TheOther: The Polish communists for example were very eager to erase everything that reminded of the German past of the new territories, so they flattened German cemeteries, removed German inscriptions from buildings, destroyed protestant churches, burnt church books, and so on.
I was rised in the western part and I know & saw how it was in one specific area of Lubuskie Wojewodztwo.
It shouldn't be a surprise if Poles were burning German books or vandalising signs written in German as it could be seen as a way of manifesting the freedom. That's understandable, don't you think so?
In the area where I grew up all the existing churches were transformed into Catholic churches! Not even one has been destroyed and I don't believe people were different on other parts of the western side.
Anyone can go and visit the western part of Poland and see for yourself, see those nicely kept and renovated very old churches.
On the contrary, on the eastern side, all of the Polish churches were adopted by Russians into farm buildings and left to deteriorate. I don't know this from books but from living people or their relatives who went to the area many years after the war.
The Germans cemeteries, believe it or not were not always destroyed but often used by the Poles - at least that's how it was in my area. Those cemeteries were kind of parted into "old" and "new" sites.
Over the time Poles build completely new cemeteries and everyone was able to move the bodies of their relatives to the new site. I remember that some German families came over to the area to collect their relatives bodies, I think it was in '70 or start '80. Somehow they find out about the relocation.
Also, there were some German families who didn't left the area after the war -surprisingly they were permitted to stay and live among the Poles.
Probably it wasn't easy for them to stay but it was their choice.
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