Occupation
Quota (kontyngent)
In occupied Poland, compulsory deliveries of farm produce imposed on the countryside by the Germans. Grain, meat and milk were bought at token prices, and failure to deliver was harshly punished.
In the General Government compulsory quotas were introduced in January 1940. Each farm and commune had to hand over set amounts of grain, potatoes, meat, milk and other produce at official prices many times lower than market prices; private slaughter of livestock was also banned. At their peak, in 1942, the quotas took around half of the harvest. Arrears were punished with fines, confiscation, labour camps and even death, and the police and gendarmerie who collected them carried out punitive raids on villages.
The food went to the Wehrmacht and the Reich, while town dwellers lived on starvation rations and the black market. The Polish underground called for the deliveries to be sabotaged, and partisan units destroyed registers and stores. The Germans imposed similar systems on other occupied countries, including Ukraine.
Sources
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