As a member of Wroclaw (Breslau) and profesional genealogist I’m very interested in erly LDS history in Silesia.

Please contact me directly.

Regards,

Urszula

Steve C and I worked at the same library table yesterday and I know something of his interests and expertise. I hope you’ll share some of that with us, Steve, if you have time to drop by again.

And Mark B, my knowledge of the geography and politics comes from pretty much the same sources and ends at pretty much the same point! But now that I’m learning about the Saints, in whom I have a real interest, I won’t have much trouble learning and remembering more.

Thanks to all of you who have read this and left comments.

Regarding the German population of Wroclaw/Breslau: The settling of Germans (Saxons and Bavarians, to be more precise) in Wroclaw/Breslau began in earnest in the middle of the 13th century, after the Mongol invasion of Europe. By the early 20th century, the census showed a population of nearly 500,000, including 20,536 Jews, 6,020 Poles and 3,752 “others.” For nearly 600 years, Breslau had been part of Germanic states, including Bohemia, Austria and Prussia, and finally the German Reich after 1871.

I’m not trying to settle the argument about whether Silesia or Wroclaw is properly German or Polish. (Couldn’t do it, even if I wanted to–especially since most of what I know on the subject I learned from Wikipedia, and the few lines that most WW2 histories devote to the boundary changes and resettlement that resulted from the Yalta Conference, etc.) It is helpful to understand, though, that the Germanic communities in what is now western Poland (Pomerania and Silesia, mainly), had what is by American standards, a very long history, and that history was uprooted violently by the Soviet army’s conquering of that area in 1945 and the conquerers’ drawing of new national boundary lines thereafter.

(On a tangent: my junior high school orchestra teacher, John (Johann?) Hilgendorff, was from Stettin–a German city on the Baltic, not far from Danzig (Gdansk). He was part of that great gathering of the saints from eastern Germany.)

This is rather a simple explanation, but there were a lot of German speaking people living in Poland and Czechoslovakia before the war. In many cases they had been there for generations. After the war, the four million Germans in Silesia had to leave Poland when it was turned over to Russian occupation. It adds something to the picture of the Saints in Breslau to think that within twenty years their families and church units would be ripped apart and dispersed by war and genocide and forced evacuation.

“The Silesian people are perceived to traditionally exhibit exceptional working ethics, high technical aptitude, dedication to family, team-work orientation, and skepticism to politics and media.” (Wikipedia) As I found out on my mission, the former Silesian refugees I met also tended to be very sensitive to the spirit, which set them apart from many other people I worked with. [Some of the following details are from my missionary journal and several from memory, so certain of the details could need correction.]

A couple of weeks into my mission, my companion and I met an older woman from Silesia named Frau W-. Why did we know she was from Silesia? For the same reason we heard from old men that they had participated in the siege of Leningrad. It was a defining moment in their lives. (We didn’t normally hear anything about the Nazis or the Holocaust, although sometimes we did.)

We had an extremely remarkable experience working with Frau W- although I was transferred soon after and don’t know if the next missionaries kept up the contact. But this experience marked Silesia in my mind, and I found out that the Stake Patriarch, Johann Paul, also a remarkable person, was from Silesia. Several years ago I was happy to see his son Wolfgang called as one of the general authorities of the church.

A member in my third area was a child of the refugees from Poland. In his case, his parents had joined the church after coming to West Germany (very interesting story). He told us their stories of the depredations as the Russians occupied Poland, including the shocking sight of Russian soldiers dragging pianos into the street to rot in the rain. I’m sure he spared our young ears some of the more awful memories (although we heard about them from other former refugees).

I remember talking to an older woman one time outside a shop and as I started to discuss the church with her, felt the spirit very strongly. In surprise, I asked if she was from Silesia, which she was.

I don’t know what or why it was; but after about a dozen similar experiences, I really had a soft spot in my heart for the Silesian people.

My final experience was in my last area. I served in a small, struggling branch. Over the months I was there, I realized that one of the older sisters in the ward had managed to offend most members of the branch, some to the extent that they would not come back to church. I felt angry toward her as we saw efforts to bring members back to activity thwarted and efforts to introduce investigators hampered by the lack of a strong church unit.

I had been home from Germany almost half a year when I was sitting together with a family home evening group at the university listening to general conference. As I listened to President Monson tell the story of the German refugee woman in his talk “The Fatherless and the Widows—Beloved of God,” I remembered that this sister had been one of those refugees and got the distinct impression that she had been through things that I could not even imagine and that I needed to repent of my hard feelings toward her. It was a very humbling experience.

So, those are my rather lengthy notes on some of the Silesians I’ve met.

And a great story, Ardis, about another branch of Zion in a place we’ve nearly forgotten. (Keeping Breslau and Wroclaw straight doesn’t help much, eh?)

That is quite the story. I wonder if the political unstability was the reason that the Germans were taking a look at Mormonism in such numbers.

My mission exp is that when there is political uncertianty people were less likely to be interested in Mormonism. This comes from South Africa in 1994. Dring the the 4-5 months around the election of the ANC government we had maybe 10 convert baptisms.

Brave souls! I think I’d pass on an outdoor baptism held at sunset in mid-December.