By Jan Puhl
The Poles are now about 15 years ahead of the Ukrainians. During that time, they rebuilt their economy and established a solid foundation for democracy. The crumbling facades of hulking office buildings in Poland's cities have given way to glass-and-steel towers developed with Western venture capital. The Poles have even become accustomed to drinking espresso and wine instead of inexpensive tea and vodka. Their country is a member of NATO and of the European Union. Average incomes in Poland, adjusted for inflation, have grown by about 70 percent in the last 15 years.
For many Poles, it takes a walk through the pedestrian zone of a town like Ivano-Frankivsk to realize how far their country has come. Poles are the Westerners here, while socialism seems to be less of a distant memory for their eastern neighbors. Very few houses are renovated, cows and flocks of geese roam along the sides of potholed streets, factories are crumbling and illuminated billboards advertising Western department store chains are few and far between. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians work in Poland today -- as carers for the elderly, cleaning women and construction workers. Many Ukrainians hope to achieve the same economic successes as their neighbors and even -- some day in the future -- EU membership.
East of Poland, the Polish currency, the zloty, is seen as hard Western currency and is as welcome as the German mark once was in Silesia. This helps to explain why the visitors from Poland view the Ukrainians from the same perspective as German nostalgia tourists once saw their eastern neighbors -- from a slightly patronizing standpoint.
"Everything that is beautiful and old here is Polish," says an elderly woman in the group. "The Ukrainians only built gray Soviet architecture."
A man sitting at the next table downs his 100-gram shot of vodka, shakes his head and complains: "Everything is so run down."
'You Have Two Hours to Leave'
The hardships of Galicia's Polish population began long before 1945. The Red Army marched into eastern Poland in 1939. The two dictators to the west and east, Hitler and Stalin, had already divided up the country between them. The communist secret service persecuted Polish priests, teachers, aristocrats and intellectuals.
The Germans came later, deporting the Jews but giving Ukrainian nationalists free rein. The troops of Ukrainian militia leader Stepan Bandera ran roughshod over their Polish neighbors while the German military looked the other way.
Whenever the Ukrainians went on their rampages, armed with scythes and pitchforks, young Deptula would hide in the hay. He was once forced to watch as Bandera partisans tortured his aunt with sharpened wooden skewers in an effort to force her to speak Ukrainian instead of Polish.
Despite the Ukrainian atrocities, the arrival of the Red Army was no liberation. Poland's borders were pushed westward. Millions of its inhabitants, most of them women, the elderly and children like Deptula, were forced to move to accommodate the new boundaries. "It was June 15, 1945," he recalls. "An officer walked into our house, his pregnant wife by his side. 'You have two hours to get out, and then we move in,' he said."
To add emphasis to his demand, the soldier pulled his Makarov pistol from its holster and fired at the dishes and porcelain figures in the Deptulas' glass cabinet. Deptula and his mother managed to pack two suitcases with clothing and a small amount of food. The pair encountered hundreds of refugees at the train station. It took them three days to get a spot in a livestock car. But they counted themselves lucky. At least the railroad offered them a roof over their heads and, together with five other families, a few chickens and goats, they made their way into the unknown.
Deptula has forgotten exactly how long the odyssey lasted through the war-torn landscape to Silesia. All he knows is that it took several weeks. The journey ended in Kedzierzyn-Kozle. The town, previously known as Heydebreck-Cosel, had just been given its Polish name, which it still has today. The Deptulas stepped off the train, and the car they had been riding in was soon loaded with machinery from a dismantled German factory bound for the Soviet Union.
Deptula and his mother were initially taken in by Germans. The newcomers spent the next few weeks living with the established residents under one roof. The Germans' chaotic attempts at fleeing the Red Army were over by then, and even the wildly exaggerated stories of Germans being chased out of their homes at gunpoint were diminishing. It was the late summer of 1945, and the Germans who had remained in the region were given the choice of becoming Polish citizens or making the journey to the West.
Very few remained, and soon the Deptulas had the apartment they had been sharing with Germans to themselves. To this day, the old man is convinced that the Germans' lot was much less severe than theirs. "They were allowed to choose, but we were just driven out," he says.
It took the Poles from the former east a long time to become established in the country's new west. "We believed that it was a great injustice, and that we would certainly be allowed to return. The English would help us, or the Americans, we thought." It wasn't until the 1960s that the first of the exiles began renovating the houses of former German residents, houses that now belonged to them. Deptula also adapted to his new environment, eventually obtaining a degree in agriculture and becoming the head of an agricultural cooperative.
How does he feel about the Germans who, like him, feel drawn to their old homes decades after being driven out? Deptula hesitates. "We aren't demanding that they give us back our houses and our property in Ukraine," he says. Like many Poles, Deptula is concerned about the Prussian Trust (Preussische Treuhand), a Düsseldorf-based company that plans to file lawsuits against Poles to force them to return the property of German expellees.
The claims stand little chance of holding up in court, but Deptula can understand the motives behind them. "I know exactly how it feels when you've had to give up your home," he says.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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