Bierut Decrees

Bierut Decrees German: Bierut-Dekrete is a term used in German historiography referring to a series of decrees, laws and regulations enacted by the Provisional Government of National Unity between 1945 and 1946 concerning the flight and expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and the property issues arising from them.

This article is about the 1945-1946 laws concerning Germans in Poland. It is not to be confused with the law on property in Warsaw known as the Bierut Decree.

The "Bierut Decrees" are named after Bolesław Bierut, installed by the occupying Soviet forces as the leader of communist government of Poland between 1944 and his death in Moscow in 1956. Bierut functioned as head of the Provisional National Council, a Soviet influenced quasi-parliament (Krajowa Rada Narodowa), from 1944 to 1947.

The term presents a conscious echo of the Beneš decrees which have been seen by critics as providing a blue print for the ethnic cleansing of German and Hungarian minorities from Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948.

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