Lost Lands Now Polish, Kohl Says : Jeering Silesians Are Told Not to Expect Border Changes

Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Sunday told an unruly, jeering crowd of Germans expelled at the end of World War II from the eastern regions of the old German Reich that their homeland must now be considered Polish.

Speaking to an estimated 8,000 members of the Silesian League of Expellees gathered for an annual rally at the northern city of Hanover, Kohl said that mainly Polish families now live in Silesia, the mineral-rich former German province that now makes up the the southwestern part of Poland. For the Polish inhabitants, Kohl said, the province has become home.

“We will respect this and not question it,” he said. “Any unilateral change in the existing European borders is for us out of the question.”

Kohl’s decision to become the first chancellor in 20 years to address the Silesian expellees was condemned throughout the East Bloc. When the group originally intended to use as its official motto for the meeting, “Forty years of banishment--Silesia remains ours,” Kohl threatened not to show up.

Kohl’s appearance at the rally was also politically embarrassing. Many of the expellees’ most outspoken representatives are from his own conservative Christian Democratic Union.

The chancellor reiterated the West German legal position that the final decision on disposition of the lost German territories can only be resolved in a peace treaty that has not yet been signed to formally end the war. The West German view is based on the decision of the victorious wartime allies to place Silesia under Polish “administration” pending a formal settlement in a peace treaty. Kohl said that West Germany’s East European neighbors should not feel threatened by Bonn’s legal position.

He called for improved cooperation and intensified cultural exchange with Poland.

Kohl was greeted with applause when he entered the large congress hall at Hanover’s sprawling industrial fairgrounds, but he was subjected to whistles, jeers and booing as his speech progressed.

Silesia Disputed

Signs saying “Silesia Is German” and “Silesia Belongs to Us” were visible in the crowd, and ushers quickly pulled down a banner unfurled by a group of young infiltrators proclaiming, “Silesia Remains Polish.”

After Germany lost most of Silesia to advancing Soviet troops at the end of the war, about 2 million Silesians were among the estimated 13 million Germans driven from all of the Reich’s eastern regions in one of the largest forced migrations in Europe. About 2 million died of starvation, disease or were killed in the trek west.

The majority of the expellees resettled in West Germany and today, one in five of the country’s 58 million Germans stem from an expellee’s family.

The successful integration of the expellees into West German society has long been judged one of the great successes of post-war German democracy.

However, in the last few years, the long-dormant groups of expellees have become increasingly vocal with claims that their homeland remains German.

The chairman of the Silesian League, Herbert Hupka, member of Parliament from Kohl’s party, was received with wild applause when he declared, “Germany is not just the Federal Republic.”

The revival of such sentiments have severely strained Bonn’s already difficult relations with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The jeering reception Kohl received is highly unusual for a German chancellor and was initially seen as a further blow to his sagging political image at home.

His words were also received skeptically in Moscow and Warsaw.

The Soviet news agency Tass, noting Kohl’s statement that only a peace treaty could determine the permanent fate of Silesia, said his speech reflected the contradictions of his country’s policies toward the East.

The Polish government said that Kohl’s words only confirmed that he still believes a prewar Germany can exist.