Video: Cieszyn / Tesin - a city divided by World War II into two countries
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
While during the Cold War the entire Western world empathized with the inhabitants of Berlin, divided into two parts by a wall, in a similar situation, Poles from Cieszyn city, whose small homeland turned out to be divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Poles have always constituted an ethnic majority in the city of Cieszyn and the surrounding region of Cieszyn Silesia. However, these lands became part of the Polish State only in 1920, after the collapse of Austria-Hungary. And even then, far from completely. The border between Poland and Czechoslovakia ran along the Olshe River, dividing the city into two approximately equal parts.
But already in 1938, during the partition of Czechoslovakia, Poland annexed the entire Cieszyn Silesia, establishing control over its ethnic lands. However, this reunion did not last long. Just nine years later, in 1947, as a result of the Second World War, the border returned to the Olshe River, again dividing the city and its inhabitants into two parts. The historical center of Cieszyn remained in Poland, the areas built up in the 19th century formed the city of Cesky Tesin as part of the revived Czechoslovakia.
Residents of the city, friends and relatives, had to communicate with each other across the banks of the Olshe River, located at a distance of several tens of meters from each other. Crossing the border of Poland and Czechoslovakia, despite the fact that both of these states ended up in the Eastern Bloc, was not so easy.
The situation changed in the early nineties, when the Warsaw Pact Organization disintegrated, and the Czech Republic and Poland turned from the satellite countries of the Soviet Union into completely independent states.
Finally, and before that, a fairly open border collapsed in 2007 with the accession of both countries to the Schengen Area. The cordons inside the city ceased to exist, and the former border crossings, conveniently located in the very center of the once again single settlement, turned into shops and restaurants.
Of course, formally Cieszyn and Cesky Tesin are still two different settlements in two different countries. There are two municipalities, two main squares, two railway stations. But in the social sense, the city became one again. And even the city councils of its two parts hold joint meetings on a regular basis.
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