Widespread travel to Silesia predated the 1970 Warsaw treaty

Evidence

While a veritable l ood of expellees crossed over into the old Heimat after 1970, a surprising multitude showed enough tact and tenacity (not to mention luck) to get into Silesia during the i fteen years before the Treaty of Warsaw. The consulate division of the Polish military mission in West Berlin (which, in the absence of a formal consulate, handled West German entry visas) received more than 9,000 visa requests in 1956. … As one Heimat newspaper editor rel ected amid the excitement surrounding the i rst trip in November 1956: “There is a general, primordial Heimat -feeling in each person to see their Heimat again after so many years, that piece of earth from their childhood,” and this, he reasoned, would lead many expellees 20 Erwin Heller, “Die letzte Erinnerung an Jeschkendorf,” Liegnitzer Heimatbrief 9, no. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 1176

Categorization

• QUESTION: The visa figure and Orbis’s 3,000-West-German expectation imply far larger ongoing contact than integration narrative literature assumes — worth verifying the total pre-1970 traveler numbers.