My grandfather’s family came from scattered villages around Olesno, in the Province of Oppeln, particularly from German-speaking communities in the region.
Unfortunately, I was never able to ask him personally about our family’s past. Based on our family records, they had been settled in this area for over 200 years. Some documents describe our ancestors as colonists, but the paper trail appears to end around 1820, so I do not know where they may have come from before settling in the region.
They had German given names but Slavic surnames, and this pattern continues very far back in our family tree, up to the last ancestor we have been able to trace.
This has left me with an open question: were they more likely immigrant Germans who settled in this region, or Germanised Slavs? And if they were originally of Slavic origin, how did they come to live in German speaking villages?
I am fairly certain that my grandfather neither spoke nor understood Polish, although it is also possible that he was afraid to admit this later in Germany because of the discrimination or persecution he may have faced after the war.
Modern genetic testing through Ancestry and 23andMe assigns our family almost 50% Eastern European ancestry. However, our G25 coordinates appear to be shifted more toward the north than the east, though not entirely, which makes the results difficult to interpret with certainty.
Like many others, he was forced to leave Silesia after the Second World War.
One detail that has always stayed with my family is that he was afraid to admit his real last name. At the end of the war, the family changed it to a German surname.
He told my mother this only once and never spoke about his past again.
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