In Poland Hoover established thousands of kitchens and feeding centres where massive quantities of food, clothing and other aid was supplied from the US to the Port of Gdansk and then throughout the nation. For a period of just over three years, more than half a billion meals were provided to the hungry and starving of Poland. Hoover was stunned on August 1919 to see over 25 000 children, quite a few of whom were barefoot, come to Warsaw to thank him. Saddened by their continued plight and aware of the coming winter he telegraphed a message and in response 700 000 overcoats and 700 000 pairs of shoes were shipped from America to Poland.

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 the former President organised the Commission for Polish Relief and again meals, blankets, clothing and other aid was mustered to assist those whose lives had been disrupted by the invasion. In 1940 alone, 200 000 meals a day were being served. Assistance continued until Germany declared war against America at the end of 1941, at which point the aid was redirected to refugees.

Hoover returned to Poland in 1946 to see what he could do to help the war torn country, but when the communists took control they decided to expunge him from history. Perhaps they thought it best that Polish youth should be quarantined from the corrupt and evil West. Whatever the reason, knowledge about Hoover’s charitable deeds all but disappeared from Poland, monuments were torn down, such as the one at Skwer Hoover in Warsaw showing two women, symbolising Poland and America, who were holding children as a symbol of life. Street names and places honouring Hoover were changed and he was ‘airbrushed’ out of history books and nothing was ever mentioned about him in schools, universities, newspapers or television programs.

Until!

Until Zbigniew Stanczyk, East European Specialist at the Hoover Institute explored the Institute’s archives as well as holdings in the Hoover Presidential Library in Iowa and organised an extraordinary traveling exhibit titled “American Friendship: Herbert Hoover and Poland. Huge crowds visited the display of photographs, letters documents and the like in Warsaw, Poznan, Lodz, Krakow and Wroclaw between 2004 and 2005. The exhibit was sponsored by the Taube Family Foundation. The response inspired the Polish Government to rebuild the Warsaw monument, and other dedications were made to Hoover around Poland. The guest books were filled with comments such as ‘thank you for the unveiling of another chapter in our history distorted by the communists. Please bring us more . . . testimonies to fill the gaps of our history.’

The curator of the East European Section of Hoover Institute observed that:

“Free Poles appreciated Hoover’s sympathy and friendship. When the United States and Britain abandoned their Polish ally, withdrawing recognition from the London-based Polish government in exile, Polish political and military authorities in the West transferred their archives to the Hoover Library. Protected from dispersion and from falling into the hands of the Soviet-dominated government in Warsaw, these archives have made the Hoover Institution into a repository with the richest and the most comprehensive documentation on twentieth-century Poland outside Poland. Thanks to generous support of the Taube Family Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, those archives have now been organized and microfilmed. In recent years, the Hoover Institution has donated these microfilms to Poland. To date, some 1.5 million pages of microfilmed documents have been transferred to the state archives of free and democratic Poland. Among these are documents that will help Polish historians understand more fully the political and the diplomatic history of the Warsaw Uprising.”

A book on the same theme was published by George J Lerki, entitled Herbert Hoover and Poland: a Documentary History of a Friendship, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University Stanford, 1977.