Shifting Poland

At the end of the Second World War and in the first months of peace, political negotiations are ongoing that would form the political map of Europe for a long time. The most important political voices belong to leaders of the Big Three: the U.S., the USSR and Great Britain. Stalin strives to retain eastern territories of the prewar Second Republic that he had occupied as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. At the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, the shift to the west of the Polish nation is decided upon – a new border with the USSR is demarked along the so-called Curzon Line while Poland, at the expense of Germany, obtains new territories in the north and west (West Pomerania and Gdańsk, the Lubusz Land, Silesia, Warmia and Mazuria).

The period 1945–1948 are a time of massive migrations of people on Polish lands. The largest part of this is forced – shifting borders resulted in replacing Poles from eastern voivodeships of the Second Republic now occupied by the USSR and in the displacement of Germans living in the regions of Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia ceded to Poland. Forced replacements of millions of people were on one hand a realization of the Yalta provisions of the Big Three intending to debilitate Germany, to appease Stalin's territorial appetites and compensate Poland's related losses, while on the other it was an effect of the belief reigning after the war that the creation of ethnically homogenous nations would diminish the risk of the outbreak of further armed conflicts. 

The remaining forced migrations were related to repressive policies of the communist regime, which utilized these as a means pointed at groups and individuals opposed to the new system (or deemed so by it) – many soldiers of the former Home Army, members of the anticommunist underground and “class enemies” deported deep into the USSR; Ukrainians and Lemkos living in southeast Poland were replaced to the northwest (Operation Vistula, 1947); in the final weeks of the war, the Red Army deported Upper Silesian miners for slave labor in Soviet mines (the so-called Upper Silesian Tragedy).

The Soviet offensive in 1945 left enduring traces on the landscape of reclaimed Western and Northern Territories – ruins, abandoned military equipment, destroyed infrastructure, depopulated centers. In the first period after the front passed, complete chaos reigned. Poles were creating their administrations, Germans lived in hope of maintaining contested territory, and real power was held by the Red Army command. From its soldiers, “trophy battalions” are formed that systematically plundered factories and transport infrastructure.

In winter and spring 1945, huge numbers of Germans from Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia fled to the west before the approaching Red Army. Those who didn't manage to escape were in the difficult situation of people deprived of civil rights. Soon after, Polish authorities began displacements of German populations – first (June–July 1945) in an uncoordinated way (“wild displacements”), next within great displacement operations (1946–1947) organized on the basis of decisions by the Big Three.

“With Germans, deal as they dealt with us. Many have forgotten what their behavior was with our children, wives and elderly. Czechs knew to deal in a way that germans [sic!] fled by themselves from their territories. The tasks should be performed in a tough, decided way, the way that Germanic scum didn't hide at home, but fled itself and returned to its land, thanking God that they made it out with their hides.”

Establishing the eastern border of Poland along the Curzon Line meant one thing for Poles of the Eastern Borderlands – displacement to the west. The communist authorities proclaimed “the return of compatriots from across the Bug River to the motherland,” but most of those “repatriated” were reluctant to leave their native lands for the unknown. The culmination of the “repatriation operation” occurred in 1945–1946, and its legal basis was made by contracts for population exchanges between the Polish Committee of National Liberation and the Soviet republics of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Western Territories were not populated mostly by people from Lviv and Vilnius. Most settlers came from the western Wielkopolska region and central Poland. Communist authorities encouraged departures, supported settlement operations, organized pioneer groups. Many thousands of compatriots who had been taken to Germany in the war and were now returning from exile migrated through the Western Territories.

“At the Warsaw East Station, I saw colorful posters encouraging settlement in the mythic Western Territories. I walked past them, indifferent so far. 'Varsovians, Settle in Elbląg!' – the fabulously colorful poster tempted with luxurious villas in gardens, comfort and splendor. Opportunity! I wasn’t a Varsovian at that time, but a repatriate thrown out to the margins, so did I have anything to lose? Everything to gain: work, apartment... I made the desperate decision: We'll head west!”

