Wroclaw University to reinstate doctorates stripped by Nazis
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
07.01.2015 12:52
The University of Wroclaw in Lower Silesia is to reinstate doctorates that were stripped from stigmatised academics prior to WWII, when the city (then Breslau) was part of Nazi Germany.
Photo: wikipedia
As many as 262 people will have their doctoral status posthumously restored, mainly academics of Jewish descent.
''It's a symbolic gesture,'' affirmed Jacek Przygodzki of the University of Wroclaw, in an interview with AFP.
Breslau became the Polish city of Wroclaw in 1945 after Poland's borders were shifted west in the wake of the Yalta Conference.
The University of Wroclaw's first professors were primarily academics who had formerly worked at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwow (now Lviv in Ukraine). The latter city was left outside Poland's borders by the Yalta Conference.
Meanwhile, German students who had been studying at the University of Breslau were chiefly absorbed into the University of Cologne.
Breslau had been the last major Germany city to surrender, raising the white flag on 6 May 1945, just two days before the close of World War II.
In August 1944, Adolf Hitler had given the order that the city was to be defended as a fortress, and the civilian population was evacuated.
During the so-called Siege of Breslau from 13 February 1945 to 6 May 1945, the city was heavily bombarded from the air by the Soviet 2nd Air Army and the Soviet 18th Air Army, as well as from the ground by artillery from the Soviet 6th Army. (nh)