the breakaway and the subsequent decline of the ZPU, or to maintain the organisational structures subsidised by the Bonn government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the end Odrobny won this fight for the status quo of the association: but he was to pay a very high price for it, since the state of North Rhine-Westphalia withdrew its donations to the Polish school system supported by the organisation. In the years that followed, Kazimierz Odrobny was no longer able to restore the association's strength, despite his efforts to do so. Although he retained his authority in front of officials and members of the association, the split caused by Dominik Marcol's faction weakened his credibility in government circles in Bonn. Nonetheless, the crisis of the association did not diminish his ambitions and he continued to deal with war reparations for former concentration camp prisoners in Germany. Here, together with the lawyer Mieczysław Chmielewski, he succeeded in securing a decision to set up a large and a small compensation fund with the High Commissioner for Refugees. In this context, he also encouraged former inmates living in Poland to submit applications. In all this, he was not opposed to contacts with the Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (PZPR), the Polish United Workers' Party.

As the ZPU chairman, Kazimierz Odrobny was well aware that it could not function after the crisis without financial support for its work. In order to survive this difficult period, in the early 1970s he initiated a conference with the participation of the Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów (Association of Polish Combatants), the ZPU and Związek Polaków w Niemczech "Rodło" (Association of Poles in Germany). Despite this trilateral cooperation, however, the Alliance failed to produce quantifiable results. To this end, ZPU officials pointed out the organizational shortcomings to their chairman. However, despite some support from the secretariat in Velbert, he was not personally in a position to fulfil all the tasks of the board. As a result some tasks were pushed to one side and others not even tackled. This led to growing backlogs that he could no longer cope with at the end of the 1970s. Against this background, since the end of the 1960s he had no longer convened any regular meetings of the Council at which assocation delegates might have been able to elect a new leadership. The official reason for this was the lack of funds to finance the meetings. In order to rescue the situation and continue the work of the board, Kazimierz Odrobny himself paid out a lot of money to publish the ZPU bulletin that was read in Polish refugee circles.

The 1970s presented new challenges, including the generational change of his closest employees. People like Czesław Brunner, Leopold Sanicki, Dr. Tadeusz Zgaiński, Dr. Henryk Bogdański, Jan Feldt and many other active members of the SN and ZPU who had previously supported Kazimierz Odrobny's policies resigned, while there were no candidates for succession to the vacant positions. In this situation the Chairman sought to maintain control of the organization by appointing younger members of the assocation and thier followers who shared his views. But despite his informal staff policy, he was unable to prevent members from travelling to the People's Republic of Poland. Throughout his presidency, he personally felt that political refugees from Poland should not travel to the country from which they had fled or to which they did not want to return. This rigid view may have been due to his own convictions, since he did not travel to Poland at all after the end of the war. Even when, during a visit to Velbert, one of his brothers tried to persuade him to return, he stayed true to his original decision. He certainly considered the option of returning to Poland, although he was doubtlessly influenced by the rumours in West Germany of kidnappings of people returning to the People's Republic of Poland. Irrespective of this he was always happy to welcome his family and friends who wanted to visit him. Until his death he maintained very close contact with Izabela Zięba, the sister of Zofia Odrobna, with whom he had corresponded since the early 1980s.

In the second half of the 1970s, the meetings of the ZPU board were only a weak attempt to continue the activities of the previous years. The chairman was accused of not complying with the rules of the statutes, and the organisation should have urgently replaced its leadership and recruited new members. Sadly, Kazimierz Odrobny was against accepting "new" refugees from the People's Republic of Poland because he believed that the ZPU was built up and developed primarily by representatives of the war refugees. As a result the ZPU continuously lost members and more and more local groups were dissolved. When the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the association were due, the occasion offered a good opportunity to draw a conclusion to the work of the organisation. Unfortunately, however, the chairman delayed the planning of the anniversary celebrations until the event proved superfluous. Instead, he merely published his own version of his more than twenty years of association work in the ZPU Bulletin, listing the most important achievements of the association. In 1975 he took part in the international conference "Polonia Jutra" (roughly, Future of Polonia) and gave a lecture on the situation of Polish refugees, but his appearance did not have any strong influence on his further commitment. At the end of the 1970s, his activities were limited to working in international bodies (he was elected chairman of ZAF) and to heading the then declining structures of the Endecja movement in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1979, on a pilgrimage of Poles to Rome organised by the Federal Republic of Germany he participated in a private audience with Pope John Paul II. In the early 1980s he was no longer able to lead the ZPU, but still had the energy to give interviews to the German press in which he spoke about the most important issues for Polish refugees and about German compensation payments to former concentration camp prisoners.

Kazimierz Odrobny died in Velbert on 13thSeptember 1981. He left an organisation on the brink of collapse due to unresolved problems and internal quarrels between the younger and the older generations, advocates and opponents of his policies, usurpers and those who resisted the takeover of the organisation. No successor was nominated. His funeral was hosted by Witold Szwabowicz, the former ZPU secretary who lived in the same building at 58 Höferstraße in Velbert. The financial situation was so desperate that Szwabowicz was forced to finance part of the funeral costs with a bank loan. He took the rest tacitly from the ZPU treasury without informing the board members. The memorial service took place on 21st September 1981 in the St. Maria Rosenkranz Church in Düsseldorf-Wersten. Kazimierz Odrobny was buried next to his wife Zofia at the cemetery in Werstener Feld 203, Düsseldorf-Eller. There were no descendants.

