German border town entices Poles to leave Brexit Britain

Goerlitz, on the border between Germany and Poland

Credit:  Nikolai Schmidt/nikolaischmidt.de

Over Christmas, a number of Polish families living in Britain received giftboxes from a small town in eastern Germany. 

The boxes contained traditional Polish dried mushrooms and Christmas cake. Full page advertisements ran in British newspapers inviting Poles to move to the town, under the slogan: "Welcome home. The best of both worlds."

It’s all part of a campaign to entice Polish people disillusioned by Brexit to leave the UK. Görlitz, one of the best preserved historic towns in Germany, is better known as the backdrop to films such as The Monuments Men and Grand Hotel Budapest.

It’s a small place, and you might think it would have trouble competing with better known cities such as Berlin and Munich. But the Görlitz authorities believe their town has a unique selling point for Poles fleeing Brexit.

Modern Görlitz is really two towns. It was divided by the peace settlement at the end of the Second World War. Görlitz, on the German side of the border, has the historic town centre and tourist sites. Zgorzelece, on the Polish side, is a little rougher around the edges, dominated by communist era concrete high-rises.

During the Cold War, the border was sealed and the two towns were cut off from each other. All you could see of the other side was the view across the Neisse river. But that all changed with the fall of communism. Today people regularly commute across the pedestrian bridge that spans the border.

“Polish people can move here and have the opportunity to work in a major European economy like Germany, and still have Polish food and the company of Polish friends,” says Andrea Behr, the general manager of Europastadt Görlitz-Zgorzelec, the two towns’ joint development company.

Anna and Bartek Truch and their two daughters are among the first to make the move

Credit: Paul Glaser

Like many towns in former communist eastern Germany, Görlitz has a falling population as young people move west in search of work, and needs to attract newcomers.

One family to take the plunge are the Truchs, who lived in Sheffield for 13 years before deciding to move to Görlitz last year.

“We’d been thinking about moving back to Poland for some time, but it was when my husband Bartek lost his job because of Brexit that we made up our minds,” says Anna Truch.

The couple moved to the UK in 2007 in hope of a better economic future. They had no hope of ever buying their own home on their income in Poland. They prospered in the UK, where Ms Truch worked in a retirement home and her husband became a salesman. 

But that dream began to founder as Mr Truch’s company started making cutbacks amid Brexit uncertainty.

“The attraction of Görlitz is that we can look for jobs in Germany, but my children can go to a Polish school,” says Ms Truch. Her two daughters, Amelia and Blanka, were born in the UK and it is “really their home,” she says. But in Görlitz they are closer to relatives.

They are one of a handful of families to make the move so far. But the Görlitz authorities are hoping they will be the first of many.