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Paweł Starzec

Documentalist, sociologist, academic teacher.

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Anew is a documentary project about the contemporary landscape of Lower Silesia – a land that passed into Polish hands after World War II. As part of the so-called Recovered Territories, the region has experienced the intersection of over a thousand years of history and the need to rewrite its identity, largely as part of an organised, propaganda effort. Settled by repatriates and migrants, multicultural Lower Silesia quickly became an important industrial center of the Polish People's Republic, and over time, also an important center of resistance against the communist government. A hotbed of cultural movements, Wrocław – the capital of the region – was demographically the youngest city in Poland. The changes of 1989 erased much of the industrial heritage, once again forcing a change in the narrative.
Contemporary Lower Silesia is less a single narrative than a stage where multiple, often contradictory scenarios of history have played out. For decades, the region has been at once an economic resource, a symbolic trophy, a question mark, and a provisional home for waves of newcomers. The Millennium Flood of 1997, catalysed a sense of belonging by uniting inhabitants in defence of their city – a rare moment where all the narratives converged.
Lower Silesia is a region where identity has been continuously scripted and rescripted – where each generation stages a new scenario of how to inhabit the past, and how to imagine the future. Anew investigates this tangle of micro-histories. What is it now? What is the sum of histories in the plural?

Part of the field work within the project was carried out with the support of the scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Young Poland 2024, and the Scholarship of the Mayor of Wrocław.

2012 – ongoing.

How many different takes on history could be fitted on top of each other?

Built at the beginning of the 20th century as barracks for German troops, when the city was within Germany. After the war, the building became Soviet army base for troops stationed in Poland. Then, the protagonists of “Lubiewo”, Michał Witkowski’s novel, traveled there to have sex with soldiers, which places the barracks in the ephemeral Polish Queer history. After the departure of the Soviet troops, the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Wrocław moved to the building. As part of the renovation, artificial antique columns were placed in the corridors.

The building of the former elementary school at 5-7 Drobnera Street in Wrocław, entered in the municipal register of architectural monuments, was sold to a private investor. Despite the historic character, the investor leaves only the facade of the original building; this way of reconstruction is called by some the Wrocław school of renovation.

Western City is a private Wild West themed funfair located at the foot of Śnieżka, the highest peak of the Sudetes, on an area of about 65 hectares. On July 4, 1998, on the anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, it was opened by the city’s owner and Sheriff, Jerzy Pokój, with a shot in the air.

Wrocław, often called the City of a Hundred Bridges, is home to between 101 and 118 bridges – some of them iconic landmarks. The Odra River and its canals once served key logistical roles. The model, built in Institute of Environmental Engineering, Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences in 2006 in the 1: 200 scale for experimental purposes, reproduces the center of Wrocław with its characteristic buildings and hydrotechnical elements.

In September of 2024, it dropped almost half a year’s worth of rain during three days. As a result, cities were flooded due to the rapidly rising river levels. The flood was further intensified by the collapse of the dam in Stronie Śląskie – the city located below, as well as the next one downstream, Lądek Zdrój, suffered catastrophic destruction of houses and infrastructure. In some places, the water level was 150 cm higher than in 1997.

Markings on the stone indicate the water level during pre- and post-war floods that passed through Malczyce, a small town with a shipyard on the Odra River.

The region has faced several floods, but the most devastating was the 1997 Millennium Flood. It submerged 40% of Wrocław, damaged 2,583 residential buildings, and took 56 lives. Across Poland, it left at least 7,000 people with nothing and damaged or destroyed 680,000 homes, with losses estimated at 63 billion PLN.

The 1997 flood also marked a turning point for Lower Silesia, seen as the moment when locals fully embraced the region as their own, over 50 years after it became part of Poland. The collective response – mobilizing 300,000 to 480,000 sandbags, mostly by volunteers – symbolized a deepening bond with the land.

A tile bearing the name of the owner of the construction company responsible for the building's completion, dating from pre-war times, is easily visible. Easily visible are traces of repeated attempts to remove it from all sides, as well as the scratching of the German name of the city. In the post-war years, systematic attempts were made to eliminate traces of German culture. Eighty years later, the tile remains in its original location.

“So the Lord said – go and build your house on the mountain, for the end times will soon come”

Edward has lived as a hermit by choice on Wilcza Góra since the early 1990s. The hill was formed from postwar rubble, including debris, human remains, and unexploded ordnance. Over the years, Edward has reclaimed much of it by hand, turning it into a garden. I’ve been visiting him for over a decade – he invariably predicts the end of the world.

