By George Loomis [Financial Times, 20 December 2005]

The city of Wroclaw has had several names in its 1,000-year existence and the current one helps disguise its past. When the borders of Poland were shifted westwards at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 the German city of Breslau ceased to exist. Much was already gone, thanks to Hitler and the Red Army. As a final gesture, the city was entirely repopulated. What was left of its German population was expelled, and residents of the Polish city of Lvov, which ended up in Ukraine, were ordered to move to Wroclaw.