Qualla: Zgorzelec

Zgorzelec: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was User: (WT-shared) Fluglotse2000 at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. There is a riverside promenade in this Polish border town called Bulwar Grecki - Greek Boulevard. It runs along the Lusatian Neisse with a clear view across to Germany, and the name is not decoration. From 1948 Poland took in refugees from the Greek Civil War, and about ten thousand of them were settled here, in a town that had itself only just been invented. Until 1945 Zgorzelec was simply the east bank of Görlitz, a German town that had grown on both sides of its river for seven hundred years. Then the Potsdam Agreement drew the Polish border down the middle of the Neisse, and the people on the eastern side were ordered out. Almost nobody who lives in Zgorzelec today is descended from anybody who lived here in 1944. That is the town's whole story, and it is worth telling in the order it happened.

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Image: Original uploader was User: (WT-shared) Fluglotse2000 at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

Zgorzelec: One Town, Two Names

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aktron, CC BY 4.0. Before 1945 there is no separate history to tell: everything that happened to Görlitz happened here. A settlement called Goreliz appears in a document of the German king Henry IV in 1071, in the region of Upper Lusatia. It grew rich on the Via Regia, the great east-west trade roa...

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Image: Aktron | CC BY 4.0

Zgorzelec: Quartet for the End of Time

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aktron, CC BY 4.0. On 26 August 1939, days before the invasion of Poland, the Germans opened a temporary camp on the eastern outskirts. It became Stalag VIII-A, and the first 8,000 Polish prisoners of war arrived on 7 September. Polish civilians were held there too, including women - activists and ...

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Image: Aktron | CC BY 4.0

Zgorzelec: The Order to Leave

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erato, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl. Polish operation groups crossed on 10 to 12 May 1945 to secure the east bank, and Polish administration was formally installed on 21 May. On 2 June the military closed the bridge to stop Germans returning to their homes. Early on the morning of 21 June the roughly 8,800 Germans s...

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Image: Erato | CC BY-SA 3.0 pl

Zgorzelec: Ten Thousand Greeks

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardalovesmonuments, CC BY-SA 4.0. Then came the Greeks. The communist side lost the Greek Civil War in 1949, and Poland admitted thousands of partisans and their families; the largest group of them was settled in Zgorzelec, where empty German housing stood waiting. At its height the Greek community here ran into ...

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Image: Ricardalovesmonuments | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zgorzelec: The Hall Where the Border Was Signed

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Takasamarasa, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl. On the Polish bank stands a vast domed hall built by the Germans as the Oberlausitzer Gedenkhalle, designed by Hugo Behr and opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 28 November 1902 to celebrate the emperors and the unification of Germany. On 6 July 1950 Otto Grotewohl and Józef Cyrankiew...

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Image: Takasamarasa | CC BY-SA 3.0 pl