German Population Displacement and the Fight Against Manifestationsof Germanness in Bielsko and Bielsko District After World War II

After the Second World War there was a great urgency among the Polish Communists to get rid of Germans from Polish society (to marginalize them totally and not to erase as the Nazis had done). They were charged with war crimes against Poles and, generally, with participation in the genocide committed by the German Nazis. Besides, as some Poles had signed the Volksliste, it was thought they should be punished as well. The problem took on considerable significance in Bielsko and its neighbourhood, inhabited by a lot of Germans. The mass operation commenced in the summer of 1945; during the operation, performed with varying intensity until 1950, about 7000 people were – voluntarily or forcibly – displaced from the area. At the same time, the operation to extirpate all displays of Germanness took place. Speaking the German language was prohibited and German notices, inscriptions and slogans had to disappear from houses, advertisements, buildings, municipality and government offices, tombstones and prints; even the German names were removed from the calendar. The operation assumed the most substantial proportions in the years 1947 to 1948.
 

After the Second World War there was a great urgency among the Polish Communists to get rid of Germans from Polish society (to marginalize them totally and not to erase as the Nazis had done). They were charged with war crimes against Poles and, generally, with participation in the genocide committed by the German Nazis. Besides, as some Poles had signed the Volksliste, it was thought they should be punished as well. The problem took on considerable significance in Bielsko and its neighbourhood, inhabited by a lot of Germans. The mass operation commenced in the summer of 1945; during the operation, performed with varying intensity until 1950, about 7000 people were – voluntarily or forcibly – displaced from the area. At the same time, the operation to extirpate all displays of Germanness took place. Speaking the German language was prohibited and German notices, inscriptions and slogans had to disappear from houses, advertisements, buildings, municipality and government offices, tombstones and prints; even the German names were removed from the calendar. The operation assumed the most substantial proportions in the years 1947 to 1948.