Flight and Expulsion of Germans From Poland During and After World War II - Repopulation

Repopulation

People from all over Poland moved in to replace the former German population in a process parallel to the expulsions. While the Germans were interned and expelled, up to 5 million settlers were either attracted or forced to settle the area. The settlers can be grouped according to their background:

• settlers from Central Poland moving in on a voluntary basis (majority)
• Former slave workers of Nazi Germany:2,8 million Poles that had been freed from forced labor in Nazi Germany (up to two millions)
• Repatriants- Poles expelled from the Kresy areas east of the Curzon line annexed by the Soviet Union, who made up for less than 10% of the overall Polish population, were preferably settled in the new western territories where they made up for 26% of the population (up to two millions)
• Poles coming from Western and Southern Europe, e.g. French miners and farmers from Prnjavor, Bosnia and Herzegovina region
• non-Poles forcefully resettled during Operation Vistula in 1947. Large numbers of Ukrainians were forced to move from south eastern Poland under a 1947 Polish government operation, termed Operation Vistula, which aimed at dispersing, and therefore assimilating, the Ukrainian population, which had not been expelled eastward already, throughout the newly acquired territories. Belarusians living around the area around Białystok were also pressured into relocating to the areas vacated by fleeing German population for the same reasons. This scattering of members of non-Polish ethnic groups throughout the country was an attempt by the Polish authorities to dissolve the unique ethnic identity of groups like the Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lemkos, and broke the proximity and communication necessary for strong communities to form.
• Tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust-survivors, most of them being "repatriates" from the East, settled mostly in Lower Silesia creating Jewish cooperatives and institutions - the largest communities were founded in Wroclaw, Szczecin, Dzierżoniów and Wałbrzych. However most of them later left Poland.
• 10 000 - 15 000 Greeks and Slavomacedonians - Refugees of the Greek Civil War

Polish and Soviet newspapers and officials encouraged Poles to relocate to the west - "the land of opportunity". These new territories - known in Poland as the Recovered or Regained Territories - were described as a place where opulent villas abandoned by fleeing Germans waited for the brave; fully furnished houses and businesses were available for the taking. These were the just rewards for the hardships and bitter losses of the war. The papers urged, "Go! Tomorrow might be too late".