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 reported.
The festival, which wrapped up on 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.
Mrągowo's scenic open-air theatre overlooking Lake Czos. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Waszczuk
There were also poetry readings, artwork displays and tastings of borderland dishes.
Lech Gołębicki, director of the Mrągowo Culture Centre (MCK), told public broadcaster Polish Radio that the festival is held annually after it was initiated more than a quarter century ago by the local branch of the Society of Friends of the Vilnius Region, in present-day Lithuania.
Many 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, according to organizers.
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 26th time.
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Source: Polish Radio/polskieradio.pl, mck.mragowo.pl