Based on a study of Czech and Polish sources and the contemporary press, the article introduces one of the chapters in the relations between the Czechs and the Poles in the Těšín region immediately following World War II. The focal point is an analysis of the political parties' standpoints to solving the problems of the Polish minority in the Těšín region, which became a very hot issue particularly during the pre-election campaign in 1946. Besides characterising the Těšín situation during the first month following the end of World War II, the text concentrates on the position of citizens who were forced to accept a conditional Reichs citizenship during the war (Deutsche Volksliste) that involved many Poles. The author uses the researched material to document that the issue of the Polish minority in the Těšín region became an important tool in the pre-election campaign and in the struggle between the Communists and the national socialists. Although the communists' attitude towards the Polish minority was the most positive of all the political parties and willing to support part of the Poles' minority demands, the analysis of the election outcome suggests that part of the Poles probably decided to cast a white ballot in the ballot box, thus protesting against the minority policy of the Czechoslovak government.
The article deals with the repatriation of Polish soldiers from Italy to Poland and is based on Czech archival documents which have not been researched before. It reveals the Czechoslovak authorities’ attitude towards the repatriation of the soldiers.
This article, on the basis of the study of one hundred volumes of the Slavonic Review, attempts to present a sketch of the reflection of Polish subjects in this journal. The Slavonic Review was founded as a news periodical, and therefore at the outset there were many texts appearing on its pages from the disciplines of ethnography, linguistics, and literature. This article focuses on the gradual filtering of historical subjects into the Slavonic Review and upon the gradual transformation of the journal into a scholarly periodical in which Czech historians who focus on Poland – as well as their Polish colleagues – published their essays. The article does not present an exhaustive bibliographical summary of Polish studies topics in the Slavonic Review. It is only a sketch of the main trends in the field of the presentation of the history of Poland and of Czech-Polish relations within the Slavonic Review.
The subject of cooperation between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the repatriation of their citizens had heretofore remained marginal to the interest of historians. Yet at the same time there exist a great number of archival sources relating to this topic. In this study the author mainly made use of documents from the national Archives in Prague and the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, but the Polish archives are no less richly endowed. In the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw it is possible to study materials from the State Office of Repatriation, and reports from the Polish diplomatic representation are available at the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. On the basis of these sources, and with reference to findings from relevant scholarly literature that has been previously published, the author endeavors to present to readers the first months of Czechoslovak-Polish cooperation in the repatriation process and to analyze in detail the problems that both states had to cope with in organizing this migration. His narrative ends with the signing of the repatriation treaty between Czechoslovakia and Poland in September, 1945, which commences the next phase in cooperation on population transfers between both states.
Czechoslovakia played the role of a transit country in the migrations of European populations in the Second World War. In particular, transports with the repatriated Polish citizens who made up the largest group of the so-called displaced persons were passing through this territory. The change in the geopolitical situation in Central and Eastern Europe naturally had the effect that a great many Polish citizens also fled to the West through Czechoslovakia. Jews also illegally or semi-legally departed from Poland, usually heading for Palestine with the help of Zionist organizations. However, they often remained in camps for displaced persons, usually in the American occupation zone. Only a few of them made it to Palestine, and those who went, did so in secret. The overflowing camps were a significant burden on the American occupation authority, which is why a plan was developed to settle at least some of the refugees in Czechoslovakia. This article analyzes this subject, which had previously only been superficially documented, on the basis of close study of Czech sources as well as documents from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.