“When I came to the office, I was told – seek, and if you find – move in.” This sentence, a recollection by one of the new Gdańsk inhabitants, clearly illustrates the way in which post-German apartments and houses were occupied. Much depended on resourcefulness, the moment of arrival in the Western Territories, luck and sometimes physical force. Sometimes Poles and Germans lived together in one place – the first having selected a new home, the second not yet displaced. The atmosphere of this transition time was accurately summed up by Bronisław Kowacz: “For a long time, neither us, Poles, or them, Germans, knew who'd last.”

“More were interested in this space, and wanted to kick my husband out. However, he'd trained before the war with Mr. Sztama in boxing, so one tough guy who wanted to violently break into our apartment got shoved down the stairs. It was a real fight then for a roof over your head.”

Everyday life in the Western and Northern Territories, along with typical postwar problems with provisions, was characterized by the lack of social bonds and uncertainty regarding the future fate of these territories. Settlers came from different regions, had different habits, spoke in different versions of Polish – the tajoj from Lviv sounded comical to settlers from central Poland. Slowly, local societies stabilized and necessities of getting by under difficult conditions strengthened neighborly bonds.

The Western and Northern Territories were a precious acquisition for the postwar Polish economy despite the ruination as a result of wartime operations, and devastation and the industrial plundering by the Red Army. Especially important were Silesian mines and factories in the southwest, and well-developed communication infrastructure and ports in Szczecin and Gdańsk. The first goal of postwar rebuilding was the integration of the new territories with the rest of the nation.

Western and Northern Territories were in the early months after the war an ideal place for criminals. Favored by depopulation, ready access to spoils, little control in the new voivodeships by the state, and lack of social bonds. Among the most frequent crimes were mugging, thievery, rape and looting. These were often committed by those who theoretically should protect settlers and undisplaced Germans – Red Army soldiers, militias, state officers. New territories were also used by functionaries from across Poland as a source of equipment for institutions (such as music schools) destroyed and devastated during the war.

“There was zero authority. There was zero law in effect except for moral law. There was no private property poisoning relations between people. You could take possession without disappropriating anybody. You could destroy without destroying anyone's possession.”

After the advance of the front through the Western and Northern Territories, new local cells of Polish administration began operations. Coordinated operations related to the state taking up the management of new territories are linked with the services of the Ministry of Recovered Territories (Sept. 1945), led by Władysław Gomułka. Stabilizing the situation meant greater control by the state and the Party and, linked with that, the end of free license in the “Polish Wild West.”

Communist authorities viewed with suspicion so-called autochthons (members of borderland societies including Silesians, Warmians and Mazurians living in prewar German territories) and citizens of the Second Republic from areas included into the Third Reich during the war who had joined the Volkslist in mass. They were often accused of betrayal and forced to leave. 

Communist repressions by the secret services many times also hurt people, families and societies that had stood for Poland during the Silesian uprisings and plebiscites.

Among the most urgent needs was the creation of an effective working web of daily-life institutions – schools, higher education, health centers, local newspapers. This often required engagement by local societies and leaders who were learning to take matters in their own hands: “arranging” equipment, “organizing” locations. The Western Territories were a terrain of active state operations, as well as a self-organizing society.

“I managed to buy a light truck for the school. Then I was going like crazy across the county. I brought all the school's things, which I'd already located. Once, I brought a truckload of laboratory glass from a small factory the Germans left. The second time, I went to the Liquidation Office in Strzelce and wrangled a stored collection of beautiful, exotic butterflies and insects that had belonged to a burned school.”

The situation after the Second World War was challenging for followers of all religions. Shifting of state borders presented administrative problems for the Catholic Church, and for other faiths and confessions. In large part, on territories conceded to Poland, Protestant dioceses had functioned, while the Orthodox Church and the Jewish faith were also followed. In this difficult situation, quick action by Catholic Primate August Hlond, who established apostolic administration, had huge significance. As a consequence, the Catholic Church soon dominated the situation. An active Church was essential in constructing Polish social structures in the Western and Northern Territories. It played a distinct role in integrating local communities and in facilitating migrants' adaptation in their new lands.

From August 1945, Primate August Hlond could create apostolic administrations, temporary administrative units that functioned as dioceses. These operated until the 1970s, when Poland's western border was recognized by West Germany, and Pope Paul VI created a fixed church organization in the Western and Southern Territories.

