When Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938 some regions of this country in the same time were occupied by Polish troops. Poland invaded and annexed Zaolzie territory part of Southern Slovakia. Why would you expect one year later in a similar situation the Soviets to act differently?
Please if you use History, do not change the content.. i know that Russia like to rewrite it and remove the ugly stuff but ... and you forget to add that after the war, the land has been given BACK !
And Zaolzie was not part of Slovakia ... look where is Silesia in Poland !
On 1 September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II in the West hemisphere, and subsequently made Zaolzie part of the Military district of Upper Silesia. On 26 October 1939 Nazi Germany unilaterally annexed Zaolzie as part of Landkreis Teschen. During the war, strong Germanization was introduced by the authorities. The Jews were in the worst position, followed by the Poles.[52] Poles received lower food rations, they were supposed to pay extra taxes, they were not allowed to enter theatres, cinemas, etc.[52] Polish and Czech education ceased to exist, Polish organizations were dismantled and their activity was prohibited. Katowice's Bishop Adamski was deposed as apostolic administrator for the Catholic parishes in Zaolzie and on 23 December 1939 Cesare Orsenigo, nuncio to Germany, returned them to their original archdioceses of Breslau or Olomouc, respectively, with effect of 1 January 1940.[53]
The German authorities introduced terror into Zaolzie. The Nazis especially targeted the Polish intelligentsia, many of whom died during the war. Mass killings, executions, arrests, taking locals to forced labour and deportations to concentration camps all happened on a daily basis.[52] The most notorious war crime was a murder of 36 villagers in and around Żywocice on 6 August 1944.[54] This massacre is known as Tragedia Żywocicka (the Żywocice tragedy). The resistance movement, mostly composed of Poles, was fairly strong in Zaolzie. Volkslists – a document in which a non-German citizen declared that he had some German ancestry by signing it; refusal to sign this document could lead to deportation to a concentration camp – were introduced. Local people who took them were later on enrolled in the Wehrmacht. Many local people with no German ancestry were also forced to take them. The World War II death toll in Zaolzie is estimated at about 6,000 people: about 2,500 Jews, 2,000 other citizens (80% of them being Poles)[55] and more than 1,000 locals who died in the Wehrmacht (those who took the Volksliste).[55] Also a few hundred Poles from Zaolzie were murdered by Soviets in the Katyn massacre.[56] Percentage-wise, Zaolzie suffered the worst human loss from the whole of Czechoslovakia – about 2.6% of the total population.[55]
Since 1945
Polish Gorals from Jablunkov during PZKO festival in Karviná, 2007
Immediately after World War II, Zaolzie was returned to Czechoslovakia within its 1920 borders, although local Poles hoped it would again be given to Poland.[57] While most Czechoslovaks of German ethnicity were expelled, the local Polish population again suffered discrimination, as many Czechs blamed them for the discrimination by the Polish authorities in 1938–1939.[58] Polish organizations were banned, and the Czechoslovak authorities carried out many arrests and dismissed many Poles from work.[59] The situation had somewhat improved when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took power in February 1948. Polish property deprived by the German occupants during the war was never returned.
