In 1931, when the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz was 20 years old, he spent a summer travelling across Europe with friends. At the French border, as he later wrote in Native Realm, they saw a sign that “Prohibited Gypsies, Poles, Rumanians and Bulgarians from entering the country”.
This experience was a vivid reminder that travellers from eastern and central Europe were often unwelcome in the western part of the continent.
