Tågerup Polish barracks

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The Poles of Lolland

Tågerup Polakkaserne (Polish barracks") on Lolland consists of workmen's houses for Poles, dating back to 1911. They were built on Lungholm Estate to house Polish farm workers. At the end of the 1800s, the estate owners on Lolland-Falster employed Polish girls as seasonal workers in the sugar beet fields, where a large workforce was needed to weed, dig up and chop up the beets. The girls were recruited in Poland via a German-speaking, Polish middleman. While staying in Denmark, the girls lived in wretched conditions, crowded together in large tenement houses – called the Polish barracks. Despite the bad conditions, some Poles chose to stay on Lolland-Falster, where their descendents still live today. "

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Women's work

Story written by Lene Buur

Time / Periode 1880 1930

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The Estate owners hired only women for the work in the sugar beet fields, even though the work was hard, dirty and repetitive. Judging by the leading farming literature and farming methods of the time, the weeding and chopping was carried out in a bent-over posture. That's why it was women's work and the Polish girls especially were brought to the estates on Lolland-Falster. In emergencies, children and foreign men were also hired in to work in the sugar beet fields. In 1915, Christian Sonne, a tenant farmer on a Lolland estate, wrote in his log on the farms' supply of workers: The bowed position required to carry out the work well is hard for the men to come to terms with. They see themselves disqualified from it, as they claim, as I have often heard it put, that they are lacking the extra hinge in the back that women are assumed to be equipped with." "