From Souvlaki to Pierogi: How Greek Refugees Revitalised a War-Torn Polish Town
Poland was the first country in Europe to adopt a constitution, and the second in the world, just two years after the US. As such, it was one of the earliest relative democracies, beginning in the 14th century – whereby the otherwise-monarchist country was ruled by a nobles’ democracy. In both government and culture, therefore, Poland is based on the ancient Greek system as outlined by classical philosophers.
The humorous Polish phrase ‘nie udawaj Greka’ means 'don’t act stupid', but means literally 'don’t pretend to be Greek'. Some attribute this to Socrates, the Greek philosopher whose instruction method involves bombarding his students with sometimes unnecessary questions in order to help them solidify their thoughts. It may also derive, though, from the history of Greek immigrants to Poland in the years immediately following World War II. The Greek diaspora’s presence in modern Poland is a little-known corner of history, albeit one that intersects with the Cold War and the post-war reconstruction of modern Polish cultural institutions.
Early history
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Original exhibition of the 'Constitution of May 3 of 1791' at the Kordegarda Gallery in Warsaw, 2011, photo: Tomasz GzellPAP
The commonwealth and partition eras, through the Second Polish Republic, was a golden era of ethnic diversity on Polish lands and, after the 1918 independence, the Polish state. Each minority group had a substantial community of its own – altogether comprising 30% of the total population.
Because the majority of Polish commerce was agricultural, and the majority of the citizens rural peasants, Poland lagged behind in industrialisation compared to its Czech or German neighbours. The Polish nobility and aristocracy also saw a political threat in a strong Polish bourgeoisie and therefore opted for non-Polish merchant classes like Greeks, Jews and Armenians to transport and sell hard goods. Industrial centers like Łódź, known for its textile manufacturing, were therefore particularly diverse, as memorialised in museums like the Izrael Poznański Palace.
Historically, the Byzantine era involved much immigration and mixing of where people lived and married. However, a distinct Greek identity in that time didn’t remain as strong and was absorbed by other Orthodox Christian groups. An explicitly Greek community in Poland began in the years immediately after World War II, when both Poland and Greece suffered immense economic and human losses – including the genocide of both countries’ deep-rooted Jewish communities.
The civil war in Greece
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Government army unit during the Greek Civil War (1945 - 1949), photo: The State Archives of the Republic of Macedonia (DARM) / wikimedia.org
In Greece, the anti-Axis resistance involved several scattered factions – monarchist, communist, democratic – all with support from the Allies, but not united. With the withdrawal of Nazi German troops in 1944, and before the exiled Greek government could return, the communist resistance fighters began taking over parts of the country by force.
In exchange, the British forces switched to supporting the anti-communists, many of whom had themselves served in the Greek collaborationist state under the Nazis. The fighting continued for almost six years. As fighters of either side conquered villages, they would often evacuate the locals, especially children. Because of this, many thousands of Greek children were orphaned or displaced. In total, 100,000 people died in the Greek Civil War. An equal number were displaced within Greece, and around 50,000 relocated by choice or force to the Eastern Bloc.
Post-war effects in Poland
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Zgorzelec, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum
Meanwhile in Poland, the country had lost much land of its eastern borders to Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, but gained a smaller but still significant amount of land from Germany to the west. Most of the German inhabitants of the new Poland left either by fear or by force – and so Poland found itself with developed but empty cities in its west.
In the early years of the communist regime's reign in Poland, while Stalin was still in power in Russia, the communist bloc countries volunteered to take in children displaced by the war in Greece, seeing an opportunity for political and labour power. Poland in particular, having been so depleted of lives in the aftermath of the war, was eager to take in refugees from Greece in the spirit of communist brotherhood, as well as to fill the vacancies of wartime destruction.
A quiet hero’s welcome
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Children after arriving in Poland, Zgorzelec, 1950, photo: archive materials
Fleeing through Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, the Greek refugees took trains, planes, boats and even submarines to Poland. There, they were welcomed by representatives of the communist regime, with the declaration: ‘the Polish nation welcomes heroes of the Greek nation'.
