Greek Refugees in Poland
Greek Refugees in Poland
The 2011 census in Poland showed that only 0.15 % of the country's 39 million people are foreigners; 1,5% are representants of other nationalities but holding a Polish passport
(www.stat.gov.pl). Polish people constituted 65% of the population of the country before World War
II. This situation changed dramatically after WW II. Firstly, as a result of the war, Poland lost its
Jewish population (before the war: 10%); under the terms of the Congress in Potsdam, 2.5 million
Germans were resettled to Germany. Then the new communist government sought to make the
Polish country nationally uniform. In 1946 Poland conducted the so-called 'Operation Vistula': almost 0.5 million Ukrainians and 40 thousand Belarusians were forced to leave Poland.
Studying the maps showing the major areas of distribution of the national minorities in
Poland, we can see that the German minority (the largest) lives in areas formerly belonging to
Germany and the Ukrainians are scattered across Poland (as a consequence of Operation Vistula displacement and the breakdown of the Ukrainian minority seeking to establish an independent state). One of the next minorities on the map is .... the Greek minority, concentrated in the north, the south-west and south-east of the country. The question then arises: how did this happen? Looking for information on this topic, we can find references to the fact that immediately after WW II, during the Greek Civil War, Poland received 30 thousand refugees from Greece. And this at the same time as the powers of the communist regime sought to make Poland nationally uniform? The issue is complicated and still shrouded in many mysteries.
This essay is an attempt to explain the suddenly appearance of a large Greek minority in
Poland at the turn of the 40s and the 50s, as well as an attempt to look into the functioning of the
Greek minority in Poland from the communist regime to the present time. The literature in the
Polish
The 2011 census in Poland showed that only 0.15 % of the country's 39 million people are foreigners; 1,5% are representants of other nationalities but holding a Polish passport
(www.stat.gov.pl). Polish people constituted 65% of the population of the country before World War
II. This situation changed dramatically after WW II. Firstly, as a result of the war, Poland lost its
Jewish population (before the war: 10%); under the terms of the Congress in Potsdam, 2.5 million
Germans were resettled to Germany. Then the new communist government sought to make the
Polish country nationally uniform. In 1946 Poland conducted the so-called 'Operation Vistula': almost 0.5 million Ukrainians and 40 thousand Belarusians were forced to leave Poland.
Studying the maps showing the major areas of distribution of the national minorities in
Poland, we can see that the German minority (the largest) lives in areas formerly belonging to
Germany and the Ukrainians are scattered across Poland (as a consequence of Operation Vistula displacement and the breakdown of the Ukrainian minority seeking to establish an independent state). One of the next minorities on the map is .... the Greek minority, concentrated in the north, the south-west and south-east of the country. The question then arises: how did this happen? Looking for information on this topic, we can find references to the fact that immediately after WW II, during the Greek Civil War, Poland received 30 thousand refugees from Greece. And this at the same time as the powers of the communist regime sought to make Poland nationally uniform? The issue is complicated and still shrouded in many mysteries.
This essay is an attempt to explain the suddenly appearance of a large Greek minority in
Poland at the turn of the 40s and the 50s, as well as an attempt to look into the functioning of the
Greek minority in Poland from the communist regime to the present time. The literature in the
Polish