Trans-Olza

• 1. Introduction

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  Polish president Lech Kaczyński stood before Czech and Slovak diplomatic delegations in 2009 and called Poland's seizure of Trans-Olza what it was. "Not only an error," he said, "but above all a sin." The occasion was the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II.

  The Olza River gave Trans-Olza its name and eventually marked its western boundary. The territory sits in Cieszyn Silesia, in what is now the Czech Republic. In Polish it is called Zaolzie, meaning "lands beyond the Olza." That name was coined in the 1930s by Polish writer Paweł Hulka-Laskowski. The word holds the entire perspective of those left on the far bank.

  The Austrian census of 1910 recorded that 69.2% of the area's population identified as Polish. That number anchored the Polish claim for decades. But the region's economic significance and great-power calculations ensured its fate would be settled at conference tables far from its villages.

  How did Czech diplomat Edvard Beneš outmaneuver both Poland and his Western allies at a conference in Belgium in 1920? What did it cost Poland internationally when it seized Trans-Olza in October 1938? And how does the region's Polish community exist today, after a century of disputed sovereignty?

• 2. Coal and Competing Claims

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  The Košice-Bohumín Railway was one of only two railroads connecting the Czech provinces to Slovakia. That fact alone explains why the new Czechoslovakia refused to surrender Trans-Olza without a fight. The region also sat atop rich black coal seams, with important mines, metallurgy factories, and industrial facilities concentrated throughout. Control of the territory meant control of the fuel and the communications of a brand-new state.

  About 60,000 people arrived from Galicia between 1880 and 1910, most of them poor, Polish-speaking, and working-class. Roughly half were illiterate. They came for work in the coal mines and steel works. For them, national identity mattered far less than wages. Almost all of them eventually assimilated into the Czech-speaking population. Today, ethnographers record that about 25,000 residents of Ostrava carry Polish surnames. That figure represents roughly 8% of the city's current population.

  Four major groups shared the territory: Poles, Czechs, Germans, and a group of Silesians who claimed a distinct national identity of their own. The Silesian identity found its strongest support among Protestants in the eastern part of Cieszyn Silesia, not in Trans-Olza itself. A fifth community, the Jews, formed a significant presence throughout the area.

  Under Austrian rule, Cieszyn Silesia was divided into four administrative districts. One of them, Frýdek, had a predominantly Czech population. The other three were mostly inhabited by Poles. German numbers grew through the 19th century. At the end of that century, the Czech population actually declined, assimilating into the larger Polish-speaking community in some areas. The industrial boom of the early 20th century reversed that trend sharply.

  From 1848 to the end of the 19th century, local Poles and Czechs cooperated, united against the Germanizing policies of Austria-Hungary. Ethnic tensions arose only as the area's economic significance grew and outside pressure intensified. The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 would make the question of national allegiance suddenly, urgently practical.

• 3. The January Invasion

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  On the 30th of October 1918, the Polish Rada Narodowa Księstwa Cieszyńskiego issued its declaration, titled "Ludu śląski!" The Czech Zemský národní výbor pro Slezsko followed with its own claim on the 1st of November. By the 31st of October, local Polish authorities backed by armed forces had already taken over most of the territory. On the 5th of November, a temporary arrangement divided the region between the two national councils.

  When Poland announced elections to the Sejm across all of Cieszyn Silesia, Czechoslovakia demanded that Warsaw stop. Warsaw refused. On the 23rd of January 1919, Czech forces invaded.

  Historian Richard M. Watt puts the Czech force at about 15,000 infantry. To suggest Allied backing, Czech commanders placed officers of Czech background at the heads of their columns. Each wore his respective wartime Allied uniform. The pretext offered to the Entente was that the Cieszyn area had become a Bolshevik hotbed. The small Polish defensive force was nearly driven out entirely.

  The advance halted after the Battle of Skoczów, under pressure from the Entente powers. A ceasefire was signed on the 3rd of February 1919. The matter then moved to Paris, where international mediation proceeded without a quick resolution. Plebiscite commissioners arrived in the territory at the end of January 1920, expecting to oversee a vote that would finally settle the question.

• 4. Beneš at the Table

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  Plebiscite commissioners declared a state of emergency in Trans-Olza on the 19th of May 1920. The conditions they found were far beyond what any orderly vote required: mutual intimidation, beatings, acts of terror, and killings. On the 10th of July 1920, both sides formally abandoned the plebiscite.

  What followed, by historian Richard M. Watt's account, was less a negotiated settlement than a carefully staged result. Over dinner at the Spa Conference, Edvard Beneš convinced the British and the French that the plebiscite should simply be cancelled. Beneš also persuaded them to draw a boundary favorable to Czechoslovakia on every key point. That meant the largest portion of the territory, the vital railroad, and all of the important coal fields.

  Beneš then visited the Polish delegation at Spa. He gave them the impression that the Czechs would accept a settlement favorable to Poland without a plebiscite. The Poles signed an agreement pledging to accept whatever Allied decision was reached on Cieszyn. Only then did they discover that Beneš had already secured that decision before approaching them. Watt's verdict: the Poles had signed "a blank check."