WUWA2 is a newly built housing estate, collaborative project of Lower Silesian Chamber of Architects, corporate investors and the city. It was advertised as an experimental settlement which was designed as a reference to the original modernist 1929 Werkbund Wohnungs- und Werkraumausstellung Exhibition estate, also located in Wrocław. The city’s announcement of its intention to name streets in the newly built housing estate after the pre-war German architects responsible for the 1929 exhibition was met with protests from right-wing circles.

Wrocław’s Przedmieście Oławskie, nicknamed the Bermuda Triangle, was long seen as a particularly dangerous area. After the city became part of Poland, this district of old tenement houses and post-industrial sites from the early 20th century was quickly inhabited, and remained severely underfunded. Its rough reputation even inspired the 1980s hit song Strzeż się tych miejsc (Beware of These Places) by Klaus Mitffoch.

Bermuda Triangle was fictionalised in TV series Świat według Kiepskich (The Lousy World), which aired from 1999 to 2022. Created by Janusz Sadza and based on his experiences in the area, the series reflects life in the Triangle setting – run-down tenement houses, coal stoves, shared corridor toilets, and heavy drinking.

Nadodrze, a district of Wrocław relatively lightly damaged during the war, plays a role in films depicting Berlin immediately after the war. Here, a mixture of scenery and real housing, as the setting for the film “Bridge of Spies.”

Wałbrzych, second biggest city of the region, was called the Polish Detroit until a few years ago. When in 1994 the coal mines – the industry that constituted the most important element of the local economy and identity – were closed, the city and its surroundings experienced an absolute economic collapse.

Wałbrzych still celebrates Barbórka – name day of St. Barbara, patron saint of miners. Celebrated with a parade, it is mostly attended by former Green and White Feathers – which means higher, safer office jobs in mining uniforms. There are associations of former miners, trying to maintain what once was a central point of local identity.

Biedaszyby (lit. Poverty shafts) are an illegal coal shafts, which
appeared across Wałbrzych after the mines closed, often dug near surface outcrops or as deep, narrow holes. Many were built by former miners using their skills, but the work remained extremely dangerous. At least nine people have died in such shafts over the past 30 years.

I asked the children waiting for the Barbórka procession through the city what they associate with mining. They answered in chorus that the local sports club was called Górnik (Miner). They were born 10 years after the announcement that coal mining in Wałbrzych would be closed.

I am convinced that the closer you are, the more obstacles they throw at your feet. On the basis of a poor photomontage, the Loch Ness municipality was able to subsidize the search for the monster in the depths of the lake; we have the facts, and we must strive for any support from the city.

Piotr Koper.

In August 2015, Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, two treasure hunters, reported to the city council that they had likely identified the place where the Golden Train was hidden. According to various sources, a nazi freight train filled with stolen valuables was supposed to leave the besieged Wrocław in the last days of World War II and dissolve without a trace.

Remains of former Książ Ceramics Factory, located right next to the alleged spot where the train was hidden in a blown up tunnel, at the 65th kilometer railway line mark. The treasure has not been found.

Sobięcin is a district in Wałbrzych, one of the few with still active remnants of industry. Due to mining damage, the progressive technical decay of buildings and revitalization plans, according to the press conference of the city’s Mayor from 2024, the entire area, excluding the tenement houses on 1 Maja, is to be demolished to prepare the area for other investments.

After years of believing that the soil composition in the region should indicate the existence of significant mineral deposits and drillings that failed to confirm this, in 1957, geologist Jan Wyżykowski discovered the Lubin-Sieroszowice copper ore deposit, the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. In effect, one of the richest sub-regions of Poland was built on copper mines, 100 kilometres from Wałbrzych.

“And this came about because in Sieroszowice, Jan Wyżykowski discovered copper deposits in 1957. This is where the Copper Basin began. I think it is a piece of history. I myself do not have family ties to copper, but I have always lived here and I think that because this history began here, because this copper has grown here, because so many mines are being established, an association was established, the Society of Friends of Jan Wyżykowski in Sieroszowice. We maintain everything and cultivate this knowledge, this history, this person of Jan Wyżykowski.”

Wanda Wdowiak, president of the Society of Friends of Jan Wyżykowski in Sieroszowice.

Bogatynia is a small town located in the Turoszowska Valley, in the south-west corner of Poland. The municipality borders with Germany and the Czech Republic and is one of the richest in Poland. Municipality of Bogatynia is known both in Polish scale and internationally primarily due to huge opencast Turów mine that takes up most of the valley, as well as due to heating and power plant connected to it. The existence of an open-cast mine in the Bogatynia region causes many problems on both international and local scale – the open-pit mine, located in the immediate vicinity of the Czech Republic and Germany, provokes protests from the inhabitants of nearby towns. In order to exist, the mine still absorbs settlements located on its banks.