“We are bound by the common Holy Catholic faith, we are united by a common language... We are united by the same tough borderland nature, which knows how to live under the most difficult conditions.” These words, from a sermon by Father Bolesław Kominek, apostolic administrator in Opole, pictured the church effort in integrating believers resettled from the eastern borderlands with Poles who'd long lived in western borderlands.

Local centers of culture and entertainment arose quickly on the resettled territories. Some of these were linked with communist organizations, but many were created thanks to the settlers' efforts. The Western and Northern Territories offered, thanks to the post-German infrastructure, excellent conditions for development of tourism and sports. Visits by vacationers in the Sudetes Mountains and at the coast integrated the resettled territories with the rest of the nation – tourists from other regions could know new places and acknowledge them as theirs.

Names of places and streets, monuments, signs, labels on taps for cold and hot water – the resettled lands were marked by traces of former German inhabitants. Communist authorities tended to Polonize the space and mark that it has new governance. Introduction of Polish names and removing German reminders was, however, not only a propaganda measure but suited the social need to domesticate the culturally foreign environment by settlers who happened to now live there. Along with this, the memory of war was fresh – for many Poles, everything German was associatied with their crimes during the occupation.

“Suddenly Wilhelm is tipping: ‘We have to rock him,' they scream, and in a second 'enough!' – he falls down, among whooping shouts. [...] I hauled the lead line for so long and so arduously, so the last mark of German arrogance was down – the ruler was dethroned.”

“Authorities of People's Poland, in alliance with the USSR, regained former ancient Piast territories along the Oder and Neisse Rivers, once taken by German invaders. Thanks to this, the Polish nation occupies an economically and ethnically homogenous territory, and reclaims the Recovered Territories and reinstates there the original Slavic character, a major success in postwar reconstruction. However, due to the threat of German revanchism, the Oder-Neisse border must be vigorously protected.” – Thus, in brief, appeared the propagandistic narrative about the Recovered Territories, which for decades was among the set motifs in the ideology of the PRL. Such a narration superseded memory about the complicated past of the borderlands, and appropriated identity in these lands.

“Poles! Inhabitants of the Piast Szczecin. Soldiers – conquerors of the Oder and Neisse [!], guarding our borders today. Polish youth who came here to celebrate the triumph of the Recovered Territories today. Compatriots – all of you who direct their hearts and thoughts today to those lands where the history of Poland is being born. I greet you warmly in the name of the Republic, on the first anniversary of liberating the proto-Piast lands.”

In 1948, a large Exhibition of the Recovered Territories was organized in Wrocław, which summed up achievements in developing the Western and Southern Territories.

The topic of resettling the Western and Northern Territories functioned in PRL culture as a myth, in which the dominant role was played by a depopulated land with new opportunities, a promised land, and its brave settlers. This doesn't mean that each tale about these territories was dominated by propagandistic narratives. Valuable works of art were also created from those atypical, intriguing scenarios, presenting people uprooted and lost in postwar reality. The action of popular comedies was also placed on these territories – “Gals' Republic” and “Our Folks.”

The fall of communism in Poland facilitated the breaking of the official narration about the Western and Northern Territories (more and more rarely termed “Recovered”). The pioneer-heroic motifs had become debilitated, and the ambiguous identity of the borderland territories and memory of former inhabitants including so-called autochthons, once placed at the far margins of interest, gained value. In the collective imagination, the Western and Northern Territories begin functioning as a place linking memories of inhabitants with different traditions, roots and historical experience.

“My father had paddled an ordinary canoe more than six hundred kilometres along the River Dunajec, then the Vistula, to Gdansk. In literally the heart of the city, on the Motlawa, he had put down his oar, picked up his rucksack and set off through the burned-out, silent streets, where brick dust and the smell of people burning were falling like a mist on the remains of the thousand-year Reich. [...] Only now … did I think he might have been like Abraham, who had received a summons from God: ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy father’s house’.”

The feature film “The Rose” by Wojciech Smarzowski introduced the topic of settlement in the Western and Northern Territories to the center of Polish public debate. In the film, several very painful motifs were taken up – brutal actions by the Red Army and NKVD (especially mass rapes of German women from East Prussia), the difficult fates of those Mazurians presumed to be German, and banditry ruling those transitional territories.

Interest in the prewar history of the Recovered Territories found its reflection in popular literature, for example the series of detective novels about Eberhard Mock by Marek Krajewski.