THE POLISH EMIGRÉ SCHOOL SYSTEM IN BELGIUM DURING THE EARLY POSTWAR YEARS

• Authors: Goddeeris I.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

During the first years after the WW II children of the Polish migrants in Belgium could study the language and culture of their parents in special Polish classes, and Polish adolescents got scholarships to study at Belgian universities. Both levels of education were involved in the struggle between supporters and opponents of the new Communist regime in Warsaw, who both wanted to mobilize the Polish migrants for their program. This article analyzes to what extent this conflict could politicize the migrants' eduction and narrow other gaps within the Belgian Polonia, for instance between generations or classes. Warsaw built up a new web of migrants' schools immediately after the war. The prewar Catholic schools on the other hand did not succeed in keeping their head above water and all disappeared by the beginning of 1948 (only in the 1950's the anti-Communist schools would be reactivated). The Polish exile government in London indeed did not want to invest a lot in the primary education of the children of miners who had emigrated to Belgium before the war. Instead, it attached great interest to young intellectuals who had left Poland during the war. In the summer of 1945, a 'Centre des Hautes Études Polonaises en Belgique' was founded, that gave scholarships to a few hundreds of Polish DP's to study at Belgian universities. This project did however not appear very successful, as most of the students could not be mobilized for the anti-Communist political program.

Keywords

EN

POLISH MIGRANTS EDUCATION (BELGIUM)

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN w Warszawie
• Journal: Dzieje Najnowsze
• Year: 2005
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 79-91
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Goddeeris I.

• I. Goddeeris, Leuven University, Institute of History, Leuven, Belgium

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

05PLAAAA0028640