Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War by R. M. Douglas

Author:R. M. Douglas [Douglas, R. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Geopolitics, 20th Century, European History, 21st Century, Social History, v.5, Political Science, Military History, Amazon.com, History
ISBN: 9780300166606
Amazon: 0300166605
Barnesnoble: 0300166605
Goodreads: 13435171
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-06-25T15:00:00+00:00

9

THE WILD WEST

Kazimierz Trzciński was one of hundreds of thousands of eager colonists from central Poland who flocked to the Recovered Territories in 1947 in search of fortune. A demobilized soldier, he was just the kind of warrior-colonist the Polish government was most anxious to attract to the western borderlands—a man who knew how to fight and would not hesitate to defend his property, with armed force if necessary, should the Germans or, more likely, the peace conference attempt to take it away from him. Some of his actions, however, offered hints that he might not be the model settler he first appeared to be. One of them was his request to the mayor of Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg), the pleasant small city in the foothills of the Krkonoše mountains to which he first went, that he be given a confiscated German property opulent enough to support him without his having to work for a living. Any such estates having already been assigned to persons far higher in the pecking order of the Polish nomenklatura than Trzciński, he was instead offered his choice of four small farms, each of which he rejected. Trzciń-ski’s eye then fell on the Jelonka Hotel and Restaurant in the nearby ski resort of Szklarska Poręba, a business which he considered far more appropriate to his status as a brave soldier who deserved well of the Republic than a peasant smallholding would have been. Unfortunately this property was already occupied by a Mrs. Pudlo, who showed no inclination to relinquish it. Although the municipal authorities of Jelenia Góra briefly considered forcing the pair to share the Jelonka, they eventually prevailed upon Trzciński to accept an adjacent corner shop instead. The life of a retailer did not appeal to him and his new venture was not a success, though his pronounced alcoholism may have been the main reason for its underperformance. When another settler opened a competing establishment across the street, Trzciński seized the excuse to abandon the shop and renew his claim, with greater importunity than ever, to the Jelonka. So persistent was he that local officials investigated Mrs. Pudlo’s ownership of the hotel and discovered to their surprise that she had no better a title to it than he did. Upon her arrival in Szklarska Poręba she had been assigned an ex-German villa, but had done nothing more with it than to strip it of every item of its furniture to fit out the Jelonka, in which she had installed herself without authority and restarted in her own name as a going concern. Equipped with these new facts, the municipal council issued an eviction order to Mrs. Pudlo and presented Trzciński with the title to the property. When he arrived to take possession she kept him waiting for a considerable time; eventually opened up the hotel; and then proceeded methodically to smash it to pieces around him as he cringed in the lobby. There being no militia or police in the vicinity, Trzciński turned tail and fled for his life, followed down the street by Pudlo’s curses and threats.

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