  On the 28th of July 1920, the Spa Conference awarded Czechoslovakia 58.1% of the area of Cieszyn Silesia, containing 67.9% of the total population. The boundary left 139,000 Poles inside Czech territory and only 2,000 Czechs on the Polish side. Polish Prime Minister Wincenty Witos warned that the decision "has caused a rift between these two nations." About 12,000 to 14,000 Poles were forced to leave for Poland in the immediate aftermath.

• 5. Poland's Borrowed Year

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  The railway junction city of Bohumín was the specific prize that Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Józef Beck fixed on in September 1938. Beck believed Warsaw had to move before Nazi Germany took the city. At noon on the 30th of September 1938, Poland issued a formal ultimatum to the Czechoslovak government. Prague was given until noon the following day to evacuate its troops and police.

  At 11:45 a.m. on the 1st of October, the Czechoslovak foreign ministry telephoned the Polish ambassador in Prague and yielded. General Władysław Bortnowski led the Polish Army into the region. The annexed territory covered 801.5 square kilometres and held a population of 227,399. It was divided administratively between Frysztat County and Cieszyn County.

  In Frysztat and Cieszyn, the local Polish population greeted the incoming soldiers as liberators. Many saw the transfer as historical justice, long overdue. That mood did not last. New Polish authorities replaced locals in key positions with officials brought in from Poland. About 35,000 Czechoslovaks left the region, by choice or under pressure. Czech and German use in public was banned. Czech organizations were dissolved and their activities prohibited.

  Pope Pius XI, a former nuncio to Poland, transferred the Catholic parishes of Trans-Olza to a new apostolic administration under Stanisław Adamski, Bishop of Katowice. Internationally, the reaction was withering. French Prime Minister Daladier told the American ambassador he hoped to live long enough "to pay Poland for her cormorant attitude." Soviet Prime Minister Molotov publicly called the Poles "Hitler's jackals." Winston Churchill compared Germany and Poland together to vultures landing on the dying carcass of Czechoslovakia, and separately to hyenas.

  Zaolzie remained in Polish hands for only 11 months. On the 1st of September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and the brief return was over.

• 6. Under Nazi Rule

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  On the 26th of October 1939, Nazi Germany formally annexed Trans-Olza, incorporating it into Landkreis Teschen. The region had changed sovereignty three times within a single decade. German authorities immediately introduced systematic Germanization throughout public and private life.

  The central instrument of coercion was the Volksliste, a document in which a non-German citizen declared some degree of German ancestry. Refusal to sign could result in deportation to a concentration camp. Many locals with no German ancestry at all were coerced into signing. Those who did were subsequently liable for conscription into the Wehrmacht.

  Jews suffered the most severe treatment. Poles received lower food rations and were subject to extra taxes. They were barred from theatres, cinemas, and similar places. Polish and Czech education ceased entirely. Polish organizations were dismantled. The Nazis targeted the Polish intelligentsia particularly, and many did not survive. A resistance movement, composed mostly of Poles, remained active throughout the occupation.

  The single most notorious war crime came on the 6th of August 1944. German forces murdered 36 residents in and around the village of Żywocice. The event is remembered as the Żywocice tragedy.

  The total death toll in Trans-Olza during World War II is estimated at about 6,000. Approximately 2,500 were Jews. Around 2,000 were other civilians, of whom roughly 80% were Polish. More than 1,000 were locals who died in the Wehrmacht after being compelled to sign the Volksliste. A few hundred Poles from Trans-Olza were also killed by the Soviets in the Katyn massacre. Measured as a share of its population, Trans-Olza's losses of about 2.6% made it the hardest-hit part of the whole of Czechoslovakia.

• 7. The Long Reckoning

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  In 1945, Trans-Olza was returned to Czechoslovakia within its 1920 borders. Most Czechoslovaks of German ethnicity were expelled. Local Poles had hoped the region might finally go to Poland. That did not happen. Many Czechs blamed the Polish community for the discrimination of 1938-1939. Polish organizations were banned again, many Poles lost their jobs, and property seized by the German occupiers during the war was never returned. The situation eased somewhat when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took power in February 1948.

  Poland and Czechoslovakia signed a treaty in Warsaw on the 13th of June 1958, formally confirming the border as it had stood on the 1st of January 1938. A post-war industrial boom drew many Slovak immigrants into the region. Almost all of them assimilated into the Czech-speaking majority over time. The last Slovak primary school in Karviná closed in recent years. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Trans-Olza has been part of the independent Czech Republic, and a significant Polish minority continues to live there.

  In May 2004, both the Czech Republic and Poland joined the European Union. When both countries entered the Schengen passport-free zone in late 2007, the signs prohibiting border crossings were removed. People could cross the Olza River at any point without documents. The area belongs today largely to the Cieszyn Silesia Euroregion, with a few municipalities also in the Euroregion Beskydy. Such frameworks would have been unimaginable to the plebiscite commissioners who declared a state of emergency there on the 19th of May 1920.