We Just Stayed, 2019/2020
The houses stood empty, and you could take whichever one you wanted. Newcomers arrived from different parts of the country — among them, my grandparents. We weren’t taught in school about the expulsion of the German population. Everyone I knew there was Polish. Over time, I began to understand what it had meant to stay and I sought out those who had. This inward journey allowed me to notice the traces of a culture that had built the villages and towns I knew so well and to change the way I looked at the familiar places of my childhood.
Warmia and Masuria, Poland