Warsaw resident Maria Jarmoszuk will never forget the Christmas celebration of 1982.

At the time she was 15 years old. A year earlier, on December 13, 1981, a military council had taken control of Poland and declared martial law in the country.

The aim of this military putsch was to break up the opposition union Solidarity, which in recent months had become a mass movement counting 10 million members. During the period of martial law at least 50 people were killed and more than 5,000 were detained in custody.

Jamoszuk's mother was among those arrested, in the summer of 1982. With her father abroad, Jamoszuk and her two sisters stayed home on their own, avoiding an orphanage only because the eldest of the three was already of age.

Their mother's bank account was frozen. But in any case, there wouldn't have been any Christmas provisions available in the shops, as the supply situation in Poland under martial law was catastrophic.

"The table with the presents was almost bare; everything was so terribly sad;" remembered Jarmoszuk. "But at that moment, the doorbell rang and someone brought a package. There were oranges and nuts in it, bigger than I had ever seen in my life. I will never forget the smell of those oranges; the whole room smelled of them."

Dozens of people were killed in clashes and strikes under martial law

Neighborly assistance

The package had been sent by the Mayer family from Munich. They had found out at their church that three girls in Poland were without their parents and decided to help there and then. And the Mayers weren't the only ones: West Germans sent over 30 million packages to Poland in the months following the imposition of martial law. The packages contained essential items such as flour, sugar, baby food, soap and bandages.

The film "Pakete der Solidarität" ("Packages of Solidarity") by the Berlin director Lew Hohmann marks the 30th anniversary of the military putsch by looking back at this huge wave of donations from West Germany. "What impressed me a lot was the enormous willingness and commitment of the people who helped," the director says. "The helpers got behind the wheel themselves, took risks and weren't put off by harassment at the border or by authorities. They did all they could to help the people in Poland."

For his film, Lew Hohmann tracked down people who helped back then. For example, Georg Dietrich, the owner of a carrier firm in Offenburg, who loaded his company's trucks with food and took it personally to the city of Olsztyn in northern Poland – and who now, aged almost 90, still travels once a year to Olsztyn to take presents to the pupils at a school for the deaf. The pediatrician Krystyna Gräf from Frankfurt am Main is also one of the heroes of Hohmann's film – she smuggled in literature by exiled Polish authors, as well as printers for Solidarity to use for its underground activities. And the Mayer family also looks back in the film: "Seeing how the situation was in Poland, it was clear to us that we didn't say: oh no, now we have to donate something again," Joseph Mayer says. The family sent one package after the other. "In that situation we weren't going to be thinking of the expense!" Joseph Mayer says.

Aid packages to Poland could be sent for free

A new image of Germany

Many West Germans sent their packages directly to a particular family or to a particular place – such as the places where they had once lived in former German territories. For many Germans, the packages were also a way of protesting against the repressive regime in the People's Republic of Poland. Over the months, sending aid to Poland became a "real grassroots movement," as the weekly German news magazine "Der Spiegel" entitled its front page in the spring of 1982. These days, however, almost no one in Germany talks about the operation any more, Hohmann says. "I have noticed that the memory of it in Germany has been buried. It has been lost, while in Poland it is incredibly alive. Even young people know about their parents or grandparents receiving packages."

Packages also came from other European countries, from the US and from Japan. But the reason so many packages came from West Germany is partly that the West German government waived postal charges for aid packages to Poland from February 1982. The coordination of this aid operation, which of course the Polish government did not relish at all, was mostly carried out by the Roman Catholic Church. Nonetheless, the regime refrained from obstructing the aid in any major way. Those in power knew that they couldn't feed their people any more. In particular the packages from West Germany developed an impact going far beyond oranges, nuts and baby food. Maria Jarmoszuk says today: "For the older generation – those people who had experienced the war – this operation was especially important. Their image of the Germans had been shaped up to then only by the Nazi era and Soviet propaganda. But now their image of the Germans suddenly became positive!"

Influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall

Maria Jarmoszuk as a child

Many families from Germany and Poland kept up their contact even after the aid operation finished. Friendships developed – for example, between the Mayer family from Munich and the Jarmoszuks from Warsaw. "The operation has bound us together. We became friends. When my parents came home again, they didn't want any more packages from the Mayers, but letters came instead," Maria Jarmoszuk said. "Later I started studying German language and literature, and often stayed with them in Munich and became like one of the family."

In the film "Pakete der Solidarität," the former union leader Lech Wałęsa says clearly that Solidarity's struggle would not have been very promising without the help from other countries. For director Lew Hohmann, it is also certain that, in the end, the Germans themselves were the ones to profit most from their willingness to help: "What we shouldn't forget is that Solidarity gave the democratic movement in Communist East Germany the hope that something similar could happen in there as well. I think that this aid operation to help strengthen Solidarity also had an influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall."

The military council did not lift martial law in Poland until July 1983. And it wasn't until 1989 that the Solidarity movement could force the rulers to participate in Round Table Talks – and emerged as victor from the first free elections.

Author: Friedel Taube / tj

Editor: Andreas Illmer