Refugee
As a 20th-century refugee you might leave with a single suitcase and a few minutes’ warning – and spend years waiting to learn whether there was any home to return to.
The century of displacement
The 20th century uprooted people on a scale never seen before. The First World War, the collapse of empires and the Russian Civil War created millions of refugees; the League of Nations introduced the ‘Nansen passport’ in 1922 for stateless people. The Second World War and its aftermath were even worse: by 1945 there were an estimated 40 million or more displaced people in Europe alone. Later decades brought partition in India in 1947, the Palestinian exodus of 1948, wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, among many others.
Polish journeys
Poles experienced displacement from many directions. In 1939 civilians fled the German and Soviet invasions; between 1940 and 1941 Soviet authorities deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Some left with General Anders’ army through Iran in 1942, including thousands of children, who were sheltered in places such as India, Africa and New Zealand. After 1945, as borders moved west, millions were resettled from the eastern territories, while Germans were expelled from the new western lands. Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust often had nowhere left to return.
Stations, camps and paperwork
Daily life as a refugee meant crowded railway stations, freight wagons, transit camps and endless forms. After the war, displaced persons’ camps in Germany and Austria housed hundreds of thousands, some for years. The 1951 Refugee Convention defined a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution and established the principle that refugees must not be returned to danger. Rebuilding a life – learning a language, having qualifications recognised, coping with loss and trauma – often took a generation.
