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After World War II displaced more than sixty million people, Cold War politics opened global eyes and wallets to European displaced persons. The postwar experiences of more than three million forcibly displaced Polish people illuminate the painfully long process of reckoning with war and its fallout.
Drawing on rich primary material unearthed in over a dozen archives, Kingdom of Barracks depicts the texture of everyday life in refugee camps in post–World War II Europe within a panorama of the social and cultural history of the twentieth century. Western Allies and Polish social elites construed the camps as spaces for rehabilitating and “re-civilizing” refugees to prepare them for the reconstruction of war-torn countries and a rebirth of the nation. On the ground, refugees lived in close proximity, sharing bug-infested barracks with people from other regions, social classes, and wartime experiences. Taking a bottom-up perspective and exploring the formation of cultural identity in exile through the lenses of class, gender, body, and nationality, Katarzyna Nowak argues that Polish DPs’ experiences of displacement stimulated a personal and a collective revival understood in religious and national terms.
In an age of intensifying forced displacement, Kingdom of Barracks sheds new light on past experiences of war and migration that are still deeply relevant in the present.
“Nowak’s well-written and well-re‐ searched cultural and social history of Polish dis‐ placed persons in the aftermath of the Second World War... is an exemplary addition to the canon of postwar historical literature. Her ability to weave individual destinies in and out of international political processes allows the author to keep displaced per‐ sons’ interests at the forefront of their own history while continuously giving them a voice in defining their own lives – and histories. Nowak’s Kingdom of Barracks is, therefore, a formidable addition to a growing body of literature that focuses on some of the traditionally forgotten victims of Nazism, a deficit of literature that historical academia has only begun to address in recent years." H-Poland
“A meticulously researched and elegantly written social history [that] offers readers the perspective from below and digs into the history of emotions rather than institutions. Nowak's ground-breaking work is a view of the zeitgeist of a million people on the move amid the postwar ruin and early Cold War. A grand study on the subject that, sadly, still remains pertinent.” Heldt Prize Jury
"Reminiscent of a classic in its depth and quality, this book is an essential read for scholars of migration, post-war history, and humanitarianism." BASEES George Blazyca Prize jury
"This book will be a key reference for scholars working on displaced people for both its content and methodology, and for anyone seeking to understand better the specific complexity of Polish identity formation in the twentieth century." BASEES Stephen White Prize jury
"It is a rare and very special achievement to create such a deeply researched book about a 'moving target' like the displaced, which shows them as individuals, and which is also so compelling and pleasurable to read." BASEES Women's Forum Prize jury
“Katarzyna Novak’s book is a superlative example of historical research and writing. Nowak has not only made use of multiple archival sources but has also read them with care and imagination, a rare combination. Her’s is a work that opens up new avenues of interpretation in refugee history, postwar reconstruction, and European nationalism and nation-building. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of the postwar world that the DPs inhabited.” Austrian History Yearbook