[LINK] "Polish-Belarusian Border: Separate Lives"

[rfmcdonald]

The knot of territory where the frontiers of Lithuania, Poland and Belarus meet, the European Union and the what-does-it-do-now? Commonwealth of Independent States, is the subject of this reposted 2004 article from Transitions Online. Back in 2008, I linked to an article describing the impact that the European Union's hard frontier had on the Lithuanian-Belarusian frontier, historically quite permeable, while not very long ago at all I blogged about Belarus' Polish minority, although not about Poland's Belarusian minority. Authors Gosia Wozniacka and Wojciech Kosc went to the village of Tokary, divided since 1945 between Poland and its eastern neighbour, and investigated how the division would impact the lives of Tokary's people on both side of the border.

Antonina, perched on a wooden stool by the white-tile stove, says the best thing her son ever did as mayor was to unite the two Tokarys, if only briefly. Her husband, Konstanty, has four brothers on the Belarusian side of the village and a sister in Brest. During the course of Konstanty’s lifetime, Tokary belonged to Poland, briefly to Germany, then to the Soviet Union, again to Germany, and, finally returned – or half was – to Poland.

As mayor, Wichowski was able to open the border in Tokary on two occasions during religious holidays, in the early 1990s. Prior to this, Konstanty had not seen his relatives for 40 years. His wife and son had never met them.

“You should have seen it when we met again for the first time,” Antonina recounts. “We were all kissing each other and cursing those who had divided us. My husband was crying. They [the relatives from Belarus] slept here; the house was full with three generations of our family.”

Things are more complicated now. To cross from one Tokary to the other, Poles now need to go to Bialystok, the province’s capital city 130 kilometers away, to get a visa. And the nearest border crossing is in Polowce, 25 kilometers away.

[. . .]

Ireneusz Koziejuk, 35, an Orthodox priest based in Polish Tokary, says he sometimes sees people driving up with old maps and waiting. “They sleep in their cars, and in the morning they are baffled as to why the gate is not rising. [I imagine] it used to be so nice, people going back and forth, back and forth. Now that’s just a memory.”

Go, read before it goes up beyond their paywall.