 

Łukasz Wolak, April 2018

 

Archives:

Material from the inventory of the Pracownia Badań nad Polską Emigracją w Niemczech po 1945 r. w Instytucie Historycznym Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego (The department for studies on Polish emigrants in Germany after 1945 at the Historical Institute of the University of Wrocław)

Material from the inventory of the Instytut Polski i Muzeum im. gen. W. Sikorskiego (Polish Institute and W. Sikorski Museum) in London

Material from the inventory of the des Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (Archive of the Institute for National Remembrance)

Material from the inventory of the International Tracing Service (ITS) Arolsen

Material from the private collection of Monika Zapałowska

Material from the private collection of Łukasz Wolak

Archive data base: http://szukajwarchiwach.pl [Kazimierz Odrobny]

 

Further reading:

Biografia byłych więźniów politycznych niemieckich obozów koncentracyjnych, edited by Dr, Antoni Gładysz and Andrzej Szymerski, Philadelphia 1974, p. 175-176.

Hładkiewicz W., Emigracyjne dylematy. Działalność Zjednoczenia Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech [in:] W kręgu idei, polityki i wojska. Studia ofiarowane Profesorowi Januszowi Farysiowi w siedemdziesiątą rocznice urodzin, edited by T. Sikorski, H. Walczak, A. Wątor, Szczecin 2009, pp. 425-436.

Hładkiewicz W., Meandry polityki. Życie polityczne emigracji polskiej w zachodnich strefach okupacyjnych Niemiec 1945-1949. Liderzy - organizacje - poglądy, Zielona Góra 2011, p. 153.

Jędrzejczak W. A., W polskiej szkole DP w Niemczech po drugiej wojnie światowej: wspomnienia ucznia z lat 1945-1949, Archiwum Emigracji: studia, szkice, dokumenty 3, 2000, pp. 278-284.

Łakomy A., Katalog książek dipisowskich w zbiorach Gabinetu Książki i Prasy Polskiej w Niemczech w PIN-Instytucie Śląskim w Opolu, Katowice-Opole 2008, pp. 10, 22 [.pdf]

Ocaleni z Mauthausen. Relacje polskich więźniów obozów nazistowskich systemu Mauthausen-Gusen, edited by Agnieszka Knyt, Warszawa 2010, pp. 237, 243-244, 263, 305.

Reich A., Nieznany front zimnej wojny. Tajny program dystrybucji książek za żelazną kurtyną, Warszawa 2015 (edited by Małgorzata Choma-Jusińska).

Ruchniewicz K., Polskie zabiegi o odszkodowania niemieckie w latach 1944/45-1975, Wrocław 2007, p. 70-71

Wolak Ł., Działacze Zjednoczenia Polskich Uchodźców w Niemczech w materiałach organów bezpieczeństwa PRL w latach 1945-1970, [in:] Letnia Szkoła Historii Najnowszej 2010. Papers edited by Natalia Jarska and Tomasz Kozłowski, Introduction: Łukasz Kamiński, Warszawa 2011, pp. 142-152.

Wolak Ł., Pierwsze trudne lata działalności. Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców w Republice Federalnej Niemiec w latach 1951-1954, [in:] Zimowa Szkoła Historii Najnowszej 2012. Papers edited by Łukasz Kamiński and Grzegorz Wołek, Warszawa 2012, pp.141-153.

Wolak Ł., Zjednoczenie Polskich Uchodźców wobec emigracji solidarnościowej w latach 1981-1989, [in:] Świat wobec solidarności, edited by Paweł Jaworski and Łukasz Kamiński, Warszawa 2013, pp. 703-717.

Wolak Ł., Życie, które uczy - Kazimierz Odrobny, [niemcy-online.pl], p. 1 (Link: http://www.niemcy-online.pl/inne/edukacja/zycie-ktore-uczy-kazimierz-odrobny-787)

Von den Sowjets liquidiert. Bereits 17 Katyn-Denkmäler in der freien Welt vorhanden, [in:] Das Ostpreußenblatt, part 11. 14.03.1981, p. 5.

 

Blog on Polish refugees in Germany:

Wolak Ł., Kazimierz Odrobny. Odpryski z życia działacza emigracyjnego cz. 1: http://uchodzcywniemczech.pl/kazimierz-odrobny_czesc_1/

Wolak Ł., Kazimierz Odrobny. Odpryski z życia działacza emigracyjnego cz. 2: http://uchodzcywniemczech.pl/kazimierz-odrobny-a-sluzba-bezpieczenstwa-prl/

 

Archive of the student fraternity:

K! Gedania Posnaniensis [Lista członków (List of members), No. 59]: http://www.archiwumkorporacyjne.pl/index.php/muzeum-korporacyjne/poznan/k-gedania-posnaniensis/