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Post by kaima on May 6, 2022 11:46:21 GMT -7
🇵🇱 Polish minority in Bosnia 🇧🇦  Poles are one of 17 constitutionally recognized ethnic minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They arrived during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina and settled mostly in the north of Bosnia proper, bringing new technology and skilled manpower. Their destiny was tied closely to that of the Ukrainian minority, with whom they joined the Yugoslav Resistance after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. After the Second World War, Bosnian Poles faced difficulties with establishing their rights as a minority as well as persecution by local population and remaining fascist collaborators. This forced a vast majority to answer the Polish government's call for repatriation. There were around 30,000 Poles in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1930, while their number today is estimated to be less than a thousand, with communities in the major cities of Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Zenica and Mostar.   History of Poles in Bosnia begins during the Ottoman rule, but a significant influx only took place following the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878. The occupying authorities wished to colonize the country with politically reliable people, whom they rewarded with land and benefits. Germans and Hungarians were not considered suitable, while Croatians and Serbians were not desirable. The authorities decided on Poles and Czechs, expecting their Slavic roots to help them acclimatize well among Bosniaks. Official settlement lasted from 1896 until 1906. The Polish settlers were predominantly ethnic Roman Catholic farmers from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, a crown land of Austria. Along with them came the Eastern Orthodox Ruthenians. Civil servants, physicians, engineers and lawyers, all driven by expectations of fast career advancement and higher wages, were also among Polish settlers. The farmers were settled in the flatlands of Bosanska Krajina and Posavina, mostly in the vicinity of Prnjavor, Derventa, Bosanska Gradiška, Banja Luka, Bosanski Novi and Prijedor. In the areas surrounding Prnjavor and Bosanska Gradiška, there existed villages inhabited solely by Poles; Poles otherwise lived in villages with Bosnian Serbs or, less commonly, in villages with Bosnian Croat majority. The two largest Polish colonies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rakovac (Polish: Rakowiec) and Novi Martinac (Nowy Martyniec) near Prnjavor, were formed between 1899 and 1901. The Bosnian Poles were appraised beekeepers and also left a great mark on the country's agriculture, as they introduced synthetic fertilizers and non-food crops in the regions they inhabited. They also taught Bosnians about cattle breeding. The colonists, in turn, were taught to grow maize by the native population and viticulture by another minority, the Italians. The Poles never integrated into the Bosnian society and functioned as a separate ethnic community even in areas where they had direct contact with the Bosnians, their relations consisting of a varying degree of tolerance. The native Bosnians resented the privileges granted to Polish colonists, which caused many disagreements. These benefits lapsed following the First World War, when Austria-Hungary broke apart and Bosnia and Herzegovina was incorporated into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Some Poles at the time wanted to move to Poland, but its government refused them. The 1910 census recorded 10,975 Poles living in Bosnia and Herzegovina; by 1930, Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and numbered around 30,000 Poles. In 1934, the Polish writer Maria Dąbrowska spent some time in Bosnia and Herzegovina and wrote a report about the lives of Bosnian Poles for the authorities of the Second Polish Republic. She focused on their economic and political status, the issue of maintaining their ethnic identity and coexistence with indigenous population. Dąbrowska wrote that as much as 80% were pressured into becoming Yugoslav citizens, which deprived them of the right to appeal to Polish consulates and had an adverse effect on their political status. On the other hand, she noted that Bosnian Poles enjoyed better living conditions than villagers in Poland. |
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Post by pieter on May 7, 2022 0:45:30 GMT -7
Ron (Kaima), Thank you for this very interesting historical story about a Polish minority in a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. I knew that there were Poles in Turkey and that there is even a Polish village of former Polish members of the elite corps the Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire made up of Armenians, Bulgarians, Croats, Hungarians, Serbs and later islamized people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and in rare instances, Romanians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Poles and southern Russians. There is some difference between the Western slavs (Poles, Czechs and Slovaks and Sorbs -Eastern-Germany- and Kashubians) and Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Slovenes and Bosnians) and certainly with the Eastern Orthodox Christian and Greek Catholic Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians. It is comparable by bringing Afrikaner (White South Africans), Dutch and English people to Sweden and Norway and settle them there and say hey, they are fellow Germanic people, not taking into account that Afrikaners, Dutch and English people are Western Germanic People and Swedes North Germanic Scandinavian people with a total different language, culture, political system and climate, the Scandinavian one. Besides that the Southern Slav Muslim Bosniaks have a completely different religion, culture and language than the Poles. The Fascist Italian influence, the Nazi Austria nearby and the occupying Nazi German and Austrian Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS and threatening Croatian Ustaše and the presence or existance of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian), the Croatian Home Guard (Croatian: Hrvatsko domobranstvo)of the Fascist Croatian Ustaše state of dictator Ante Pavelić must also have been threatening to the Polish minority because Croats saw themselves not as Slavs and had a racist policy towards Serbs they considered slavs. Okay Poles were fellow Slavs, but not Croatians and probably as you (Ron) stated often more sympathetic and loyal towards the Yugoslav Communist Partisans of Josip Broz Tito. During the Second World War, Bosnia and Herzegovina was absorbed into the fascist puppet-state known as the Independent State of Croatia. Its regime organized the transfer of many Bosnian Poles to villages in the adjacent region of Slavonia in order to raise the percentage of Roman Catholics there. Bosnian Poles joined the resistance movement led by the Yugoslav Partisans rather reluctantly, possibly due to a "different treatment by the Germans