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Elbląg’s Old Town ceased to exist during just two weeks of fighting at the turn of January and February 1945. What could still have been rebuilt was instead dismantled, and the bricks were used for higher-priority reconstruction projects elsewhere in Poland.
The Old Town began to be rebuilt according to the concept of "retroversion" decades after the war. Reconstruction continues to this day, but the area has lost much of its former character.
The New Town was only slightly more fortunate. It lost most of its distinctive buildings as well, including the Town Hall.
The communist authorities of the Polish People’s Republic showed little interest in rebuilding churches, even when they had survived the war in relatively good condition. Of the churches shown here, only the smallest one, the Church of Corpus Christi, survived, albeit in a heavily altered and disfigured form that bears little resemblance to its pre-war appearance.
Elbląg was never a priority for the Polish state in the post-war reality.