With the Treaty of Versailles, Poland regained its independence. France, ravaged by war, was short of labour, while in Poland millions of people were looking for work. France and Poland sign an emigration agreement. Between the wars, almost a million Poles settled in France.
Following the First World War, Poland regained its independence. France, ravaged by war, was short of labour to rebuild the country, while in Poland millions of people were looking for work.
This second phase of emigration in the first half of the 20th century was mainly economic. With the signing of an emigration agreement between France and Poland in 1919, hundreds of thousands of farmers, miners and workers came to work in French mining regions and the agricultural sector. Between 1919 and 1931, the Polish population grew from tens of thousands to half a million, making Poland the second-largest foreign nationality in France after the Italians.
The Vercors was affected by this new wave of immigration. The massif was already home to Swiss and Italian craftsmen, farm workers, foresters and metalworkers. In the 1930s, many Poles started a new life in the Vercors’ mountain pastures. These new immigrants were often farmers in their own country. Unhappy with the work they had been offered in the French coalfields, many offered their services to property owners in Isère and elsewhere.
1.5.1 “I 'm staying!”
—Gabriel C., farmer. Memoir on les Écouges, Philippe Hanus, 2004.
In around 1936-38, the workers went up on foot from Montbonnot, accompanied by two oxen, horses and all the sleeping and cooking equipment. We hire a dozen reapers for the season. Among them was a Pole who worked in Poliénas. At the end of the summer, he said: “I ‘m staying!” ” My father replied: “I ‘m not paying you!” – “I ‘m staying anyway!” And he spent the winter up there doing odd jobs for the estate ‘s caretakers. He was eventually hired on an annual basis. In 1939, he was drafted and then taken prisoner of war. He managed to escape to Switzerland and then returned to Montbonnot. He remained in the family’s service until 1976, when he retired to live with us until his death in 1989.