in Bosnia". The Ukrainians in Bosnia and Herzegovina accepted Polish leadership in this regard. The Partisans were eager to induce both groups and considered it a success when the number of mobilized Poles and Ukrainians from the Prnjavor area rose to 20. In the spring of 1944, a representative of the Polish government-in-exile in Yugoslavia influenced Bosnian Poles to join the Partisans. The latter eventually formed the Initiative Council of Poles to both help the mobilization and by-pass the Polish government representative. Thanks to the council and collaboration of Polish village headsmen, the Yugoslav Partisans founded a so-called Polish Battalion, the 5th Battalion of the 14th Central Bosnian Brigade, on 7 May 1944. It was active in the aeras of Teslić, Žepče, Zavidovići and Zenica. Numbering "a modest 200 ethnic-Polish soldiers", the Battalion helped mobilise other Bosnian Poles, and eventually around 3,000 Poles took part in the liberation of Yugoslavia. In late 1944, Ignac Kunecki represented Poles at sessions of the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH), which sought to restore the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina (previously divided into banovinas) and make it a federative unit of Yugoslavia. Kunecki cited the precedent of the Second Partition of Poland and its effects on his people. ZAVNOBiH, however, declined his request that the Declaration of the Rights of Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina "be amended, so that it emphasizes the equality of national minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina" because the equivalent declaration by AVNOJ had already done so and because, unlike in Croatia and Vojvodina, "the minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina are, on the basis of their numbers, insignificant minorities." Despite assurances that they would be "granted full freedom of use of their mother tongue", Polish representatives remained unsatisfied. Next to the Ustaše Croatian Fascists, the Italian Fascists and the German and Austrian nazi forces in back then Yugoslavia you had the threat of Serb Nazi collaborating forces, the Četniks, the Serbian State Guard (Serbian: Srpska državna straža, SDS) and the Serbian Volunteer Corps (Serbian: Српски добровољачки корпус / Srpski dobrovoljački korpus, SDK). These were largely active in Serbia, but also in Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially the Četniks and these were brutal and violent against anyone not-Serb, like the Ustaše Croatian Fascists that massacred Serbs, Jews and Yugoslav Sinti and Roma. Both the Ustaše and the Četniks were very vicious, sadistic, brutal and extremely dangerous for minorities and opponents. The Croats had their own concentrationcamps. Not Nazi concentrationcamps, but Croat Ustaše concentrationcamps. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_campMeanwhile, the Polish People's Republic called on Polish diaspora to return and repopulate the areas previously inhabited by Germans. More than 15,000 Poles saw the end of the Second World War in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On 1 July 1945, their representatives held a conference and decided in favour of repatriation. Their emigration was hastened by a terror campaign launched against them and Ukrainians by the Chetniks "with the support of a large part of the Serb population" who "did not view these minorities with sympathy". Thousands of Poles and Ukrainians were expelled from their homes by Chetnik elements in late 1945 and early 1946. A Polish militia, supported by the Yugoslav authorities, was set up to defend the minority following the Polish ambassador's visit to Prnjavor in December 1945, but Kunecki criticized it as ineffective. After notifying the Yugoslav authorities and the Polish embassy in Belgrade, the Polish delegation went to Poland and opted for Bolesławiec County in Lower Silesia. They encountered problems with the Yugoslav government when the latter refused to compensate them for the houses and land they had left behind. The Yugoslav government even demanded that Poland pay for the cattle that the Bosnian Poles took to Poland. The insulted and disappointed Poles appealed directly to the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito. Their transfer from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Poland took place between 28 March and 2 November 1946. By 1953, their numbers had fallen to 1,161, and by 1981, there were 609 Poles living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Links: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1een.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChetniksPieter |
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Post by pieter on May 7, 2022 10:32:43 GMT -7
Ron, Miroslav Filipović (5 June 1915 – 1946), also known as Tomislav Filipović and Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović, was a Bosnian Croat Franciscan friar and Ustashe military chaplain who participated in atrocities during World War II in Yugoslavia. Convicted as a war criminal in a Yugoslav civil court, he was executed by hanging in 1946. His sadism, perversion, serial killer murderous instinct and bestial way of killing is extreme, disturbing and ill. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Filipovi%C4%87I hope that no Pole in Yugoslavia had to endure what Serb women and children had to endure under this Croatian Catholic Fascist beast. These Croat, Slovak, Italian, Spanish and French Vichy Catholic examples, and of course the Roman Catholic members of the German and Austrian bad elements of the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst make me not so positive minded about some fellow Catholics. Of course next to Calvinist, Lutheran, Orthodox christian beasts. But Roman Catholics on the Nazi and Fascist side do not have such a good record. Also the way they treated fellow Catholic Poles and other Roman Catholics they persecuted in occupied Europe. Nazism, Fascism, Ustaše, Četnik, Jozef Tiso supporters, the 'Arrow Cross Party-Hungarist Movement' and the Romanian Iron Guard and fascist military regime were not very human, pleasant or peaceful movements, ideoligies, systems, parties and groups. They caused great harm, human suffering, caused a lot of Post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD's) and are directly responsible for the conflict between the Yugoslav army and the Slovenes in 1991, the Bosnian war of the nineties, the war in Krajina between Serbs and Croats and the Kosovo conflict. Of course conflicts in the Second World War in Yugoslavia had roots in the First World War (1914-1918), and in tensions and political assassinations of Croat and other politicians during the Interbellum (1919-1939) years. Pieter |
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Post by Jaga on May 7, 2022 12:30:15 GMT -7
Kai,
I did not realize that Poles are acknowledged as the official minority in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I knew about Polish minorities in Romania and in Turkey but not in ex-Yugoslavia. Interesting story.
