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Issue 148 (2)

Flight – Refugee – Repatriation: Wartime Migration Processes in a Comparative Perspective

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Publication date: 08.2021

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Na okładce wykorzystano obraz Jana Rembowskiego (1879–1923) pt. Uchodźcy ze zbiorów Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (MP 4621 MNW). Źródło: https://polona.pl/item/z-zycia-korpusu-ochrony-pogranicza-na-polesiu-fragment-z-wesela-chlopskiego-na-pol-esiu,MTAxNzYwNg/0/#info:metadata
 
Publikacja sfinansowana ze środków przeznaczonych na działalność naukową Wydziału Historycznego Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND  licence icon

Editorial team

Issue Editors Kamila Ruszała, Piotr Szlanta

Issue content

Tomasz Ładoń

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 217 - 231

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.017.13854

During the First Civil War, political emigration occurred in Rome. The author of the paper distin­guishes three stages of this emigration. The first concerns the period immediately after the outbreak of the First Civil War in 88 BC. At that time, a small group of refugees escaping Sullan repression reached Spain and Africa. The second stage involved the persecution that broke out in Rome after the victory of Cinna and Marius. In this case, emigration concerned a much wider population. First, refugees fled to the East to join Sulla, but they also sought out asylum in other parts of the Republic, for example in Spain or Africa. The third stage of emigration followed the victory of L. Cornelius Sulla in the First Civil War in Italy and the introduction of proscription (82 BC). Spain became the main destination for refugees, and their number was so great that they established their own center of power, organized armed forces, and resisted Sullan troops for several years.

In the paper, the author presents the reasons emigrants had for leaving Italy, the scale of the phenomenon, the main directions and circumstances of emigration, its nature as well as the actions undertaken by refugees to return to Italy.

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Michał Norbert Faszcza

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 233 - 246

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.018.13855

Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico are a unique Roman source containing information on barbarian migrations in the 1st century BC. Despite numerous studies dedicated to Caesar’s narrative style, there still is a lack of reflection on the possible causes of migrations and the attitude of wan­dering barbarians to the Roman rule. Contemporary scholars have a tendency to see barbarians as Rome’s ‘eternal’ enemies, and often assume that they ‘must’ have manifested aggressive attitudes. By incorporating anthropological reflection and adopting the ‘other’s’ perspective, it is possible to better understand mechanisms prompting barbarians to look for a new homeland. No less of an important aspect is the reconstruction of Caesar’s way of presenting the phenomenon of migration, which allows us to explain why he treated it as hostile in every case.

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Teresa Wolińska

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 247 - 262

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.019.13856

Paulicians, treated as Manicheans and persecuted in Armenia and the Byzantine Empire, escaped to the Arab-occupied territories where they established a state (843–878) and kept invading Byzantium in alliance with the Emirs of Melitene. Eventually Basil I (867–886) was able to defeat John Chrisocheiros and capture Tefrike. Constantine V, Basil I and John Tzimiskes drafted Paulicians into the Byzantine army and got them relocated to the territory of the empire, hoping to use their military potential to defend the borders against the Bulgarians. Consequently, a substantial group of Paulicians found themselves in the Balkans. According to some scholars they were the predecessors of the Bogomil heresy.

* Artykuł powstał w ramach grantu NCN: Herezje dualistyczne w dziejach Europy Południowo­-Wschodniej, IX–XV wiek, nr DEC-2016/22/M/HS3/00212.

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Sławomir Bralewski

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 263 - 276

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.020.13857

In the second half of the 4th century, the migration of Goths to the Balkan Peninsula took place, which led to a serious crisis in the Roman Empire. Its consequence was the defeat suffered by the Romans at Adrianople (378), in which emperor Valens died. This battle is considered to be one of the decisive battles in the history of mankind, which has changed the face of the late Roman history to such an extent that one sees it as a caesura marking the end of antiquity. How did the authors of ecclesiastical histories living at that time as those who, after all, devoted a lot of space to political history in their works relate to these events and to the entire Gothic crisis that was the result of the migration of the Goths? Is it possible to see any differences in the presentation of these events by Rufin of Aquileia, Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomen, Philostorgius or Theodoret of Cyrus? The author tries to answer these questions in this article.

