Infrastructure and funding
The high school’s legal status was difficult to define precisely. It was in fact a foreign, private school with its own administration and its own programmes, but was overseen from an educational point of view by the French Ministry of Education.
The Polish Red Cross acted on behalf of the Polish government in exile. It rented the buildings and made them available to the Service de Contrôle Social des Étrangers (SCSE) (“Social Control Service for Foreigners”). The Hôtel du Parc et du Château officially became “SCSE centre no. 56 bis”. When the Red Cross fell to the Germans in June 1941, the Groupement d’Assistance aux Polonais en France (GAPF) (Welfare Society for the Poles in France) was quickly set up to replace it. In 1943, Vichy took control of the high school and from then on the school was funded by the Service de Contrôle Social des Étrangers. In 1945, the resurrected Red Cross came under the control of Poland’s new communist government and funded the school.
October 1940 to November 1941.
The Polish authorities considered the school to be a state secondary school. As assistance to Poles in France was provided entirely by the Polish Red Cross, the high school was officially Centre 56 bis of the network of Polish refugee hostels. The Red Cross was responsible for the school, its employees and its funding.
Stanisław Zabiełło, a Polish diplomat acting as the unofficial representative of the government in exile, coordinated the Polish Administration Offices set up by Vichy and supervised the transfer of funds from the Polish government in exile in London, under the guise of grants from aid agencies. Most of these funds were channelled through Switzerland.
November 1941 to December 1942
Under pressure from the Germans, the French authorities dissolved the Polish Red Cross and replaced it with the Groupement d’assistance aux Polonais en France (GAPF) (Welfare Society for the Poles in France), whose organisation was exclusively Polish. Its president was Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski.
The GAPF was keen to ensure that its largest centres, including the high school in Villard, remained financially independent of the French government. It voluntarily renounced French public aid “in order to avoid any interference by foreign agents in the field of youth assistance”.
The funding channels remained unchanged.
December 1942 to May 1945.
The occupation of the free zone by the German and Italian armies complicated the GAPF’s task. Contacts with London and Switzerland were becoming less regular and the GAPF believed that the umbrella of the French authorities would provide better protection for the high school from the unpleasant surprises that the new circumstances were likely to bring. The GAPF asked the Vichy government to take charge of the high school as a hostel. The high school was henceforth under the authority of the Service du contrôle social des étrangers (SCSE) for administrative purposes and the French Ministry of Education for educational purposes.
Stanisław Zabiełło was arrested. While the funds still come from London, some were now channelled illegally from Switzerland. The remainder took the form of fictitious subsidies from the American Polonia Council and were channelled through the Polish consulate in Portugal. Both channels were complicated and risky. It was a transfer of funds from Portugal that led to the arrest of Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski in March 1943.
May 1945 to June 1946
The Polish Red Cross was no longer clandestine From London, it resumed funding of the high school. It soon came under the political and financial control of the new communist government, known as the “Lublin government”. After returning from deportation, Lubicz-Zaleski became worried and tried to find other sources of funding to escape the Lublin government’s control, but to no avail.
Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski, director - Polish Resistance fighters in the Vercors, 2011
From 1941 to 1943, the GAPF expanded and covered more areas than had been covered by the Polish Red Cross. Our activity was not intended to be exclusively philanthropic. Any initiative that had a chance of coming to fruition, whether in industry, crafts, science, publishing, education or the arts, could count on our help. I always put young people at the forefront of our concerns, both in schools like Villard and in universities. I felt that in the long term they were the most important… The high school also looked after young Poles at university. At the same time, I managed to get the Polish language departments at the universities of Grenoble, Lyon, Toulouse, Montpellier and Clermont-Ferrand up and running again.