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Post by pieter on May 8, 2022 1:26:24 GMT -7
Jaga/Ron,
For me Yugoslavia is my raison d'être. My Polish mother and Dutch father met in the Croatian city Dubrovnik in what was back then the Croatian Socialist Republic as part of the Yugoslavian Federal Socialist Peoples Republic of Partisan leader and president Josip Broz Tito.
I met Bosnians, Serbs, Croats and even Albanian Kosovaars in the Netherlands who were still Titoïst. Titoïst like Trotskyist was a bad label or swear word in the Communist Polish Peoples Republic, East-Germany (GDR/DDR), Communist Czechoslovakia, Communist Hungary under János Kádár, Bulgaria and the SovietUnion.
A Bosnian woman told me Yugoslavia was her country, today I have no nation, my mother is Serb, my father is Croat, and I have Bosnian and Montenegrin family members and Slovenian, Macedonian and Kosovar friends. Today my family is split and I can’t see them or with difficulties. Nationalism has split parts of my family and our social network of colleagues and friends was broken up. I had to flee from Bosnia due to the Civil War.
Other people I met had clearly Serb, Croat or Bosnian identities. I fear the Civil War will return to Bosnia 🇧🇦 now the Bosnia Serbs from Banja Luka want to erect their own state in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republica Serpska.
My mother once went to Belgrade and loved the city and the people in peaceful times in the sixties. The Croatian coast is beautiful and there my parents met on their holiday in 1966.
Cheers,
Pieter
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Post by Jaga on May 8, 2022 17:25:47 GMT -7
Hello Pieter,
I am not surprised that your mother and your dad felt in love in Dubrovnik. This is one of the most beautiful cities in Yugoslavia. I have never been there yet.
Referring to Yugoslavian woman, the same is happening in Ukraine, a sudden split between Ukraine and Russia in spite of both countries being so interconnected through marriage and families. It is sad, but the history is changing in our lifetime profoundly.
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Post by pieter on May 13, 2022 6:28:12 GMT -7
It is sad, but the history is changing in our lifetime profoundly. Jaga, You are right of course, Europe is changing for 2 decades now. The 19th century and early 20th century saw the Emergence of the National states, Nationalism, Liberalism (the liberal revolutions of 1848 against absolutist monarchism), the emergence of Socialism, Marxism, Communism, the Bolshevic October revolution of 1917, fascism, Nazism, Stalinism and the confrontation of the Western and Eastern Powerblocs (Western Europe and the USA & Canada and their NATO vs the Warsaw Pact and Comecon). In the modern world of today you see older deeper patterns of the Russian Tsarist Empire, the Soviet Empire, the British Empire (The UK 🇬🇧 today as military power), The French military power, the U.S. Global military power, the re-emerging German political power, Poland 🇵🇱 which becomes an European and Global military, diplomatic and Financial-Economical Power again (with Józef Piłsudski/Visegrád elements), the Ottoman Empire (Turkey today), and the EU replacing the Prussian and Austrian Habsburg empires. If you look carefully and closely folks you see similarities between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The Japanese empire of that time is the Chinese Communist Empire today. The First World War Serbia 🇷🇸 is Ukraine today. Habsburg Austria and Prussia were the EU of today. Cheers, Pieter |
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Post by Jaga on May 13, 2022 23:00:49 GMT -7
Pieter,
the same happened with the generation of our parents and grandparents. My grandmother was born when Poland did not exist as a country, my mother went through the school when only German was allowed. For us WW II was long time ago, for her generation this was the time break - things that happened before and after the war; maybe for us covid would be once such a "break".
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