ABSTRACT
The decisions regarding the course of Europe’s borders and the shifting of Poland westwards were made by the Allies. As a consequence of these political resolutions, it was necessary to take over and manage new territories, which was carried out by new settlers. It was, in fact, they who, frequently under coercion, had been transported to the Oder region and it was they who, partly with the local inhabitants, had to start a new life here. An enormous group of 2,171,000 people is comprised of forced labourers and other migrants who had come to Poland from Western Europe and beyond the European continent. The category of ‘indigenous’ was also used in Communist statistics to decrease the proportion of members of the German minority in a Polish state aiming for ethnic homogeneity. The political aim of the publication of these writings was, namely, to present the settlement and management of the incorporated territories as a run of success.
