Remembering the Others in the narratives of new settlers. The case of the Western Territories in the post-war Poland

Abstract

The purpose of the text is to present the nature of the memory of the “Others” in post-war Lower Silesia in the biographical narratives of those displaced from Eastern Galicia. The group of “Others” includes the autochthonous population of Lower Silesia, but also distinct groups who came to Lower Silesia after the war: those displaced by the Operation Vistula, people from central Poland and Greater Poland, Jewish survivors and Soviet soldiers. The stories of the “Others” present us with a fragment of the post-war world, redefined by war and migration. Using the memoirs of Eastern displaced persons, the article shows how Eastern displaced persons remember their first contacts with the “Others”, but also stereotypes and opinions about other national and ethnic groups in the first postwar years in the Western Territories of Poland. Using the example of excerpts from biographical narratives in the text, correlations between representations of groups of “Others” and the formation of a sense of settlement in the new territories and the construction of postwar self-identification.