Comments
Thank you for the presentation! I was thinking of the theme of our session, collective experiences. It seems to me that there was no such thing as a “Silesian” experience of World War II, but all the powers in control aimed to divide the population to different national (sub)categories. Would you agree, or is there something you would call a collective Silesian experience, where people would have found and shared commonalities over these national borders?
Thank you for your interest. Sorry it wasn’t visible enough in the presentation, but the format has a time limit. I hope I can convince you. Of course, this is a moot point, but in my opinion there was such a thing. The simplest possible division of inhabitants are: Poles, Germans, locals (Silesians). People who did not feel attached to any nation. They were interested in their neighborhood and their loved ones. This population was multilingual, often the inhabitants spoke German and Polish, but at home they spoke the local dialect. People who mainly speak Polish spoke in favor of German nationality. The Germans felt more attached to their neighborhood than to the state or nation, etc. Neighbors fought their neighbors on the pretext of nationality, families had internal conflicts due to the necessity to take one side or assign them to one side.
At the beginning of World War II, the Germans treated the inhabitants as German or in large part suitable for Germanization. Most Polish elements were killed or thrown into the General Government. Nobody respected the feelings and desires of the inhabitants, regardless of their nationality or understanding of the nation. A specific pattern was imposed on them and they were used. They could not in any way express their problems, death and suffering of loved ones. It threatened to share their fate. After expelling the Germans, the Soviet forces also wanted to use these people. Even if there was no doubt that they were Poles, they were seen as Germans, people who felt neither German nor Poles were created as enemies and Germans. The location of the Germans is obvious. Regardless of whose rule their fate was just as difficult and terrible. After the war, they could only remember the bad things inflicted on them by Germany, they were denied the memory of the victims at the hands of the Russians. Of course, their experiences are not unique in the world or Europe. Their location and fate are definitely different from the war zones in the interior of Poland or Germany. We mainly have a group of people who can be distinguished in some way. These were people who often came from Polish-German families. Often times, individual family members were associated with opposing forces. Their own or imposed attempts to join some “national side” were confronted with the lives of their families, relatives, neighbors, etc. All parties were affected by forced labor, waves of arrests and terror, and persecution. They were prevented from publicly commemorating their experiences, first by the Germans, then by the Soviets. The events presented in the Video-poster are the result of decades of living together in a specific region, which the hostilities and looming totalitarian regimes led to an extreme. It was more than a clash between Poles and Germans, it was also a struggle for survival in a multinational area and a confrontation with people with whom they had lived for years. Their experiences were different than in other parts of Germany or Poland and no less tragic.
For example, deportations, deportations to camps, and terror may serve as a model of collective survival. It affected all groups by both the Germans and the Soviets.
Thanks for your presentation. You bring in quite a lot of different identities and demographics of Upper Silesian Poles and their respective experiences in various situations (“Germanification”, social pressure, language and cultural expressions, imprisonment in concentration camps by Germans and later Soviets, deportations…); what is your methodological approach in analysing these – I assume – very different voices? And what happens to the self-interpretation of experiences when living through multiple of these situations, e.g. are narratives and reflections on experiences of German occupation impacted by later experiences of deportation to the Soviet Union?
Thanks a lot for your interest. The methodology is not necessarily a big problem. Especially for the experiences of the German occupation. The situation is a bit more difficult for the post-war period. Many sources are outside of Poland. Only since the 1990s, more extensive research has been conducted on the events related to the actions of the Soviets. Of course, the experiences of the inhabitants are similar for the actions of Germany and Russia. Both of them were equally not concerned with the national sense of people towards whom they directed their actions and often attributed certain features to them as a pretext: collaborators with the enemy, traitors, etc. Witnesses to these events noticed the similarities.
Thank you for your interesting presentation. I was wondering how these wartime and postwar experiences have been dealt with later, for example in literature and art.
