Poles in Germany

Polish minority in Germany, is the second largest Polish minority (Polonia) in the world and the biggest in Europe. Estimations of the number of Poles living in Germany vary from 384,808 Poles with exclusively Polish citizenship to about 2 million and with up to three million people living that might be of Polish descent, although many of them have lost their ancestors' identity. The main Polonia organisations in Germany are the Union of Poles in Germany and Congress of Polonia in Germany. Polish surnames are relatively common in Germany, especially in the Ruhr area (Ruhr Poles) and among Silesians. Minority rights for Poles in Germany were revoked by Hermann Göring's World War II decree of 27 February 1940, and their property was confiscated. The official minority status of Poles has never been restored in Germany.

History
Since the Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 and Poland's partial incorporation into Prussia, a large Polish ethnic group existed inside Prussia's borders, especially in the new provinces of Posen and West Prussia. During the transformation of Germany from an agrarian to an industrial society, many Poles, alongside Silesians, Kashubians and Masurians migrated to the rapidly transforming areas around the Ruhr river. The expansion of the coal mining industry of the area required manpower which could not be supplied from the nearby regions. The workforces had to be recruited from other regions and thus, beginning in the 1870s, a large migration wave of the aforementioned groups started to settle in the Ruhr area. Participants in this migration are called the Ruhrpolen. Following many years of Germanization policies, only the Weimar Republic granted the Poles living in Germany its judicial status as a national minority. However, in August 1939, the leadership of the Polish community was arrested and interned in the Nazi concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. On the 7th September 1939, shortly after the breakout of World War II, the Nazi government of the 3rd Reich stripped the Polish community in Germany of its minority status. This was formally confirmed by Hermann Göring's decree of 27 February 1940. Since then, the German government still does not recognize the national minority status of the Poles in Germany, claiming their recent origin due to immigration within the past two centuries and denying the minority its right of self-determination. After Poland joined the European Union, several organisations of Poles in Germany attempted to restore the pre-war official minority status, particularly claiming voidness of the Nazi decree. While the initial memorandum to the Bundestag remained unanswered, in December 2009 the Minority Commission of the Council of Europe obliged German government to formally respond to the demands within 4 months.