Central Welfare Council
organization
The Central Welfare Council (sometimes also translated as Main Social Services Council--Polish, Rada Główna Opiekuńcza) was one of the very few Polish social organizations that were allowed to work under the German occupation of Poland in World War I and World War II.
History
It was created during World War I in 1916. By 1918, the RGO had 125,000 children and youth in its care. It moved 11,000 children from Polish cities to families in the countryside between 1915 and 1920.
The organization was re-created in February 1940 in Krakow. The RGO was meant to represent Polish voluntary welfare organizations in the General Government (German-occupied Poland). It was headquartered in Warsaw during World War II, but had its departments in most of Polish towns and cities.
The RGO had connections to the Polish resistance, and although it was supervised by the occupying German authorities, it did not cooperate with them.
The RGO organized a field kitchen outside of the transit camp Durchgangslager 121 following its establishment in 1944. Mathematician Josephine Janina Mehlberg worked with the RGO, bringing food and other supplies to Majdanek concentration camp and negotiating the release of Polish prisoners.
Organisation
The RGO aided one million people in 1941; in the fall of 1944, 1.2 million people received aid from the organization.
The public source identifies “Central Welfare Council” as organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Central, Welfare and Council.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4139212. VIAF identifies the subject as 125164850. The Library of Congress control number is n85301792. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 1918, 1915 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Central Welfare Council” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.