Published: 2019-12-31

The process of the autochthons’ and displaced people’s growing into the new cultural space of Silesia after the Second World War

Janina Hajduk-Nijakowska
Journal of Urban Ethnology
Section: Articles
DOI https://doi.org/10.23858/JUE17.2019.007

Abstract

In compliance with the resolutions made at the Yalta Conference in 1945, new borders of the post-war
Polish state were demarcated and the necessity of displacing the German population from the lands incorporated into Poland was agreed upon. This led to mass-scale displacements of the population from the
former eastern lands of the Second Republic of Poland to the so-called Recovered Territories (or Western
Lands), which in turn triggered the exceptionally traumatic process of people’s “growing into” the new space. The author follows this complicated and long-lasting process, using the example of the Opole Region,
where two communities co-existed side by side: the displaced and the autochthonous, both sides equally going through the peculiar shock connected with their difficult adjustment to the new socio-political reality.
The drama of the situation resulted also from the clash of two totally different communities of remembrance.
In the author’s opinion, presently we can speak of the progressing finalization of the process of “taming the space” at last, as documented by the experiences of the third generation of the so-called “uprooted” persons.

Keywords:

displacements, uprooting, growing into, community of remembrance, nostalgic tourism

Citation rules

Hajduk-Nijakowska, J. (2019). The process of the autochthons’ and displaced people’s growing into the new cultural space of Silesia after the Second World War. Journal of Urban Ethnology, 17, 109–121. https://doi.org/10.23858/JUE17.2019.007

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