While after 1945 Poland for the first time became a country with 90% ethnic Poles (a percentage that continued to rise to 98% by 1989) some religious minorities remained, often in more or less cohesive groups: the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainians and Belorusians in the North East, Catholic Lithuanians in Punsk and Germans in the South West, and Polish Lutherans in the Wisła Valley. The rise of Catholic and very conservative rhetoric in Polish politics however, has had different effects on those groups and their politics. In our presentation we will pay attention to three of these groups - the Germans (Roman Catholic), the Ukrainians (Eastern Orthodox) and the Polish (Lutherans) - and how their minority history and status has influenced their political choices since.
