Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej (Oct 2015)
“The Lebanese” and their fate in biographical perspective
Abstract
The text is about Poles who in 1941, as a result of the so-called amnesty, left the Soviet Union and wandered the earth to end up in Lebanon. Their presence in this country was a phenomenon unprecedented in the Middle East region. The biggest wave of Polish refugees came to Lebanon in the years 1943–1946 and had ca. 6000 people for whom Lebanon became a truly safe haven. This continued till the beginning of the 1950s, when the last group off Poles left the country. Most of them never came back to their home country, settling mostly in Great Britain and beyond the Ocean, while only a handful of them remained in Lebanon. The text discusses the accounts given by the so-called “Lebanese”, as those Poles who at some point of their lives found refuge in Lebanon call themselves. The accounts were recorded in Poland, Great Britain and Lebanon. “The Lebanese” explained the motives that drove people or their families forced to leave their place of stay when taking decisions regarding new destination. Also, the text describes in detail the impressions of the narrators from the new places they found themselves in and how they coped in new reality (on the example of Great Britain and Poland which was a Communist-ruled country at that time). The text aims to familiarize the audience with this subject, about which not much has been said so far.
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