The article by Katarzyna Boćkowska is entitled “The World Seen Through the Eyes of Returnees from Bosnia – the Oldest Residents of the Bolesławiec Area in Lower Silesia”. The author writes, among other things, about the history of Polish peasants’ settlement in Bosnia, Polish-Serbian relations in those areas, and the cultivation of traditions in the Recovered Territories. As we read:
Today, musical groups performing in Serbian are active in many villages around Bolesławiec. Since 2001, Bolesławiec has hosted the South Slavic Culture Festival, initially operating under the name Balkan Culture Festival in Bolesławice “Bałkańska Festa”, while in Gościszów, one of the nearby villages, there is the Pečenica festival […], during which pigs are roasted on a spit according to homemade recipes brought from Bosnia, accompanied by Balkan music performed by local groups.
The article also discusses the problems of adaptation and assimilation faced by returnees from Bosnia in the Recovered Territories after the Second World War:
Another serious problem for the returnees was the presence of other groups of Poles in their neighbourhood. They often approached one another with distrust and a lack of understanding. It was particularly painful for the returnees to be called Serbs, Yugoslavs or Yugoslav Gypsies, because their Polish identity was often questioned both in Yugoslavia and in Poland (in Bosnia they were called Galicians or associated with Austrian Germans). From the first contacts between the returnees and other groups of Poles to the present day, they have sometimes been identified with Serbs and attributed negative traits considered typically Serbian—violence, irascibility, drunkenness and backwardness.
A substantial part of the article is devoted to the memories of returnees from our county. The author began dialectological research in November 2007. She met with several dozen returnees. The conversations, Katarzyna Boćkowska writes, most often lasted about two or three hours. (Excerpts from the interviews were included in an appendix to the aforementioned text.) She adds: “The free interview method I used makes it possible not only to describe many variants of the dialectal Polish spoken by returnees from Yugoslavia, but also to learn about the world in which they were born and raised.”
The topics most frequently discussed included, among others, the war, pre-war memories, neighbours, family and Poland.
K. Boćkowska concludes:
It therefore seems that an in-depth study is still needed that would present more fully their [reemigrantów – przyp „ii”] lives both in Bosnia and in Poland, particularly during the earliest years after their return. This is important because the distinctive characteristics of each group settled in the Bolesławiec area are disappearing exceptionally quickly.
The full article appears in the latest issue of “Literatura Ludowa” (nos. 4–5, 2015). More information on the website of the Polish Ethnological Society and in the online journal catalogue.
It is worth adding that the article by Katarzyna Boćkowska from Bolesławiec was illustrated with photographs from Bałkańska Festa, taken by employees of the Municipal Culture and Sport Centre in Bolesławiec, based in Kruszyn.