As the house we were supposed to
live in was occupied by Germans, we were split up. One person had to go to a German family
for a few nights ... Putting us up with the Germans was humiliating and made us feel sick, but
we were told they would be leaving and we would get the house for ourselves and our
families
.
25
And they did go: firstly to other housing for a brief period in a part of the town set
aside for Germans, then to a camp and later on a long way from home in the new Germany
made up of occupation zones.
They had to leave because their fate had already been decided in Tehran in 1943, and later at
Yalta (February 1945). At these conferences, the Allies laid down the new ethnic and territorial
order in Europe. The decisive factor here was that national and ethnic boundaries were to
coincide as far as possible. It was agreed that the border between Poland and the Soviet Union
was to run along the Curzon Line, that Germany would cede territory in the east, that Germans
would leave these areas and that German minorities in various countries of eastern central and
south-eastern Europe would be expelled. Shifting the border a long way to the east inevitably
meant that there had to be a big change in Poland's western border and that, at the same time,
considerably more Poles and Germans would be affected by a population transfer than initially
planned. Since important details of the new territorial order in Europe were still undecided (such
as whether the Glatzer or the Görlitzer Neisse was to mark Germany's eastern border, and who
was to be given Lwów/Lemberg), the powers that be resorted to a fait accompli policy in order to
prepare the later allocation of territory. In spring and summer 1945, the Polish authority
subordinate to Moscow set up its own administration in the eastern parts of Germany. The first
24
"Die
Vertreibung der
deutschen
Bevölkerung
aus
den Gebieten östlich
der
Oder-Neiße", vol. 1, pp. 74, 76 E.
25
"Tu jest nasza ojczyna", Pozna*, p. 264.
44
Germans were moved out in May, while the rest were not allowed to return to their places of
residence. 250,000 Germans were evacuated before the Potsdam Conference, which approved
the expulsion of the German population. (Skubiszewski, drawing on German sources, puts this
figure at about 400,000.) A further 550,000 followed in the period between the Potsdam
Conference and the end of the year. After reaching a high point of approximately 2 million in
1946, including 1.1 million from Lower Silesia and 160,000 from Upper Silesia, the number of
expellees gradually decreased in the following years, as did that of transports. The figures fell to
approximately 500,000 people in 1947 and 150,000 in both 1948 and 1949. In the so-called
"Link" operation, from March 1950 to the end of 1951, about 44,000 people, mainly women and
children, were evacuated (4,228 from East and West Prussia, 4,023 from East Pomerania and
East Brandenburg, 15,368 from Silesia, 12,744 from Wartheland and 5,964 from central
Poland).
26
The majority of the Polish-speaking population living in the area, the fate of which had been
determined by referendum in 1922, encompassing Upper Silesia, Ermland and Masuria, were
not affected by the compulsory evacuation. The Polish authorities' standpoint on this issue was
clear from the outset: We do not want to keep a single German, nor do we want to give up a
single Pole.
27
These people faced a dramatic choice in 1945 between staying together in their
home region or roaming in foreign parts. It was only possible to stay if they agreed to be
subjected to the national verification process, the main criterion of which was the use of the
Polish Upper Silesian dialect or the standard Polish language. However, those concerned had
to obtain a provisional certificate, or subsequently apply for permanent Polish citizenship. By
the end of 1949, 850,000 people in Upper Silesia and 15,000 in Lower Silesia - more than 85%
of all persons verified in the new western and northern areas of Poland - had been successfully
verified.
In addition, skilled German workers, and their families, considered vital to the economy stayed
behind. They mainly worked in the mining and food-production industries. According to the
1950 census, there were 106,500 in the whole of Poland, almost 80,000 of them in Silesia.
Most lived in the Walbrzych (Waldenburg) coal-mining area (25,000) and Jelenia Góra
(Hirschberg) (about 12,000). After October 1956, almost all of them left for the Federal Republic
of Germany. Very few went to the German Democratic Republic.
However, this was not the end of the displacement of the population to western Europe.
Migration from Poland began in 1956, when people were allowed to leave for the west to rejoin
their families. It continued until the end of the 80s and eventually led not only to a percentage,
but also to an absolute, reduction in the Polish population. Between 1952 and 1955 10,800
persons emigrated from Poland to the GDR and 737 to the FRG. In the next year 20,615 left, of
whom 14,992 went to the Federal Republic; in 1957 the figure rose to 113,297, 22,962 to the
GDR and 90,113 to the FRG; in 1958, 119,236 persons left, but only 8,483 went to the GDR.
In the following years the Polish state made emigration difficult (the final decision on whether a
person was allowed to leave was taken by the Ministry of the Interior). As a result, the number
of emigrants (known in Germany as "late emigrants" [
Spätaussiedler
]) declined. Between 1959
and 1970, 110,752 persons emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany, most of them from
26
Source: "Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung", vol. 1, p. 155 E.
27
According to the estimates made by H. Rogmann, of
Bund Deutscher Osten
, about 550,000 Poles lived
in the German part of Upper Silesia in 1935. See M. Lis, "Wach auf mein Herz und denke", Berlin/Opole,
p. 471.
45
the provinces (
województwa
) of Olsztyn, Opole and Katowice. In the next five years, the figure
was 12,437, and under the agreement signed by Edward Gierek and Helmut Schmidt in Helsinki
in August 1975, 124,493 persons left the country.
28
The wave of emigration to Germany lasted
until 1991. To these figures must be added the political emigrants of the 80s and over 13,000
Jews who left Poland after March 1968.
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