Exodus, Expulsion, Explication
Exodus, Expulsion, Explication Collective Memories of Silesia as a German-Polish Frontier Zone Steven Jefferson BA, PGDip, MRes, MCIL Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study, University of London February 2016 1 I hereby declare that this work is entirely my own except where explicitly stated in bibliographic and copyright notices Steven Jefferson BA, PGDip, MRes, MCIL The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. 2 Abstract This thesis addresses the traumata associated with Poland’s frontier changes in 1945, within a collective memory paradigm. These events include expulsions from German territories incorporated into Poland, and population transfers between Poland and the USSR. The thesis addresses two components: a central trauma complex, and the resulting collective memory discourse. Being a matter of historical record, the statistical details and chronology of these events are seldom contested, although they have often been instrumentalised by various stakeholders. Instead, the relevant collective memory discourse has focused on the production of broad, often exculpatory, narrative frameworks designed to explain a set of largely accepted facts. Accordingly, my thesis is primarily focused on this collective memory discourse. As an active phase, dominated by stakeholders with a high level of emotional investment in the narration and memorialisation of the relevant events, this collective memory discourse is currently undergoing a transition to the domain of History as a scholarly pursuit. This transition is best symbolised by the fact that, as of 2016, for the first time since 1945, all restrictions on the acquisition of agricultural land and forests in Poland’s former German territories, by Germans, will be lifted.
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