GORZELIK AND OTHERS v. POLAND JUDGMENT Mr D. TYCHOWSKI, 3 Advisers. One of the applicants, Mr Gorzelik, was also present. The Court heard addresses by Mr Waliduda, Mr Drzewicki and Ms Kowalska. Mr Gorzelik also made a short statement in reply to a question put by the Court. THE FACTS I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE 12. The applicants were born in 1971, 1940 and 1944 respectively. All three live in Poland; Mr Gorzelik and Mr Sowa in Katowice, and Mr Kołodziejczyk in Rybnik. A. General background 13. Silesia (Śląsk) is a historic region that is now in south-western Poland. It was originally a Polish province that became a possession of the Bohemian Crown in 1335. It passed with that Crown to the House of Habsburg in 1526, and was taken over by Prussia in 1742 under the Treaty of Berlin. After the First World War, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles provided for a plebiscite to be held to determine if Upper Silesia should remain German or pass over to Poland. The results of the plebiscite in 1921 were favourable to Germany except in the easternmost part of Upper Silesia. After an armed uprising of the Poles in 1922, the League of Nations agreed to a partition of the territory; the larger part of the industrial area, including Katowice, passed over to Poland. In the aftermath of the Munich Pact of 1938, most of Czech Silesia was divided between Germany and Poland. After the German conquest of Poland in 1939, the whole of Polish Silesia was annexed by Germany. After the Second World War, the pre-1938 boundary between Poland and Czechoslovakia was restored. The western boundary of Poland was moved to the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers. In effect, all of former German Silesia east of the Lusatian Neisse was incorporated into Poland, while only a small sector of Lower Silesia west of the Neisse remained within the former East German Land of Saxony. 14. According to some linguists, although the Polish language is relatively unaffected by regional variations, it is possible to identify at least