Sympathy for the Unfamiliar Ghosts: Why did Polish Settlers Care for Tombs of Ancestors of Expelled Germans?

Although the scholarship to date has assumed that after the Second World War in central  Europe, in regions where forced displacement took place, the new, mostly Slavic settlers  neglected and destroyed German cemeteries left behind by the expellees, I argue that this  process did not start in the first years after the war because of the relationships that the settlers  established with chosen German dead. I explain why this particular deceased individual was  chosen, focusing on how the care of their tomb temporarily established a form of spectral  kinship. To do so, I focus on ethnographic materials, including interviews, gathered in central  Pomerania, contemporary Poland, to see how these stories have been conveyed after 1989 and  what impact post-socialist conditions had on them.

Funded by the European Union (ERC, Spectral Recycling, 101041946). Views and opinions  expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the  European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.