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Wojciech Krawczuk

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 277 - 281

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.021.13858

After the Swedish Civil War of 1598 hundreds of exiles left their home country and fled to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, hoping for the protection of king Sigismund. Composition of this group and ways the refugees were helped are known thanks to the conducted research. The king could not support exiles too openly because of the gentry’s reluctance to strangers, but they received general salary and small privileges. However, many actions of this group are still unexplored. One can especially mention their participation in the construction of the Royal Fleet, activity of this group in Gdańsk (Danzig), and other actions carried out by the exiles in support of the Polish branch of House of Vasa.

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Artur Goszczyński

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 283 - 299

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.022.13859

The uprising ignited by Bohdan Chmielnicki had a multidimensional effect on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One of its consequences was the migration of population forced by Cossaks’ actions. The gentry inhabiting the southeastern parts of the country had to flee inland fearful for their lives. Jews, who were a group prone to being persecuted by Cossacks, acted in a similar way. Refugees from the Ukrainian provinces first fled to the neighbouring city fortresses which, however, capitulated under the siege of the rebels. People who survived the slaughter, usually carried out by the Cossacks, tried to reach the central part of the country hoping to escape the rebels’ sabres and spring guns.

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Krzysztof Popek

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 301 - 314

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.023.13860

One of the main goals of Serbian Uprisings was to banish Muslims from the Serbian lands. After creation of the modern Serbian state, Serbia’s status was still that of a half-autonomic province, and so its authorities tried to use agreements with the Sublime Porte to achieve this goal. Although Ottoman authorities repeatedly permitted the eviction of the Muslim population from the Principality, later on they did not implement the agreements, taking advantage of the weak Serbian position. In 1833, however, things changed: The Sublime Porte allowed the Serbian authorities to banish Muslims from their territory, including the six nahiyahs then incorporated into the Serbian state (Krajina, Crna Reka, Paraćin, Kruševac, Stari Vlah and Jadar with Rađevina).

* The research presented in this article was financed by the grant of the Polish National Science Center: The Balkan Migration Processes in the 19th Century. Cases of Bulgaria and Serbia (2017/25/N/HS3/00576).

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Dariusz Faszcza

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 315 - 329

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.024.13861

The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 ended in a catastrophe for the Ottoman Empire. As a result of military operations, 80% of European territory inhabited by the population of four millions were irretrievably lost. A large number of Muslim refugees appeared in the Asian part of the Empire during and after the military operations. This fact was used by the High Porte to change demographic relations in Thrace and Anatolia. These activities led to construction of a homogeneous state and significantly contributed to economic changes in the areas subjected to the settlement. In the national dimension, they contributed to the development of Turkish nationalism.

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Kamil Ruszała

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 331 - 347

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.025.13862

As a result of war hostilities which began in the Habsburg monarchy in 1914, migrations of the civilian population started, connected with the movement of war refugees from the eastern front, i.e. Galicia, and since May 1915 also from the Italian front. Austria had to face relocation and accommodation of hundreds of thousands of civilians, who were put in special refugee camps or beyond them in various towns and cities in the monarchy with local residents or in specially adapted buildings. The article shows selected aspects of the system of barrack camps created during the First World War in the Habsburg monarchy, focusing on the efficiency of the system in the face of real challenges of the war period.

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Piotr Szlanta

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 349 - 361

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.026.13863

During the World War I millions of civilians all around Europe and the Near East were often forced to leave their homes unprepared and in desperate hope of finding safety and refuge in distant lands. From the very beginning of the war, refugees became the topic and subject for both propagandists and artists alike. For the purposes of this article, a selected number of examples of drawings and paintings, presenting perspectives of Latvian, Polish and Jewish subjects of the tsar, have been chosen. In the iconography, war refugees are generally presented as innocent and helpless victims of the conflict, and as a proof of the brutality and barbarity of the unfolding hostilities. The article also explores the way artists honed in on the depictions of crying women; troubled and helpless old men; small children snuggling up to their mothers and people contending with hunger, cold, fear, disease, uncertainty of the future and longing for lost homes as well as separated family members. Very often, the typical backgrounds for such scenes are ruins and burning buildings. The artists who depicted the war refugees’ fate did not always share such dramatic experiences personally. However, they clealy acknowledged the fact that it played a huge role in forming the identity of the nations they belonged to.

