Returns

During the occupation over 30,000 inhabitants of Poznań were displaced outside of the voivodship, which amounted to about 10 per cent of the pre-war population of the city. Over 60,000 people had to leave their flats in the city centre and move to apartments of a lower standard of living. The flats belonging to the displaced inhabitants were managed by the occupiers. After the war, many people tried to return to their family homes. However, often their flats were either destroyed or already taken by other inhabitants.

Crowds of people are coming to Poznań from everywhere, even those who were sent to the so-called General Government in 1939 and 1940, not knowing yet that the front has reached the city centre. Where should we accommodate them? What about the flats?

Zaremba, Piotr. 1980. The first days of 1945 in Poznań. Poznań: 127-128.

(…) they were coming back, exhausted after the walk, without food supplies and often without underwear and proper clothes. In Poznań they discovered that their flats had been taken by other tenants or burnt down.

Klimowicz,. 1980, in: Tadeusz Świtała (ed.) The first years. Memories of the inhabitants of Poznań from the years 1945-1948. Poznań: 61.

Our greatest tragedy struck us when we came home – our flat was simply taken. The Synorackis, who were fire victims from Głogowska Street, had moved in. They moved all the furniture from our flat to the balcony room. When we came back they said that this flat had been allocated to them because they reported it as an abandoned property to the accommodation office and that the flat belonged to them. ‘But we have been registered here since forever, this is where our children were born. You have no right to be here!’ But they had a paper proving that this flat had been allocated to them by the accommodation office…

Excerpt from Felicja Nowicka’s account recorded in 2008 by Grzegorz Kaczorowski. The account (file no. AHM_1023) comes from the collection of the Oral History Archive of Dom Spotkań z Historią.

[After returning to Poznań], when we were unloading the most necessary things (…) from a cart drawn by a horse, the horse startled because a military band was walking somewhere near us. The table just fell off and crumbled, the chairs broke. Our nearly five-and-a-half-year-old possessions were destroyed already at the railway station. […] And we had to start from scratch.

Excerpt from Ewa Czarkowska’s account recorded in 2006-2009. The account comes from the Poznań Oral History Archive.

The Szymkowiak Family’s return from displacement to Radomsko (probably the vicinity of Częstochowa) in 1945, property of Małgorzata Czarkowska, cyryl.poznan.pl