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.
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.
The blog post was quest-written by Karolina Gembara, a visual artist, researcher, born and raised in Ząbkowice Śląskie in a family resettled from various parts of today’s Ukraine.
A chance discovery of a bag filled with old photographs led the author of this month’s blog post into a poignant reflection on memory, inheritance, and the aftermath of postwar displacement.
The found images – wedding portraits, marginal notes, rare wartime snapshots – revealed a tangled history of Polish and German lives, layered with silence, loss, and emotional complexity. Among them, a photo album titled Erinnerungen (Memories), likely once owned by a displaced German family, raised urgent questions about symbolic appropriation, mourning, and the uneasy intimacy of living with things that are both ours and not ours.
From July 14 to 18, 2025, three members of our team—Magdalena Bubík, Karina Hoření, and Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska—presented their research at the 9th Annual Conference of the Memory Studies Association, which took place in Prague, Czechia, under the theme Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)Stability. Conferences are always a collective endeavor, and we’re happy we could be part of this one. We reconnected with long-time colleagues, forged new friendships, and had the opportunity to share our research within the SpectralRecyling project.
Magdalena presented part of her PhD study in a talk titled Two Phantom Churches, Only One Remembered: A Comparative Study of Protestant and Catholic Churches in Post-Displacement Regions. She focused on Piła, where two churches were demolished post-1945, but only one has been actively commemorated, both in the cityscape and in collective memory: the Roman Catholic one. Her analysis explored why certain religious sites are remembered while others are forgotten, shaped by memory politics, local agency, and material decay. She was part of the panel Nostalgia and Memoryscapes, alongside Ümit Fırat Açıkgöz (American University of Beirut), who spoke on Monuments, Ruins, and the Making of the Future: The Crisis of Urban Memory in Early Republican Istanbul (1923–1949), and Bjorn Krondorfer (Northern Arizona University), who presented on Testimonial and Toxic Landscapes and Memory Objects. All three talks focused on the memory in particular landscapes, where people’s individual stories cross paths with the larger projects of rebuilding, both the past and the future. The panel was moderated by Marcin Jarząbek (Jagiellonian University, Kraków).
Karina presented in the panel Conspiracy Theories, Myths, and Alternative Histories: Probing ‘Speculative Memories’ in Times of Crises, organized by Ilana Hartikainen (University of Helsinki). Her talk, Ghosts and Treasures: Stories about Post-War Property Changes in the Czech Borderlands, explored a topic she had been eager to tackle since the very beginning of our shared project. Namely, how narratives of postwar property shifts in the Czech borderlands have long revolved around the motif of treasure hunting—and how that motif has evolved. Ilana presented on A Pseudohistorical Brotherhood: Pro-Russian Sentiment in Czech Political Rhetoric During Russia’s War in Ukraine, introducing us to the concept of pseudohistory to explore how Pan-Slavism is present (and more often absent) in contemporary Czech far-right narratives. The panel also included Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (University of Kentucky), who discussed her forthcoming book on sacred landscapes in Western Siberia. The session was moderated by Tatjana Menise (University of Tartu).
Karolina presented on the final day of the conference, in a panel she co-organized with our colleagues from the MEMPOP ERC StG project, affiliated at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. The panel was chaired by the PI of that project, Johana Wyss. Together with Jitka Králová, Laura Mafizzoli, and Ioana Brunet, Karolina explored the question of reconciliation: When is memory enough? Karolina’s talk, “My uncle used to collect everything. Now, I somehow admire him”: The Stories of Formerly German Objects Between State-Level Administration and Personal Narratives, looked at the everyday ethics of keeping, discarding, or interpreting things that come with layered pasts. She was looking for a method of dealing with entangled pasts, stemming from a case study she encountered during her fieldwork in Wałcz, Poland. Ioana Brunet shared insights from her initial fieldwork in Romanian Bukovina in a presentation titled Oktoberfest in the East, while Jitka and Laura summed up their fieldworks: Laura in Georgia, Gulag past presencing: Generational Memory and the Politics of Reconciliation in Georgia, exploring stories of reparations for Soviet-era repressions, and Jitka in Czechia, Uprootedness as a symptom of marginalisation: Case study from the Ústecký region, where she examined how the local history of expulsion is used to explain the development of the region.
