1920 A new border across OravaNová hranica naprieč Oravou

Czechoslovakia was declared in 1918, and Poland immediately claimed the northern end of Orava, whose Goral villages spoke a dialect close to Polish. A plebiscite was promised and then dropped, and on 28 July 1920 the great powers at the Conference of Ambassadors simply drew the line: twelve villages of northern Orava, some 389 square kilometres with around sixteen thousand people, went to Poland and have been Polish ever since. Families, parishes and market days were cut in half by a border that had never existed before. Tvrdošín lost its district in 1922 into the bargain, and spent the interwar years smaller and quieter than it had been.V roku 1918 vzniklo Československo a Poľsko si okamžite nárokovalo severný koniec Oravy, kde goralské dediny hovorili nárečím blízkym poľštine. Sľúbený plebiscit sa napokon nekonal a 28. júla 1920 veľmoci na konferencii veľvyslancov jednoducho nakreslili čiaru: dvanásť severooravských obcí, asi 389 kilometrov štvorcových a okolo šestnásťtisíc ľudí, pripadlo Poľsku a poľské zostali dodnes. Hranica, ktorá dovtedy neexistovala, rozťala rodiny, farnosti aj jarmočné dni. Tvrdošín k tomu v roku 1922 prišiel o okres a medzivojnové roky prežil menší a tichší, než býval.