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New! WebQuest for education

“A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. WebQuests are intended to use learners’ time meaningfully, to focus on the use of information instead of the search for information, and to support learners on the level of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.”

(Definition by Bernie Dodge, the inventor of the WebQuest)

In the context of our current exhibition “Between Uncertainty and Confidence. The Art, Culture and Everyday Life of Polish Displaced Persons in Germany 1945-1955”, which is accompanied by a huge number of articles on our portal, we are offering schools a WebQuest containing complete training documentation.

Catalogue of Exhibition “Between Uncertainty and Confidence. The Art, Culture and Everyday Life of Polish Displaced Persons in Germany 1945-1955, Dortmund, 2016.

LWL-Industriemuseum 2017

Between Uncertainty and Confidence.

The Art, Culture and Everyday Life of Polish Displaced Persons in Germany 1945-1955

Introduction

The end of the Second World War liberated people in Germany from wartime events and the National Socialist regime. Around 8,000,000 people who had been transported from their homes to Germany during the war and survived forced labour, the concentration camps and civilian labour, were also liberated. They were regarded as "Displaced Persons", to be cared for immediately.

But it was not long before huge difficulties arose, especially for Polish Displaced Persons (DPs). The upshot was that many of them were prevented from returning home for many years and some of them were never able to return. Despite the lengthy periods of uncertainty life had to go on and every day conditions had to be organised in an alien country. But why did Polish DPs have such great difficulties in returning home quickly? What did the everyday life of Polish DPs in the camps look like? How did the DPs and the German population react to one another? And there again, there was another special feature: the Polish enclave of Maczków...