ABSTRACT
Arrival in the new territories was an important event for most Polish migrants, one which stayed long in their memory and is observed in descriptions in memoirs. However, there were also many for whom the taking over of someone else’s property did not go as smoothly and who hesitated and felt very uncertain. Most of expellees from the eastern borderlands did not know exactly where they were going. Concepts such as the ‘Recovered Territories’, ‘the West’, ‘the Oder region’ or the names of particular towns told them almost nothing. For a long time to come, rumours circulated among the settlers that the previous border would be restored, with Germans and Poles returning to their respective homelands. In particular, those settlers who had been expelled from the eastern borderlands had problems finding their place in the reality of the Oder region. War and the lawlessness of occupying forces was nothing foreign to them –– they had experienced it a lot themselves.