I’m not a specialist in literature or art, but I think it will be difficult to find them. In the years 1945-1989, it was virtually impossible to talk about it, the communists forbade it. The works I know are, above all, documentaries, museum exhibitions and scientific articles or a commemorative monument. Currently, historians of the region are mainly trying to restore the memory of these events.
Thank you for your interest in my presentation. The question is very hard to answer shortly.
They were similar in other areas of Poland incorporated into Germany, especially in Gdańsk Pomerania. It differed from other Polish lands mainly due to the necessity to serve in the Wehrmacht. Speaking of the Soviet occupation, which was terrible for Poles, these people were treated almost like Germans, regardless of who they were and who they felt. In other parts of Poland it was simply exploitation and robbery, here they were seen as enemies, Germans and Nazis.
The inhabitants of the Polish Upper Silesia, as in the rest of the country, primarily tried to survive. It was more difficult for them because they could not speak Polish even. They organized guerrillas and the resistance movement, their activities became part of the Polish underground army “AK. – Armia Krajowa”. The main difference was that liberation from the Germans did not end their fear for life. In Poland, they feared the Soviets, in Silesia the danger was even greater.
Thanks for your presentation. To what extent do you think the experiences and identities of people in this region were similar to, or different from, those of other mixed German/Polish population areas? Could you please elaborate on what is distinctive here?
Sorry, I wrote my answer above. 🙂
Thank you for the poster. You point out that Upper Silesians did not consider themselves neither Polish nor German. This brought to my mind the concept of national indifference that has been pondered over in the nationalism studies in recent years. And linked with national indifference, Brendan Karch has applied the concept of “instrumental nationalism” to Upper Silensians. How do you see the usability of these concepts in your research? I would also be interested in hearing more about your source materials and how they possibly shed light on the link between the experiences of Upper Silesians (related to persecution, terror, deportations etc.) and their national identification.
Sami Suodenjoki
15.3.2022 10:47
Thank you for your interest, many questions and not easy to answer briefly. The video poster has a certain time frame and it is impossible to say about everything. The sense of nationality in this region was more complicated than that of Poles, Germans and Upper Silesians. Many families were mixed, often with brothers or grandparents fighting on opposite sides. Of course, some residents were more interested in themselves and their relatives than in the affairs of the Polish or German nation. The Germans initially believed that most of these inhabitants could be Germanized – easier or more difficult. The theses of Bernard Karch and his “instrumental nationalism” are particularly important for the study of the attitudes of residents facing the choice of a nation or family, inhabitants of a village / city, friends. The ethnic mix and, above all, German actions aimed at Polishness and non-Germanness presented the inhabitants with very difficult choices. Very often, people who had known each other for years and lived in the neighborhood became mutual torturers and victims. It also contributed to the escape from the Soviets and Poles when the front was approaching. The Soviets came out of similar assumptions as the Germans, who, after all, often treated even Poles during the war, the fate of people coming from Polish-German families or who could be accused of collaborating with the Germans were in a much worse position. Ultimately, the Germans treated the inhabitants as Germans, which provided a very convenient excuse for the Soviets to take advantage of this population after the war. Experience, of course, meant that during the war many claimed to be Germans, and after the war many claimed to be Poles. This is particularly important in the context of the ineffectiveness of Germanization activities, as their addressees also saw the disadvantages of these activities (for themselves). Post-war experiences made many of these families distrust the communist Polish authorities, remembering the actions of the Soviets after the defeat of Germany. This was one of the arguments to take advantage of the possibility of going to western Germany during the Cold War.
In my main research, I focus mainly on the pre-war years, which are the prelude to the activities presented. Until now, I mainly use archives: official documentation (territorial, police, military) and more and more scientific studies. In order to understand the relations during World War II, one must at least go back to the division of Silesia in 1919-1921. The relationships are relatively well developed in Polish literature and are gradually disseminated, among others by the Polish History Museum.
Kamil Kołodziej
15.3.2022 22:38