Another resource of Bogatynia is methamphetamine, produced in the Czech Republic from pseudoephedrine-containing cough medicines available in Poland without a prescription, such as this tablet. Medicines are taken out of the blisters and transported across the border. Piko, as it is called in the local slang, has a huge impact on the local social life.

The R1 factory was part of a secret Soviet uranium mining project carried out after World War II. The operation, hidden from the public, led to severe mining damage and the eventual decision to completely erase the town of Miedzianka, where most of the shafts were located. By the 1970s, nearly all of Miedzianka had been demolished, and its residents were relocated.

Tomato greenhouses in Siechnice are one of the largest in Europe. Urban sprawl of Wrocław means further population of the area with new housing estates. Combined with the expansion of agriculture production, it resulted in a conflict over the light pollution of the natural environment. As a temporary measure, greenhouses are partially covered at night, but at dusk the glow emanating from them is visible from several kilometers.

From the 1970s until 2019, a welcome sign for Fabryczna (the Factory District) stood at Wrocław’s western entrance. This area was once home to the city’s largest industrial plants, many of which were restructured or shut down after 1989. The sign was eventually removed due to neglect, which posed a structural hazard – its rusting began to threaten with collapse of the structure.

Elwro was the pride of Wrocław and the People’s Republic of Poland, an electronics factory that produced computers and IT systems. After the fall of communism, Elwro was bought by Siemens. The factory ceased operations in 1993, and shortly thereafter most of the production halls were razed to the ground.

“I am absolutely a child of the Wrocław’s industry. All of my grandparents, who came to Wrocław from different places after the war, worked in the factories. One grandmother in Elwro, the other grandmother in Fadroma. We’re in the building that used to house Elwro, Wroclaw Electronics Factory. My workplace, SWPS University in Wrocław, was my grandmother’s workplace. Both of my grandfathers worked in Pafawag, as did my parents, who met there. Once, a newsreel crew came up with the idea to show how wonderfully and dynamically the large industrial plants in Wrocław operate, how love and other relationships are formed there, how families are created from this. And that’s how the newsreel ended up in my family home one day. Apparently my parents went to the cinema especially to watch it. I became the heroine of one report about such a multi-generational family in Pafawag.”

Katarzyna Kulwicka

After WWII, Wrocław became a major industrial hub, with the Pafawag locomotive factory as one of its key sites. Located in the Fabryczna district, Pafawag functioned like a small town, with its own newspaper, allotment gardens, vacation resorts, clubs and community spaces. It produced the EN57, the world’s longest-produced electric train, now iconic in Polish rail history. Pictured is the oldest operational unit in its original livery.

Despite Pafawag being bought by international capital, the memory of it still exists. Zygmunt Czerniak was an engineer in Pafawag, a member of the workers’ community. His grandson, as a gesture of commemoration of his late grandpa, got a tattoo with a banner of a long-defunct Pafawag sports club.

Iwona Kałuża, a curator and art historian, knew about the existence of a 1952 sketch of a ceiling painting by Wacław Szpakowski. Szpakowski, a pioneer of geometric abstraction, worked for Pafawag, but there was no indication that this particular sketch had ever materialized. However, the planned renovation of the former factory Culture club allowed Iwona to persuade the management to check whether there were any traces of Szpakowski’s work under the suspended ceiling. It turned out that under a layer of plaster there was the only preserved work by Szpakowski on such a scale. The photo shows two uncovered openings in the ceiling of the auditorium. Preparations for its renovation are currently underway.

Opened in 1993, Solpol was a postmodern department store built on Wrocław’s main shopping street, Świdnicka. A building designed in five days by Wojciech Jarząbek – that's the deadline given by the investor, Zygmunt Solorz, one of the richest Poles. Its playful, colorful façade and bold geometry made it one of the city’s most recognizable and discussed buildings, capturing the spirit of a rapidly changing time, a striking symbol of Poland’s early capitalist era.

Despite years of public campaigns and efforts to protect it as a modern landmark, Solpol was demolished in 2022 to make way for new development. Thirty years later, the same capitalism whose early form it expressed ended its existence. For many, it became a symbol of vanishing modernity and a catalyst for grassroots urban activism in Wrocław.

Since the 1970s, Wrocław has been a key hub of Polish independent culture, home to the country’s first squat and a vibrant punk scene. Central to its recent history is the former squat-turned-cultural center CRK in Nadodrze, emerging from the previously existing squats. For 20 years, several thousand different people, activities and collectives have passed through this place. Although according to unofficial information it was Nadodrze that secured Wrocław the status of the European Capital of Culture in 2016, many of the independent cultural institutions were since taken over or closed.

