In 1945, after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the winning Allied powers decreed the expulsion and resettlement of Germans from Eastern Europe, and reassigned or restored the evacuated territories to present-day Poland, Hungary, and Romania, and to the then Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Consequently, between 1945 and 1947, some 14 million Germans, mostly people whose families had lived in those places for generations – even since the 14th century – had to leave west and settle in what remained of a Germany. reduced to ruins.
The largest contingent of evicted people (about 8.2 million people) came from historic regions of eastern Germany (Pomerania, East Prussia and Silesia), which were mostly awarded to Poland, which in turn had to give up part of its own area. this to the Soviet Union. This is how the German city of Stettin – 65 kilometers from the Baltic Sea and, connected by canals and rivers, served as the port of Berlin – became officially called Szczecin and became part of Poland. The same happened with the current Polish cities of Wroclaw and Poznan (Breslau and Posen, in German times) and with the myriad of towns and villages in those regions. The German Königsberg, at the eastern end of East Prussia, became part of the USSR with the new name of Kaliningrad, and has since been a highly militarized exclave – today Russian.
As they left, the expelled Germans left behind the homes, businesses and belongings that had survived the Allied bombing raids, and new inhabitants took their place. In western Poland, such buildings and objects are called poniemiecki (formerly German). Although used out of necessity, they were viewed with displeasure as an inheritance from the Nazi aggressor enemy. But time tempers everything, and in these cities there are now initiatives to recover the difficult German legacy.
In the summer of 1945, the remaining 80,000 Germans left Szczecin and the city was repopulated with Poles arriving from the center of the country or evicted from territories in eastern Poland that had become part of the USSR. Little by little, the newcomers began to carve out a new life for themselves. “The third and fourth generations of Szczecin residents are becoming more and more interested in local history, and the reality is that all the old buildings still standing are German,” says Monika Szymanik, a German teacher and amateur photographer who works to rescue traces of German presence in the city.
One day in 2018, Szymanik struck up an everlasting friendship in the courtyard of the building where she lived at the time. In the courtyard, an old German man, accompanied by his wife and daughters, was trying to get his bearings. It was Siegmar Jonas, a resident on the outskirts of Berlin, who was born in 1940 in this house, and here he lived until he was 5 years old with his parents and Christel, his older sister. The city had been almost completely devastated, but this central building built in 1902 was saved. The footsteps echo in the square patio, overlooking the interior balconies, after crossing a hall decorated in Art Nouveau style. You really have the impression of being in a German housing estate.
That same atmosphere can be felt on Pope John Paul II Avenue (Kaiser William Street, in German times), where the lined houses are reminiscent of the stately neighborhoods of Berlin. Szczecin proudly displays its castle, the former residence of the Pomeranian dukes. The German princess Sofia Frederick Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, who was born in the city, and the future Empress Catherine II the Great of Russia, spent her childhood in this white castle.
“Siegmar wanted to see the places of his early childhood; He doesn’t speak Polish, so I accompanied him to knock on the door of what had been his house; When I explained her situation to the tenant, she received him kindly and allowed him to visit the apartment; “It was very emotional,” Szymanik recalls in conversation in his café Kamienica w lesie (Tenement House in the Forest), which is named after his photo book of corners of the city. She opened the café with her husband in an old location, and to observe it is to immerse yourself in the recent past – German and Polish – of Szczecin.
For Monika Szymanik, meeting Siegmar Jonas has meant many things. “Mine were also forced to leave their home in 1945,” she explains. My family comes from eastern Poland, from an area that became part of the USSR and is now Ukraine. If one day I decide to go in search of my origins, I would like the local Ukrainian neighbors to also welcome me with delicacy. Of course, now they suffer from the war and everything is very hard…”
A project emerged from friendship. Jonas showed her the memoirs about life in Szczecin written by her deceased sister Christel, who was older when the family had to leave the city. “It is not a diary written by her when they lived in Szczecin, but her memories are very precise,” says Szymanik, who translated them into Polish and published them in a book with photos of places mentioned by Christel. The book will be published shortly in Germany.
The memory continues. With its 410,000 inhabitants, Szczecin now has a specific museum about its complex history from 1939 to 1989 – that is, from the German invasion of Poland to the fall of the communist regime –, the Centrum Dialogu Przelomy, next to one of the emblematic buildings of the new era: the Philharmonic, the work of the Barcelona firm of architects Barozzi and Veiga. The city has built its Polish present and maintains an increasingly less hated German past.