Jarosław Kaczyński stirs up old ethnic hatreds
Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s main opposition party, PiS, ‘Law and Justice’, during a visit to Opole in Silesia, which has a substantial German minority population, suggested that Poland has been far too ‘idealistic’ to its German minority.
Jarosław Kaczyński
In his visit to Opole, on Saturday, 8th December, Jarosław Kaczyński stated that, “Germans in Poland should have the same rights as Poles in Germany.” He went on to claim that ‘privileges’ provided to the German minority in Silesia encouraged ‘separatism’.
Kaczyński is hoping to stage a March in Opole in May under the slogan Tu jest Polska, ‘Poland is here’.
The pre-1945 German population of present day Poland is estimated at 11 million. Following Germany’s defeat in World War II, almost the the entire German population either fled or were killed or deported.
According to the 2002 census, 147,000 Germans remain in Poland. Of these, 104,000 live in the Opole region, and a further 30,000 in neighbouring Silesia.
Most of the ‘Germans’ in Silesia and Opole are not obviously ethnic Germans, but rather Wasserpolak or Wasserpolen, people with both Polish and German roots after centuries of inter-marriage between the two nationalities. The most obvious examples of ‘German’ Silesians, are the Germannational football team players, Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski.
German speaking minority in Opole region
English editor, A native of the Isle of Wight, Warren has been running the language teaching company, Go! Languages, with his wife Małgorzata, since 1997. A fan of England, Portsmouth F.C. and Pogoń Szczecin, Warren will be contribing articles on football for the Szczecinian.
This post is also available in: Polish
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