Zaolzie (Olsaland) 1945. On Polish historiography and historiographical controversions

Abstract

Zaolzie – a part of Cieszyn/Teschen Silesia – was always known as a conflicted area between Poland and Czechoslovakia, specially in the years 1918–1920, 1938, 1939–1945 (in exile) and 1945–1947. Because of the political situation, the objective reconstruction of the last conflict, started in the May 1945, was until the changes in Central Eastern Europe in 1989 impossible. The real breakthrough was the book of Marek Kamiński Polish Czechoslovak political relations 1945–1948 edited in 1990, which opened up a discussion about this forgotten period. Now, thanks to the books by Kamiński, Nowak, and Friedl a lot of so called“white patches” in the  history of Zaolzie after WW II are dissolved. Probably the new facts about Zaolzie and the Polish minority in Czechoslovakia we can find only in the Russian archives. On the other hand, the historiography is still “bombed” by amateurish works which are typical example of the local emotions on the borderlands.