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Sifting Poles from Germans? Ethnic Cleansing and Ethnic Screening in Upper Silesia, 1945–1949

2010; Maney Publishing; Volume: 88; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/see.2010.0016

2222-4327

Hugo Service,

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics

Ethnic screening played an important role in the ethnic cleansing carried out by the wartime German occupiers and post-war governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia during the 1940s. This article undertakes a detailed examination of this phenomenon through a local case study of the ethnic 'verification action' implemented in the district of Oppeln/Opole in western Upper Silesia by Polish officials between 1945 and 1949. It contends that the way this process was put into practice was strongly influenced by the desire of the post-war Polish authorities to strengthen Poland's claim to the new western and northern territories acquired from Germany at the end of the Second World War. It seeks to demonstrate that — characteristic of all the major cases of ethnic screening implemented in East-Central Europe in this period — the 'Verification action' was a flawed attempt to apply a nationalist conception of identity to a region where most locals had never thought of themselves in 'national' terms.