Goralenvolk

Goralenvolk

Part of the General Government zone of occupied Poland
Meeting of Governor Hans Frank in Zakopane with leaders of his Goralenvolk in November 1939
Period	1939 – 1943
Membership	200

The Goralenvolk was a geopolitical term invented by the German Nazis in World War II in reference to the population of Podhale region in the south of Poland near the Slovak border. The Germans postulated a separate nationality for people of that region in an effort to extract them from the Polish citizenry during their occupation of Poland's highlands. The term Goralenvolk was a neologism derived from the Polish word Górale (the Highlanders) commonly referring to the people living in the mountains. In order to make Gorals collaborate with the SS, the Nazis proclaimed that this group were part of the Greater Germanic Race and worthy of separate treatment from the Poles.

Nazi ideology claimed that Gorals (Górale) were descended from ethnic Germans who allegedly settled in that region during medieval times in significant numbers. They were considered by the Nazi ideologues to be a part of the "Greater Germanic Race". The concept of the Gorals being from German descent did not originate with the Nazis themselves. For example, the 1885 Meyers Konversationslexikon entry under Goralen stated, that Germans (also) lived in that area in the 11th century but were slavicized.

The region inhabited by Górale (pre-war Polish Nowy Targ County in Podhale) was annexed by Germany immediately after the Invasion of Poland in 1939. Later, the German authorities attempted to assimilate the population into the body of Volksdeutsche, and to encourage their collaboration with the occupying forces. Soon, a small group of local collaborators gathered under the leadership of Reichsdeutscher Witalis Wieder, with Wacław Krzeptowski – a self-proclaimed Goralenführer – and his cousins Stefan and Andrzej Krzeptowski, as well as suspected German spy Henryk Szatkowski, and Józef Cukier from Zakopane. During a visit of Nazi Governor-General Hans Frank to Podhale on November 7, 1939 they proposed to establish a separate state for Goralenvolk. Most fled to Germany at the end of the war except for Krzeptowski himself, who decided to hide in the mountains (at na Stołach) in a secluded shack. He was apprehended by the Polish Armia Krajowa unit under Lieutenant Tadeusz Studziński, charged with high treason and hanged on January 20, 1945.