Taken together, the three presentations by Magdalena, Karina, and Karolina reflect the core questions at the heart of our research team: How do material remnants—whether sacred architecture, things sought after as treasures, or everyday objects—shape post-displacement experience? What ethical, emotional, and political negotiations emerge when people confront things left behind by others? And how do individual stories, state-level frameworks, and ghostly traces intersect in the formation of new societies? These panels offered a valuable space to test ideas, refine concepts, and stay in dialogue with scholars working across geographies and disciplines. We’re looking forward to building on these conversations in the months to come.
pictures from the 9th Annual Conference of the Memory Studies Association
Two members of our research team, Karina Hoření and Magdalena Bubík, used the summer not just to relax, but also to dive into academic work and spread the word about our project. In early July, they set off from two different cities – Magdalena from Kraków and Karina from Prague – to meet at a shared destination: the Slow Memory Conference in Porto.
The event was organized by the COST Action network SLOW MEMORY, which brings together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences under the common motto: slow down and take time to remember well. This idea shaped the entire conference, fostering reflection, collaboration, and attentiveness to memory and history.
During the conference, Karina and Magdalena led a workshop titled Slow Memory in Photographs. Working in small groups, participants discussed postcards featuring sites from our field research. They grouped the images by theme, then created their own postcards inspired by the conference experience. The workshop took place in the evocative setting of a former lamp factory – now repurposed as the Lino Cultural Space. We included new technologies in our workshop, using a mini printer to create photographs on site to capture the experience of various memory layers visible in the space. It is no wonder that the participants did not have a problem with identifying some ghosts lingering in that place.
The time Karina and Magdalena spent in Porto brought not only valuable new contacts and insights but also a wave of fresh, ocean-inspired energy – and plenty of ideas for future research initiatives.
during conferencevibe of the Espaco Lino venue was perfect for our hauntological topic, photo: Johana WyssEspaco Lino venue, layers of memory, photo: Karina Hořeníintroduction during the workshop, photo: Johana Wyssparticipants of the workshop, photo: Karina HořeníMagdalena and Karina during the workshop, photo: Johana Wyssinspired by postcards from our fieldwork, participants created their own postcards, photo: Karina Hoření
We’re pleased to share that, starting this July, our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, has been appointed to the position of associate professor.
In the Polish academic system, there are two types of professorships: one is the title of professor – the highest academic distinction awarded by the President of Poland in recognition of scholarly achievement – and the other is a professorial position within an academic institution.
Karolina’s appointment refers to the latter. We warmly congratulate her on this achievement and recognize it as an important step in her continued academic path.
How do you stage the end of East Prussia? This question was taken on by the team at the Jaracz Theatre in Olsztyn. Set in a city that was once German—and in a theatre originally built as the Treudanktheater to commemorate Germany’s plebiscite victory in the 1920s—the production unfolds in a space rich with historical layers. Reopened as a Polish stage in 1945, this venue becomes the haunting backdrop for All for Nothing, Walter Kempowski’s novel brought to life by director Weronika Szczawińska. The play tells the story of Prussian nobility and their neighbors facing the collapse of their world in the brutal winter of 1945. Karolina travelled to Olsztyn to see how this apocalypse was brought to the stage—and what it means to perform it in a place that carries such a complex past. Link to the blog post you can find here.
At the end of June, Magdalena Bubík participated in a seminar organized by scholars from the Institute of History at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The weekend gathering was designed as an intensive workshop: participants submitted works-in-progress beforehand, which were then discussed in a group setting. Chapters of dissertations, drafts of books, and early versions of articles all found their place at the seminar table.
Magdalena also had the chance to share her article about the church of St. Johns’ in Piła. This church has appeared on our posts before, as it is closely tied to her research interests. Until the mid-19th century, St. Johns’ was the only church in the city. Like many other buildings, it was destroyed during the so-called “liberation” of the city in 1945, and thirty years later it was torn down entirely. Today, the Gromada Hotel stands in its place.
Although it was a Catholic church, Magdalena, who is doing her research on Protestant communities, felt compelled to write about it. Not only because of its religious significance, but also because its history reflects the lives of the city’s residents and the profound changes they experienced. The exchange of population–mainly Protestant Germans for Catholic Poles–influenced that the church was perceived as a ‘bastion’ of Polishness during the Prussian and German administration. However, the building is no longer there. In its place stands a hotel, which is also intended to serve as a link to the past. Presenting the article at the seminar proved especially valuable: the discussion brought many insights, suggestions, and constructive feedback that will help shape the final version of Magdalena’s work. Among the mentors were historians Barbara Klich-Kluczewska (Jagiellonian University of Kraków), Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz (University of Warsaw), Dobrochna Kałwa (University of Warsaw), Marcin Jarząbek (Jagiellonian University of Kraków), and Tomáš Pavlíček (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences).
Adding to the experience was the seminar’s setting. Held in the picturesque village of Lanckorona, just outside Kraków, the gathering offered the perfect backdrop for thoughtful conversation and reflection. Surrounded by quiet landscapes, the participants could immerse themselves not only in texts but also in the atmosphere that fostered new ideas.
