The annual Borderland Culture Festival in the northeastern town of Mrągowo, in the heart of Poland’s picturesque lake district, featured music groups, choirs and song-and-dance ensembles from neighbouring Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.
Guest performers from Latvia, the Czech Republic and Russia also took part, public broadcaster Polish Radio's IAR news agency reported.
The festival, which ran from Friday to Sunday, included events in and around a local culture centre and a concert at the town’s landmark open-air theatre by the shore of Lake Czos.
There were also poetry readings and artwork displays as well as a cheerful parade through the town centre.
Aniela Dobielska, head of the local branch of the Society of Friends of the Vilnius Region, in present-day Lithuania, said the festival takes place annually in Mrągowo because about 60 percent of the town’s residents have ancestral ties to areas east of Poland that were once part of the country before borders shifted after World War II.
Following decades of convoluted history, many residents in Poland's northeast are descendants of arrivals from regions that are now in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine but were part of Poland before World War II.
As a result of postwar border changes, Poles living in those areas were resettled further west to towns such as Mrągowo.
After Poland’s borders shifted sharply westward after WW II, the country lost some of its eastern territories, known as the Borderlands, to the former Soviet Union, while gaining others at the expense of Germany.
Mrągowo, a popular vacation resort in what is known as the Land of a Thousand Lakes, was once called Sensburg and was part of East Prussia before the borders were redrawn more than seven decades ago.
Launched in 1995, the Borderland Culture Festival was held in Mrągowo for the 24th time.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR