Silesians

So the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Silesians, the Franciscans, a lot of these priests work with children in schools and universities.

U.S. Bishops Quietly Reinstate Accused Priests 2010

What I read said that many Silesians, Mazurians, and Kashubians held fiercely to their heritages, but many accepted Polonization because of stronger local than national ties and because conditions in Poland were better than in Germany at the time.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

An article by Tomasz Kamusella describes the situation of the Silesians:The Silesians began agitating for recognition after World War I, when the status of Germany's Upper Silesia became uncertain.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

I don't know much beyond some stuff I recently read, but the Silesians had something of a choice about their fate.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

Millions of what Polish authorities called “indubitable Germans” were expelled, but those Silesians referred to as “autochthons” or “ethnic Poles insufficiently aware of their Polishness were allowed to stay on, after being were sifted out from “indubitable Germans” by a process of “national verification” that was not, in truth, too rigorous: to qualify, it was enough to speak some of the Upper Silesian Slavic dialect, or just to have a Slavic-sounding surname...

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

I don't know of a dialect either - the only Silesians I know speak beautiful High German.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

Adding to the woes of both the Silesians and the government were the newly-arrived eastern Poles expelled from Belarus and Ukraine who didn't quite think of themselves as Poles, but certainly didn't like the Silesians.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

A turning point in their story came in 1922, when Upper Silesia was divided between Germany and Poland, disregarding the yearning of many of the area's 2.3 million inhabitants for an Upper Silesian nation-state with German and Polish as its official languages the interwar Union of Upper Silesians, the main proponent of independence put its membership at half a million.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

For Berlin, the Silesians became "in-between people" and, for Warsaw, a "nationally labile population."

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005

I don't know to what extent there is a genuinely distinct Silesian dialect—R.G.A. de Bray's Guide to the Slavonic Languages 1951, the only reference book I have that mentions it, says only that such dialects "are chiefly characterized by the pronunciation of true nasals in all positions"—or whether there is a widespread sense of micronationalism among the Silesians, but I thought I'd pass along the information.

languagehat.com: SILESIANS. 2005