AustreibungExpulsions3

Austreibung Expulsions - 3
(The Atrocities of Ethnic Cleansing!!!)

Expulsions - 3

THE EXPULSION OF GERMANS
                     By Dr. Alfred de Zayas

The main speaker at the premiere of the documentary
travelling exhibition "In the Claws of the Red Dragon" in
Pittsburgh last year, organized in cooperation with Dr.
Marianne Bouvier and B. John Zavrel,was Dr. Alfred de
Zayas, a prominent expert in international law; he is an
American of Spanish-French descent. After law school at
Harvard, de Zayas went to Germany on a Fulbright
fellowship, took a doctorate in History at the University of
Goettingen. He works as a legal consultant in New York
and Geneva, Switzerland, and is the author of several
books dealing with the subject of the Expulsion of
Germans in Europe.

The following is a transcript of the essential part of the
excellent lecture on the Expulsion which he gave in
Pittsburgh.

Dear Friends,

When I was a student of history at Harvard back in 1970,
I knew nothing at all about the Expulsion of Germans.
None of my history professors considered this event
sufficiently notable to mention it, much less to assign a
research paper on it. It was curiously not in history class,
but in a seminar on Law of War that I first heard about
the Expulsion.

At that time I still could not read or speak German, but my
law professor, the late Richard Baxter, who was
subsequently the American judge at the International
Court of Justice, encouraged me to pursue the matter and
he brought to my attention two books in English that
touched upon the subject matter. Those were the books of
Victor Gollancz Our Threatened Values and In Darkest
Germany. Victor Gollancz was a British socialist and a
human rights activist. I was so impressed by Gollancz that
I later dedicated my first book, Nemesis at Potsdam, to his
memory.

Now, when I first approached the subject matter, I thought
naively enough that it was a legitimate field of research,
like any other. But I soon learned that it was no accident
that there was nearly nothing written in English on the
theme -- it was taboo, it was not chic, it was not
fashionable to do research or to publish in this field.

After all, Germans were looked at in a rather monolithic
fashion as all Nazis, and not deserving any degree of
human sympathy. As citizens of the "evil empire" they
were morally disqualified "ad illicio."

It is perhaps curious to compare it with the way the press
today deals with the Soviet system, but thank God the
press has not thought of disqualifying the Russian people
and considering them "ad illicio" as criminals only because
their system is an inhuman, anti-democratic system.

Now, what actually happened with regard to the Germans
at the end of the Second World War, the previous speaker
has already outlined and given you the figures of the
Expulsion. Obviously you can take the simplistic view and
say, "Hitler started the war, he lost the war, therefore the
Germans have to take the consequences," but I don't think
that this axiom actually exhausts the subject matter.

As you may or may not know, the expulsion syndrome was
actually started by Hitler himself. After subjugating
Poland, he expelled over 1 million Poles from western
Poland, from the areas that were annexed by the Reich,
and pushed them off into so-called General-government
Poland, and he also expelled over 100,000 French from
Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France. And this was a matter
that curiously enough was condemned by the Allies during
the war, and at the time of the Nuremburg Trials, this
expulsion that Hitler carried out for the purpose of
"Lebensraum" -- pushing out one ethnic group in order to
settle the area with your own -- was declared to be a war
crime, and a crime against humanity.

Not only in the London Agreement, that was the basis of
the Nuremberg Trials, but throughout the trials, and the
hearings, and the proceedings, it was constantly brought
up, and a number of the German leaders were actually
convicted of committing these specific crimes, war crimes
and crimes against humanity on the basis of these mass
expulsions. So that it is a particular anomaly that the Allies
themselves got involved in a policy of expulsion of a far
greater extent than the one that had been carried out under
the Nazis.

Now, it is not just the Expulsion that is of interest to us
and you have seen the pictures, a great many of which are
devoted to the flight of German civilians from the Red
Army in 1944.

In October of 1944 the Red Army entered East Prussia,
and they entered the area of Gumbinden, Nemmersdorf,
and Metgethen and they occupied the area for
approximately two weeks and pretty much decimated the
civilian population.

Thereupon the German army was able to re-occupy the
area, and they realized what had happened. The legal
division of the German Army was given the assignment of
investigating what had happened; a great many persons, --
witnesses who saw the bodies, when they came in, -- gave
their depositions, and their sworn testimony is available
for the study of any researchers.

Now, it was this kind of occupation by the Russians that
forced the flight. You may compare the American
occupation of the Rhineland, of Duesseldorf, of Cologne,
of Koblenz, and you will realize that the Germans living in
these areas had no need to flee from the American Army,
whereas you had 5 million Germans from East Prussia,
from Pomerania, Silesia, East Brandenburg, who helter-
skelter and pell-mell had to leave the area. Surely, not
because they wanted to leave the area in the middle of the
winter of 1945, but because they realized that the entire
population of Nemmersdorf and of other cities had been
liquidated.

This aspect of the Expulsion, just the loss of life involved
would have been enough, I would say, for any historian to
devote attention to it, but as I already mentioned, the flight
has been largely ignored.

Now, these refugees were basically turned into expellees
when they were not allowed to return to their homeland.
Because certainly at the time of the flight, the German
refugees were expecting to return to their homelands at the
end of hostilities.

But, before I go into the nature of the Expulsion itself, I
wanted to cite from George Kennan as to the nature of the
flight. In his Memoirs, Volume 1, page 265, he wrote

"the disaster that befell this area, (speaking of East
Prussia) with the entry of the Soviet forces has no parallel
in modern European experience. There were considerable
sections of it where, to judge by all existing evidence,
scarcely a man, woman, or child of the indigenous
population was left alive after the initial passage of Soviet
forces; and one cannot believe that they all succeeded in
fleeing to the West."

Obviously Kennan'sMemoirs are not devoted to the
Expulsion of the Germans, but he does have several pages
in which he describes it from the perspective of an
American official at the American embassy in Moscow.

As far as the decisions with regard to the Expulsion of the
Germans, those were taken as early as at the Teheran
Conference, and confirmed, or actually expanded, at the
Yalta Conference, and finally at the Potsdam Conference,
where they were more or less articulated in ARTICLE 13
of the Potsdam Protocol.

In this ARTICLE 13 the allies agreed that it was necessary
to transfer the German populations from what they
referred to as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. They
did not mention the Donauschwaben, the areas in
Yugoslavia, or the areas in Rumania, but in fact all of
these countries were in the process of pushing the
Germans out at the time.

And the reason for these expulsions from East Prussia,
Rumania and from Silesia was ostensibly that Poland was
to be given compensation. Compensation for the territory
of eastern Poland that had been annexed by the Soviet
Union pursuant to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939.

People, and very many historians conveniently seem to
forget that the outbreak of the World War II in 1939 was
caused not only by Hitler, but also by Stalin: Soviet Union
invading the eastern half of Poland, and Germany
invading the western half.

Stalin made it very clear at Teheran that he was certainly
intending to keep the half of Poland that he had invaded,
and he ended up keeping it. But not only that, he ended up
taking up a good slice of East Prussia, which is today part
of the Soviet Union, and Koenigsberg is today, as you all
probably know, called "Kaliningrad."

As far as the lip service that was paid to human rights, you
will read in ARTICLE 13 of the Potsdam Protocol, that
these expulsions were to be carried out in an "orderly and
humane fashion."

Now, as far as the nature of the Expulsion, or the manner
in which the expulsions were carried out, I wanted to quote
very briefly from Victor Gollancz's book Our Threatened
Values, on page 96 where he says:

"If the conscience of men ever again becomes sensitive,
these expulsions will be remembered to the undying shame
of all who committed or connived them... The Germans
were expelled, not just with an absence of over-nice
considera- tion, but with the very maximum of brutality."

Now, I'm quoting Gollancz precisely because he is not
German. In the German archives in Koblenz, you have
over 40,000 reports of survivors that are open to all
researchers, and there you will see what the survivors have
to say.

Some critical voices might say they have an axe to grind,
that they are just trying to excuse themselves. But you
have extensive documentation -- American, British, French
documentation that prove the nature of the expulsions as
an exceedingly cruel and brutal expulsion.

Particularly sad is the fact that if you compare that with
our commitments, because after all, ostensibly the
Americans and British entered the war on behalf of
democracy and for certain principles of humanity and fair
play -- and, after all, in August of 1941 President Roosevelt
and Prime Minister Churchill had agreed in the middle of
the Atlantic on the ship Augusta on the so-called Atlantic
Charter, and the Atlantic Charter provided that neither
would seek territorial or other aggrandizement, and they
both undertook a commitment to oppose, and I quote,
"territorial changes that do not accord with the freely
expressed wishes of the peoples concerned."

So, in light of the principles which we ourselves
proclaimed as our peace aims, it is most regrettable that at
the end of the war we did not live up to those principles.

The moral question therefore arises: if the allies fought
against the Nazi enemy because of this inhuman message,
could they then adopt some of those same methods in
retribution? Who was it then who succeeded in imposing
his methods on the other? Whose outlook triumphed?

I think this is a question that we all have to answer to
ourselves.

Robert Murphy, the political advisor of General
Eisenhower, and later the political advisor of Clay during
the occupation in Germany, was one of the first official
voices in the American government that opposed the
Expulsion, and to criticize the manner in which the
Expulsion was being carried out.