The little dwarf is one of the most recognizable symbols of Wrocław. Placed on the walls in the 1980s in places where the authorities painted over opposition slogans, it was one of the first actions of the Orange Alternative, led by Waldemar “Major” Fydrych. Over time, the movement grew to street demonstrations, mocking the communist system with absurd humour. After 1989, it lost its political importance.

In 2004, an advertising agency working on a new symbol for Wrocław got in touch with me. I came up with the idea of dwarfs: small, non-monumental figures, a spatial form just a few centimeters tall. The dwarfs I came up with were of a very non-monumental quality, they were tiny. Originally, there were five of them, I installed them myself. We were supposed to do a few each year in non-obvious places. Then the city decided to announce to everyone how anyone can make their dwarf, counting on the fact that private businesses will do it as part of advertising. Other people started doing them, basically stealing my concept.

Tomasz Moczek, author of the first dwarf sculptures.

One of more than 600 dwarf sculptures pictured in Legnica, a city known for being the location of the Northern Headquarters of the Red Army Group between 1945 and 1993. Right next to it, there is a plaque describing the return of Legnica (here under the name that was used shortly after the war, Lignica) to the Motherland (lit. “Piast territories”) – a rhetoric generally adopted towards the Lower Silesia by state propaganda, referring to the rule of the Polish Piasts in Lower Silesia nearly a thousand years earlier.

IV LO in Legnica with Ukrainian as the language of instruction is the oldest Polish high school with this profile of education, founded in connection with the activity of the Ukrainian Union in Poland following the post-war forced migrations and resettlements within the framework of the Vistula Action, that affected mostly Lemkos people of nowadays Ukraine.

The region also has several separate Roma communities – some of them have lived in Wrocław for generations, customarily in districts such as Ołbin or Brochów. In the second decade of the 2000s, there was also a Romanian Roma community living in an illegal encampment. Thanks to the efforts of activists and with the support of the municipality, in 2019 the last inhabitants of the camp were settled in city apartments, and the place itself was liquidated.

Bordering Wrocław, Kobierzyce municipality is one of the wealthiests in Poland. It is the location of Biskupice Podgórne Special Economic Zone, which houses mostly factories from tech industry, and most of the complex of facilities belonging to LG or its subcontractors. The investment in the SEZ was so large that it led to the emergence of a Korean minority in the region as most of the management positions in the SEZ factories are filled by Korean expats.

Founded in 1980 in the remote mountain village of Czarnów, in a difficult-to-access mountain valley in the Rudawy Janowickie mountains, Nowe Śantipur was the first Hare Krishna center in Poland. At the time, ISKCON was illegal and operated in secrecy, disguising its temple as a regular rural house. Over the years, the site expanded to include monks’ quarters and cow shelters. The surrounding region is now home to several other new religious communities, including Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist centers.

Sokołowsko was established as one of the world’s first sanatoriums, thanks to its unique location in a valley with exceptionally clean air. After the industrial collapse of the region in the 1990s, the nearly forgotten village was gradually taken over by artists and turned into a space for annual film, experimental music, and performance art festivals. In recent years, the settlement has been undergoing noticeable gentrification, with new investments and rising property prices contributing to the gradual replacement of long-time residents.

Archaeological research conducted at the site of the planned industrial investment in the suburbs of Wrocław. As part of the excavations, several hundred well-preserved graves, over a thousand years old, were discovered. Afterwards, a logistics center was built here.

Knysza is a toasted bun filled with white and red cabbage, tomato, cucumber and canned corn, generously topped with sauce (garlic, mayonnaise or spicy) and sprinkled with roasted onion. It is also available with various types of cheese and/or meat added. Commonly associated with the Wrocław Main railway station, and often mentioned as the first, and sometimes the only, element of culture and language specific only to polish Lower Silesia.

Lubawka’s train station, once a grand hub, was abandoned post-1945, partially burned in 1991, and left to decay after train service stopped in 2004. A plan to turn it into a luxury hotel fell through. Like most local industry, the border town’s factories were shut down and demolished after 1989.

Ślęża (German: Zobtenberg) is a 718 m high mountain in the Sudeten Foreland in Poland. Despite its low absolute height, it has an impressive appearance due to its significant relative height, and is easily observable from a great distance. The name of the territory Silesia either derives from Mount Ślęża, or the Ślęza River that starts next to it. The mountain is a center of religious cults dating back to the Bronze Age; it is the central point of Slavic pagan beliefs. In the first half of the 12th century, a monastery was located on it. Some of the new religious movements in the region also pointed to Ślęża as a place of worship.