Sunday - September 09, 2007

Poland's Physical Shift Westward after WWII

After Word War II, the Soviet Union physically shifted Poland's boundaries westward. A large chunk of eastern Poland was given to the Ukraine (the Soviet Union) and then the Soviets add a large portion of Germany's eastern frontier to the Poles. In essence, Poland shifted westward, the Soviet Union had a new larger land buffer against invasion, and millions of people were forced to move.

Der Spiegel has the story of one such refugee and his homecoming:

The Poles are now about 15 years ahead of the Ukrainians. During that time, they rebuilt their economy and established a solid foundation for democracy. The crumbling facades of hulking office buildings in Poland's cities have given way to glass-and-steel towers developed with Western venture capital. The Poles have even become accustomed to drinking espresso and wine instead of inexpensive tea and vodka. Their country is a member of NATO and of the European Union. Average incomes in Poland, adjusted for inflation, have grown by about 70 percent in the last 15 years.

For many Poles, it takes a walk through the pedestrian zone of a town like Ivano-Frankivsk to realize how far their country has come. Poles are the Westerners here, while socialism seems to be less of a distant memory for their eastern neighbors. Very few houses are renovated, cows and flocks of geese roam along the sides of potholed streets, factories are crumbling and illuminated billboards advertising Western department store chains are few and far between. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians work in Poland today -- as carers for the elderly, cleaning women and construction workers. Many Ukrainians hope to achieve the same economic successes as their neighbors and even -- some day in the future -- EU membership.

East of Poland, the Polish currency, the zloty, is seen as hard Western currency and is as welcome as the German mark once was in Silesia. This helps to explain why the visitors from Poland view the Ukrainians from the same perspective as German nostalgia tourists once saw their eastern neighbors -- from a slightly patronizing standpoint.

"Everything that is beautiful and old here is Polish," says an elderly woman in the group. "The Ukrainians only built gray Soviet architecture."

A man sitting at the next table downs his 100-gram shot of vodka, shakes his head and complains: "Everything is so run down."

'You Have Two Hours to Leave'

The hardships of Galicia's Polish population began long before 1945. The Red Army marched into eastern Poland in 1939. The two dictators to the west and east, Hitler and Stalin, had already divided up the country between them. The communist secret service persecuted Polish priests, teachers, aristocrats and intellectuals.

The Germans came later, deporting the Jews but giving Ukrainian nationalists free rein. The troops of Ukrainian militia leader Stepan Bandera ran roughshod over their Polish neighbors while the German military looked the other way.

Whenever the Ukrainians went on their rampages, armed with scythes and pitchforks, young Deptula would hide in the hay. He was once forced to watch as Bandera partisans tortured his aunt with sharpened wooden skewers in an effort to force her to speak Ukrainian instead of Polish.

Despite the Ukrainian atrocities, the arrival of the Red Army was no liberation. Poland's borders were pushed westward. Millions of its inhabitants, most of them women, the elderly and children like Deptula, were forced to move to accommodate the new boundaries. "It was June 15, 1945," he recalls. "An officer walked into our house, his pregnant wife by his side. 'You have two hours to get out, and then we move in,' he said."

Author: The Machiavellian
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