Date: October 8, 2025
Time: 18:00
Venue: Pracownia Etnograficzna, Warecka 4/6, Warsaw

We invite you to a public debate organized around the latest issue of Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa. The discussion will center on the complex ways histories are remembered, lived, and negotiated in post-displacement Central Europe. In the lead-up to the debate, we’ve been featuring the articles from this issue on our Facebook page. Be sure to check them out for background and insights!

We especially encourage you to read Michal Korhel’s and Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska’s editorial – they offer an introduction to the issue’s central themes.

Participants:

• Kamila Fiałkowska (University of Warsaw)
• Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur (New York University)
• Dariusz Stola (Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Moderator:
Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska (our PI and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sprawy Narodowościowe)

The event will delve into themes of memory, identity, displacement, and the legacies of migration in the region. It is free and open to all. We warmly welcome your presence and contributions.

In the interview in “Wysokie Obcasy”, journalist Dorota Wodecka speaks with Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, our PI and author of the acclaimed book “Ziemie. Historie odzyskiwania i utraty” (“Lands: Stories of Recovery and Loss”). The conversation delves into variety of postwar experiences of millions of people who were resettled to Poland’s so-called Recovered Territories, but also tackles the questions we research in our project.Karolina compares how these processes looked like in Poland and postwar Czechoslovakia, but also shows the long inheritance of them. How are our genealogies intertwined with the post-1945 policies and decisions of our acenstors? Why Polish settlers decorated German graves, especially in the early years after the war, when they had no graves of their own loved ones nearby? How cultural recycling shaped the new communities, from reusing German furniture and religious monuments to transforming war memorials into Polish shrines? It all contributes to a wide range of emotional inheritance the inhabitants of post-displacement regions face on the daily basis.

In May, our researcher Michal Korhel participated in a student-led march from Postoloprty to Žatec in northwestern Czechia, held in remembrance of the tragic events of late May and early June 1945, during which hundreds, possibly thousands, of German-speaking civilians — including women and children — were killed in Postoloprty.

Throughout the march, participants symbolically carried the names of the victims, aiming to foster a personal connection with the past and to restore individual identities to those who have long remained anonymous in historical records.

The route traced key locations linked to the massacre, and the experience was marked by several deeply emotional moments — including an encounter with a local resident whose father was among the victims, and stops at memorials established by activists.

While silence persists in some local communities, memory initiatives — often spearheaded by individuals from outside the region — continue to play a crucial role in preserving awareness of this painful chapter of history.

The march was not only an act of remembrance, but also a call for historical accountability — an attempt to address the overlooked and unspoken aspects of the past and to give voice to those who have been silenced for decades.

In the accompanying text, Michal reflects on his experience, shares conversations held during the walk, and situates these moments within the broader framework of local memory culture.

Link to the blog post you can find here.

In the latest issue of the Zeitschrift für Slawistik you can find an article written by Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska titled “Memory-making and Vampire-hunting: A Hauntological Study of the “Recovered” Pomerania in the 1950s”.

This article examines how memory and materiality were managed in the Recovered Territories, lands incorporated by Poland after 1945, through a case study set in Central Pomerania. It juxtaposes Bram Stoker’s Dracula with 1958 bureaucratic documents concerning the trade in cemetery stones from former German graveyards near Koszalin. The study reveals how local and central authorities in People’s Poland navigated the legal, political, and symbolic challenges of dealing with remnants of German heritage. By exploring tensions between top-down directives from Warsaw and local interpretations, the article sheds light on broader post-war memory processes and the contested legacy of German material culture in the 1950s.

Link to the article you can find here.

fieldwork in Pomerania, photo: Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska