Historical Population
For more details on this topic, see Historical demography of Poland.For many centuries, until the end of World War II, the Polish population was composed of many significant ethnic minorities. The population of Poland decreased due to the losses sustained during the Holocaust, and became one of the most ethnically homogeneous in Europe as a result of radically altered borders after the war. The subsequent repatriations were accompanied by two waves of forced migrations ordered by the Soviet and Polish communist authorities, including the transfers of sizable Polish population from the prewar territories of Eastern Poland, which today are divided between Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, the transfer of ethnic Ukrainians back to USSR, and the Germans to Germany from lands ceded to Poland after the Yalta Conference.
Read more about this topic: Polish Society
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or population:
“Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature; they can offer no reason or “guess,” but they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces the reason and the understanding at the same time. Of such sort is always the only pertinent question and the only satisfactory reply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)