Talk:Staniszów

"Ethnic cleansing"

There is no source to support the statement that "ethnic cleansing" happened in Staniszów. I am removing this sentence. signed, Hattie Cape.

I am not an expert on this area, so I'm worried about commenting. Take this as an external, uninformed view. At the level of crude fact, I can see why the IP editor added the sentence about "ethnic cleansing". I know we are not supposed to cite WP itself (we are an unreliable source!), but the WP article on the Potsdam agreement does imply that those of German origin were forcibly removed from Polish-administered regions following WWII, and the WP article on ethnic cleansing describes this as the systematic forced removal or extermination of ethnic, racial... groups... from a particular area. So technically they're right. But practically they're completely wrong. Firstly, 'ethnic cleansing' is a 1990's term, and it's risky to apply it retrospectively to a 1940's situation. Secondly, and I think most importantly, in many people's minds, 'ethnic cleansing' is linked to the idea of exterminating (rather than relocating) people of a particular ethnic background, and is always completely immoral. But the context after WWII was that the Nazis had installed concentrations camps in Poland, where they had exterminated huge numbers of people merely because of their race. For this reason, putting a sentence in this article saying that the Germans were ethnically-cleansed out of the Polish-administered region is tantamount to accusing the Poles of committing the same crime as the Nazis, which in my view is extremely distasteful and inappropriate. Also, when you've just reached the end of a world war, it's natural that an occupied country might want to eject anyone associated with the aggressor, even if they or their relatives happened to live there before the war; we are not, in 2021, able to make a moral judgement on the situation. So I am with @Hattie on this. It is appropriate to say that Germans were removed from the area according to the Potsdam agreement following WWII, but it is right to use the word "removed", or even "forced to leave" or "expelled"; it is not, I think, okay to refer to this as an act of ethnic cleansing. I hope that makes some sense? Elemimele (talk) 19:35, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Elemimele. I also did a search for the phrase on Wikipedia and found more Polish village articles that had the exact same sentence in them, all related to the post-1945 border changes. I removed them as well. I am still searching for more of them. Hattie Cape (talk) 13:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you User:Hattie Cape, well spotted! Yes, it looks like a user 62.155.201.30 back in 2015 seems to have put a load in, but there may be others too. It's good you noticed this. Elemimele (talk) 13:56, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Did anyone bother to go look at Potsdam Agreement to see if there might have been a source there that verified the information being claimed here in this article or others? Perhaps "ethnic cleansing" was an improper term used to describe the expulsion but if the expulsion did occur wouldn't that be encyclopedic information that would be an addition to the article? Sometimes we may remove information that is factual and backed up by sources even if embellished using non-neutral wording to describe it. Perhaps simply changing the wording from "ethnic cleansing" to "expulsion" and then adding sources like those found at Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950) would suffice rather than wholesale deletion of encyclopedic and historical information. Just a thought. Thank you for watching over and finding these statements which are seemingly non-neutral and do not need to be included in the encyclopedia in the manner in which they have been. --ARoseWolf 16:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi User:ARoseWolf. I actually have been reading a lot about this topic recently. It's true that many Germans were forcibly expelled from their homes and moved west as a result of the Potsdam Agreement. However, not every pre-WWII village was entirely populated by Germans, as 100 years ago it was common for Polish people to be living in Germany, and German people to be living in Poland. Some smaller villages could even be composed of entirely one ethnic group in the opposite country - the borders had been moving for hundreds of years, back and forth. There was not even a Poland before 1918, unless you go back to the 1700's, because of the partitions. In some cases, Germans were even allowed to stay within the new borders of Poland if they took Polish citizenship. The point is, it's dangerous to make such blanket statements about every single village in one area just because it fell on one side of the old border and on the other side of the new border, unless there is a source specifically saying that village had Germans expelled. Hattie Cape (talk) 23:31, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Hattie Cape, I agree with the sourcing part but I disagree with your position that, because a village was not completely comprised of Germans that it should be ignored that they were expelled from their homes. The ethnic percentage of the population within a village shouldn't even matter. It is dangerous to make blanket statements. It is equally dangerous to place contingencies on whether it deserves to be mentioned, as it seems you initially suggest that it must be a significant amount of a certain population of a village in order to rise to the level of being included. If one German family in that village was expelled because of their ethnicity and it can be properly sourced then it deserves mentioning. It may not deserve undue weight but that does not mean that it doesn't carry any weight. We have sources which say that this did, in fact, happen within the region in which this village is located. That, in itself, does not mean it should be included, specifically, but I will continue to look for sources for this particular village. If those sources are found then it will be re-added with proper attribution. --ARoseWolf 12:20, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I didn't really say most of what you're stating I'm saying. For the record, I agree with your assertion that "If one German family in that village was expelled because of their ethnicity and it can be properly sourced then it deserves mentioning." I simply believe that just because the region had Germans expelled (which it certainly did), that doesn't mean a sentence about that should be included on this village's page without a source. If there is a reliable source that states it DID happen in this village, then of course that's a different matter altogether - include it. Hattie Cape (talk) 02:51, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I have now finished removing the unsourced statements from most of the villages and towns in Poland that had these unverified claims. I did notice in some of the article histories, that many of these articles had that unsourced text removed before but it was re-added. It appears that this is an ongoing controversy. Hattie Cape (talk) 13:11, 10 October 2021 (UTC)