After World War II, Waldenburg became part of Poland under border changes demanded by the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference and was renamed to its historic Polish name Wałbrzych. Many of the Germans living in the city fled or were expelled. The town was repopulated by Poles expelled from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, particularly from Borysław, Drohobycz and Stanisławów, as well as Poles returning from France and Belgium and from forced labour in Germany. Wałbrzych was one of the few areas where a number of Germans were held back as they were deemed indispensable for the economy, e.g. coal mining. An ethnic German society has been maintained in Wałbrzych since 1957. Greeks, refugees of the Greek Civil War, settled in Wałbrzych in the 1950s.