* Artykuł powstał w wyniku badań zrealizowanych w ramach grantu Narodowego Centrum Nauki 2018/29/B/HS3/02075

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Marcin Rzepka

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 363 - 380

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.027.13864

By focusing on the Assyrian Christians scattered around Urmia in the north-western part of Iran during World War I, the article analyzes the processes and changes that occurred in the religious life of the population under the circumstances of depravity, trauma and migration. The migrations, as it is suggested, caused two opposing tendencies among Assyrians strengthening individualization and ethnicization of the religious matters. The migratory experience played a crucial role in transforming the Church institutions as it might be seen in reference to the Assyrian Church of the East and shifting the focus away from religious authority while giving space to more emotional, private, and finally Pentecostal religiosity.

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Jacek Pietrzak

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 381 - 395

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.028.13865

During the World War II Iran was an important centre of Polish war refugee communities. Members of Poland’s social elites (intelligentsia and also landed gentry to a certain degree) who had experienced Soviet repressions played a key role in establishing and operating a network of Polish institutions and organisations in Iran. The author focuses on profiles of members of various professional groups and examines their significance in activity of Polish governmental apparatus (social welfare, education) as well as cultural, educational and political organisations.

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Beata Kozaczyńska

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 397 - 410

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.029.13866

In December 1942 and in the following two winter months of 1943 during the race selection at transit camp in Zamość (UWZ-Lager Zamosc), Germans deported about 3,500 Polish children, who qualified as “racially worthless” from the camp. Most of them were separated from their parents. After a stay of several days or several weeks at the camp, having been crammed into unheated freight carriages, they arrived in six “death transports” to three poviats: Garwolin, Siedlce and Mińsk Mazowiecki, located in the eastern part of the Warsaw district. The article presents the attitudes of Poles rushing to save the children, disregarding the difficulties that occurred at that time in the face of the prolonged war and German terror. Both the inhabitants of the area known by surnames and those who are now nameless, joined the rescue operation. Their determination, commitment, and sacrifice during the relief operation that lasted for many months under the occupation up until the end of the war, deserve emphasis. Undoubtedly, it was a show of huge selflessness of people of goodwill to save the lives of innocent and defenceless Polish children from the Zamość region.

* Praca powstała w wyniku realizacji projektu badawczego o nr 2017/25/B/HS3/01085, finansowanego ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki w Krakowie

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Aleksandra Sylburska

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 411 - 423

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.030.13867

There were many Polish inhabitants in Hungary after the end of the World War II. They were economic emigrants who arrived at the end of the 19th century or refugees who crossed the Polish-Hungarian border in 1939. The goal of Polish representatives in Budapest (diplomats from July 1946) was to organize repatriation/re-emigration which would include both groups. The execution was not easy due to the problems with supplies, lack of money and difficulties to estimate the number of Polish people in Hungary. According to Polish government regime, repatriated people/re-emigrants were to help in rebuilding of the destroyed country, populating it, and developing Recovered Territories, whose status in the first post-war years had not been officially established yet.

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Tomasz Korban

History Notebooks, Issue 148 (2), 2021, pp. 425 - 436

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.21.031.13868

The article presents issue of the Polish displaced persons on the territory of the former Third Reich in light of coverage in the The Polish Daily & Soldier’s Daily newspaper (Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza – DPDŻ). The author of this article verifies this journalistic representation, which wasn’t in line with reality. Journalists wrote about such topics as material conditions in the DP camps, possibilities of cultural activities in camps and attitudes of camp authorities towards the DPs. The newspaper criticised the UNRRA which it regarded as a proponent of compulsory repatriation. This and other opinions have been confronted with the actual state of research. Another question raised by the newspaper was one concerning the international efforts taken to solve problem of the displaced persons. DPDŻ’s journalists were against Moscow and its satellites states, which sought to repatriate all the DPs.

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