This article considers the development of the Polish 'community' in Leicester, starting with memories of Poland's occupations and subsequent population displacements during the Second World War, and finishing with the establishment of formal and informal Polish institutions and networks in the city in the post-war period. Using extracts from oral history interviews undertaken with local Poles, it charts the survival of a very strong Polish national identity within the community, illustrating how this national consciousness has been based primarily on a shared sense of history that has been cemented by the common experience of war-time suffering.
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Kathy Burrell (2022) studied this question.