5,000,000 POLES CROSS THE NEISSE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 77, 24 January 1947, Page 4

5,000,000 POLES CROSS THE NEISSE

Five million Poles have now gone to the Oder-Neisse territories transferred from Germany by the Postdam agreement, many of them to settle on lands formerly owned by the Prussian Junkers. '

Under Polish agrarian reforms, these Junker estates were divided up into small peasant holdings. Of the three million acres owned by the Junker landlords in this territory, 630,000 acres have already been divided up and settled by Poles. Figur'es given by the Polish ViceMinisters for the Regained Territory, M. Wolski and M. W. Czajlcowski, show that Poles are rapidly replacing Germans in one of the great est population transfers of history. In February, 1946, there were five million inhabitants in this territory transferred to Poland from Germany. Of these five million, 41 per cent, were still Germans.

About 1,500,000 Germans have been returned to Germany. There are still from three-quarters to a million unwanted Germans to be returned.

The Vice-Ministers said that the Government would not monopolise industry in the new territory, but leave much of it to private enterprise. Ex-soldiers, resistance fighters and war invalids would be given priority in acquiring property.