How does mass deportation of people with connections to the land and its markers, impact that landscape?
Last week's article explored the impact of the increasing urbanization on the connections between landscape and the way we live our lives. The disappearance of pedestrian life and the fragmentation of the activities of home, work and leisure are consequences of urbanization. These consequences, I pointed out, impact our archaic bonds with landscape.
Landscape and Deportation
In this article, I will explore the impact of ethnic cleansing from a certain region on the landscape of that region, and I will use the context of the forced expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans following World War II to do so. Several hundred thousands of them were driven across the borders of Germany and Austria. Less fortunate others ended up in concentration or labor camps. During this deportation, an estimated thirty thousand Germans died in the camps, in massacres and in forced marches (Glassheim, 2006). Given that landscape and identity go hand in hand, what then, could be the impact of forced expulsion? How does mass deportation of people with connections to the land and its markers, impact that landscape?
Ana's Story
In my continued work with women who experienced these particular forms of post-war violence, I spoke, amongst many others, with a woman whom I will refer to as Ana here. Ana spent much of her childhood in then German spoken, German ruled Danzig-Oliva. Danzig-Oliva was, as she calls it, her Heimat. But even before the end of World War II, when Ana was an eight-year-old girl, it was decided during the Yalta Conference that Danzig would be placed under Polish administration. This decision was later confirmed at the Potsdam Conference. Now, Danzig-Oliva is called Oliwa and Gdansk.
Ana talks about visiting Danzig-Oliva, the landscape of her youth, years after the forced expulsion:
Later on I came back to Oliva to visit. There were fences, barbwire fences, everywhere. When I grew up there, people had lovely gardens. My grandfather for example had a beautiful garden, carefully tended with loads of apple and cherry trees. When I came back the gardens were overgrown with weeds. The houses were dilapidated and I noticed bullet holes in the walls of many of the houses I saw. The damage from the war, nothing had been done to fix it... The Church was still there, but that too was on the verge of collapse. Everything was so run down. Our former kindergarten had been made into a smoke-filled pub. Outside of the pub, there was a man peeing against a tree. I cried.
Landscape Alienation and Connection
Ana is convinced, like many others whose experiences are similar to hers, that Oliva's deterioration is connected with the mass deportation of Germans from the area. New Polish settlers with no connection to the land moved into the houses of people who had always thought of Danzig-Oliva as their Heimat.The new settlers came from entirely different regions. Some of them came from other parts of Poland. Others came from Polish-speaking areas east of the Curzon Line that had been annexed by the Soviet Union after WWII. The landscape of Danzig-Oliva was alien to them. And these new settlers, says Ana, did not feel any connection with it. As a result, they also did not care for it in the way that Ana and her family had cared for it. Ana is certain that the sense of alienation that the new Polish people felt in Danzig translated in a general lack of care and neglect for the land.
In Closing
Is Ana's assessment accurate? Does the deportation of millions from land with which they had connections lead to its deterioration? It may or may not be so. Undoubtedly, the loss of so many with strong felt connections to the land has an impact. But as so often, the answer may not be so simple. As Eagle Glassheim (2006) asks, can we even really know a concept as Heimat? Can we accurately link Ana's dismal impression of post war Danzig with the loss of landscape connections? Quite likely, that many other factors influenced the post World-War II landscape of those areas in which major at work as well- the new communist government, changes in sources of income for the city and other factors.
References
Eagle Glassheim, (2006). Ethnic Cleansing, Communism, and Environmental Devastation in Czechoslovakia's Borderlands, 1945-1989. In: The Journal of Modern History 78 (March 2006): 65-92. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