Despite their acceptance of the thousands of fleeing partisans, the Polish government didn’t actively advertise to their own people that they were receiving so many Greeks. Because the war had left Poland a much more homogenous country, the hellenic newcomers faced some difficulty in culturally acclimating, due to their differences in language and lifestyle.
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Remaining pieces of the Communion of the Apostles mosaic from the Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral in the lower church of the Metropolitan Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene in Warsaw, photo: Adrian Grycuk / Wikimedia.org
Poland has had a strained relationship with the Orthodox church because of the historical memories of Russia. (Because of this, many Orthodox churches were destroyed following the end of the Russian partition in the years following the First World War.) Yet the Greeks found themselves relatively accepted because of their shared political allegiances to the communist regime. In addition, their agrarian backgrounds suited them for the jobs they needed to do in Poland.
As asylum seekers, the Greeks were assigned by the government to live in Zgorzelec, formerly the German Görlitz – a town right on the border of East Germany, divided by the new Oder-Neise line. Although the town had been illustrious in the Prussian era, it had fallen into disrepair as a large concentration camp during the Nazi German occupation. The more functional part of the town had remained German after the war, leaving the Polish side of it fairly desolate.
Greeks in action
Given the vast linguistic divide against the Poles, and the familial tightness of the Greek community, the local authorities were happy to give the Greeks a fair level of cultural autonomy. The Zgorzelec community had an official society, the Community of Political Refugees from Greece (Gmina Demokratycznych Uchodźców Politycznych z Grecji), and they developed their own schools, social clubs and art venues.
Several workplaces functioned in Greek to accommodate the workers – in particular, the Delta farm and the Arnand suitcase and leather-products factory, which are recorded as having more than 3,000 Greek employees.
This was also a chance for Greek women to enter the workforce in a more egalitarian way than they had been given the chance to do back in Greece. Many worked not only in childcare but in medicine and science, and even political leadership.
The more avowed communists among the Greeks spoke some Russian or Polish and therefore were able to function for some time in the party bureaucracy with relative ease. But with the split between Yugoslav and Soviet communists, they increasingly faced suspicion as outsiders and were relegated to more labour-centric tasks.
Continuation
Initially, the communist regime expected the Greeks to only stay for a short while before they could return to their own country, although hopes of going home quickly diminished.
The persecution of suspected communists in Greece was particularly brutal in the years following the civil war, so many more Greek refugees kept arriving in Poland to reunite with their families even after the main transports.
The community organisation opened a new branch in Wrocław, the Nikos Beloyannis Union of Political Refugees from Greece (Związek Uchodźców Politycznych z Grecji im. Nikosa Belojannisa) – named after the Greek communist leader who had trained in Poland.
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Milo Kurtis, photo: Victor Greg / Forum
Gradually though, this rich community life began to fade. Modernisation and urbanisation meant many of the children or the more idealistic communist Greeks moved to the larger cities of Warsaw, Gdańsk and Wrocław. Several hundred Greeks who had comfortably assimilated into Polish society intermarried with local Poles, thereby obtaining Polish citizenship. Some notable Polish musicians like jazz guitarist Apostolis Anthimos, drummer Milo Kurtis and singer Eleni Tzoka are descendants of these Polonised Greeks.
Leaving Poland
The 1980s brought an end to the communist regime in Poland, as well as an end to the right-wing military dictatorship in Greece. Despite their relative successes in their generation-long stay, most of the Greeks left Poland for the UK, US and Greece.
With the EU and its revival of commerce, relations between Poland and Greece have been greatly strengthened. The town of Zgorzelec operates an annual Greek culture festival, as well as a new Orthodox church for the remaining few Greeks. Even if little today visually or physically stands out as a testament to the short but productive sojourn of a refugee community in Poland, it remains a unique niche of history in cross-cultural collaboration – one that helped Poland regain its footing and perhaps contributed a dash of Polishness to the Greek salad.
Written by Theo Canter, Apr 2021