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The subject-matter of considerations is a presentation based on memories reports of the cultural process of accustoming Lower-Silesia villages by the population from the Eastern borderlands of the Second Republic of Poland. The basis of this work constitutes empirical studies conducted between 1989 and 2009. The analyses cover the first period of Pole relocation, namely from 1945 to 1946. What has been assumed is a colloquial way the relocated understand their history, according to which the timeline is broadened and comprises the period from the World War II breakout and, subsequently, so called occupations (a Soviet, German and again Soviet one) to the moment of their arrival to the Western lands. In accordance with such an understanding of their own fate, cultural accustomation of new spaces is analysed through trauma and experiences of these people starting from a luminal period, it being a death of Poland in September 1939. This kind of a subjective perception of the history of one’s own group is extremely attractive for an anthropological analysis. It enables tracing not only subsequent political changes and prosecution of the Polish people connected with it, but also cultural changes, and new competence gain. It is them that, in consequence, determined a qualitatively different way of a dialogue with a changing reality and one’s won cultural heritage despite the permanence of many traditional cultural structures. It was a totally new phenomenon, and unknown to this population. Objectively speaking, it required the renouncement of many cultural canons biding so far and working out categorically new mediation structures under the circumstances of a dismantled borderline. It derived from particularly a political, but also cultural status of the Polish borderline people in this area. The experiences constituted the basis for the formation of a new social and cultural capital. As a result, it decided on particular ways of a cultural accustomation of the people in an extreme situation. The text paid attention to such issues as the first contact with a foreign land, new, multidimensional challenges, and, consequently, accustoming homestead, farmstead, fields, chapels and roadside crosses, and, finally, the whole village space.

Collective memory, the issue visibly raised recently, is particularly important, and perhaps, especially with reference to the reality of the Silesian native population; regional collectiveness of a special history. Analysing the very phenomenon in the context of ethnology/anthropology and also basing on the arrangements (and terminology) within the scope of history and sociology, the very problem has its clear conditions and regional features in Upper-Silesian reality as well as processes taking place on the scale of the postcommunist Europe. In the space in question — as a result of the process of system transformation two different phenomena such as economic (transformations of the economic policy), trade (industry restructuring), social (structure, relation and bond transformation, lowering of life standard, and change of life style), ethnic-national (divisions within native population, a fully non-cristallised national process, erosion of Polish national attitudes, the phenomenon of the so called Silesian nationality, preceded by the growth of the so called Silesian option, and, finally, cultural ones (the predominance of the Silesian over Polish one, a weak relation with the Polish symbolic universe, revitalization of the Silesian identity) clashed here. The result has constituted a peculiar collective memory of the Polish People’s Republic being the expression of current dilemmas, questions, as well as trauma and hope. The very states are projected on and referred to the past. Moreover, in the perspective of our interest, the phenomenon of collective memory manifests in its different functions such as enculturation, information, explication, legitimization (of concrete events, messages, anniversaries, people), axiologisation (of processes, events or people), reproduction (“processing” of given facts or values) or redefinition — on the level of informality of given notions. It is this series of factors that decides on the importance of the research problem raised which is also connected with the phenomenon of identity in a special way.

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Copyright of Cardiology Letters is the property of Slovak Society of Cardiology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cardiology Letters is the property of Slovak Society of Cardiology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)