In a memorandum to the State Department of 12 October
1945 he presented this moral dilemma very eloquently, and
I quote in part:

"Knowledge that they are the victims of a harsh political
decision carried out with the utmost ruthlessness and
disregard for the humanities does not cushion the effect.
The mind reverts to other mass deportations which
horrified the world and brought upon the Nazis the odium
which they so deserved. Those mass deportations
engineered by the Nazis provided part of the moral basis
on which we waged war and which gave strength to our
cause. Now the situation is reversed. We find ourselves in
the invidious position of being partners in this German
enterprise and as partners inevitably sharing the
responsiblity."

As a result of this and all the memoranda of Murphy, the
American government repeatedly protested at Warsaw and
at Prague and tried to get some cooperation from the
Czechoslovak government and from the Polish
government.

But unfortunately the Soviet occupation forces in those
areas encouraged both the Polish and the Czechoslovak
governments in the Expulsion, so there was no way for the
U.S. to effectively stop it.

With regard to the legal aspects of the Expulsion, were
such expulsions to take place today, there is no question
that it would constitute the violation of various provisions
of international law.

ARTICLE 49 of the Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits
specifically such expulsions. I'm speaking of the Geneva
Convention for the protection of civilians.

ARTICLES 3 and 4 of the Fourth Protocol of the
European Human Rights Convention also prohibits such
expulsions.

It would also be incompatible with ARTICLES 12 and 13
of the International Covenant on civil and political rights.

It would be incompatible with the General Convention of
1948 and with several other instruments.

But obviously, at the time of the Expulsion none of these
instruments were in force. So the only applicable principles
were the Hague Conventions, in particular, the Hague
Regulations, ARTICLES 42-56, which limited the rights of
occupying powers -- and obviously occupying powers have
no rights to expel the populations -- so there was the clear
violation of the Hague Regulations.

And, obviously, if you want to apply the Nuremberg
principles to the German Expulsions, considering that the
London Agreement was supposed to reflect, and not to
create international law, so if that was applicable to the
German crimes against the Poles with regard to
deportation of Poles, and deportation of French for
purposes of "Lebensraum," certainly it was applicable to
the expulsions by the Poles of Germans and by the Czechs
of Germans.

So, if you apply these Nuremberg principles and the
Nuremberg judgement, you would have to arrive at the
conclusion that the Expulsion of the Germans clearly
constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Now as you all know, the more than 12 million German
expellees who survived, and who have come to the Federal
Republic of Germany, have been integrated into the
democracy that the Federal Republic of Germany is, and
have contributed to the European reconstruction and to
the so-called

Wirtschaftswunder, which was facilitated through the
funds of the Marshall Plan.

And one of the most noble things that the German
expellees did, and I would invite all non-Germans to try to
place yourselves in the position of the German expellees,
and try to see it through their eyes, what it meant having
lost homelands that were over 700 years German; having
lost half of their families in the process of the expulsion,
having suffered what they all suffered, having being
spoliated and having been victimized, -- what it meant to
adopt the Stuttgart Charter of the German Expellees,
which provides specifically for renunciation of revenge
and renunciation of violence.

I wanted to quote from this document, which is also on one
of the placards. I quote:

"We, the expellees, renounce all thought of revenge and
retaliation. Our resolution is a solemn and sacred one, in
memory of the infinite suffering brought upon mankind,
particularly during the past decade."

Now, consider what it meant to write that, at a time when
the memories were still very fresh, and when the wounds
were not yet healed.

I think it is a tremendous contribution to peace,
tremendous contribution to the normalization of the post-
war Europe.

For this contribution of the German expellees to peace in
Europe, earlier this year the German American National
Congress (DANK) passed a resolution to nominate the
Union of Expellees for the Nobel Peace Prize, thus joining
the earlier initiative of parliament members of several
nations from the European Parliament.

Why this honor to the Union of Expellees?

Because the German expellees have done more for peace
in Europe, than they are credited for. Indeed, the more
than 12 million surviving expellees from East Prussia,
Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Silesia, Sudetenland, etc.
could have turned to terrorism like the Palestinian
refugees, and they could have developed into a major
destabilizing element in Europe after 1945.

Instead, they proclaimed the Charter of the German
Expellees in 1950, in which they proclaimed themselves to
the peaceful reconstruction of Europe, and pledged never
to use violent means to achieve their right to the homeland.

We must also keep in mind, however, that these expellees
and their descendants are today -- 43 years after the
Expulsion -- still waiting for a just settlement of this great
injustice, and for return to their ancestral homelands in the
Central and Eastern Europe.

As a final thought, I wanted to encourage all students here,
to consider the Expulsion of the Germans as a worthwhile
field of research.

I would like to encourage professors to give research
papers and research assignments on the basis of the many,
many aspects of the Expulsion. As I mentioned the
archives, both the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, and also the
National Archives in Washington are full of relevant,
unpublished materials, which would more than satisfy a
doctoral requirement, if you wanted to take a doctorate on
any question of the Expulsion of the Germans.

And more importantly, and I rather hope that it will
happen, I look forward to the great novelist, who will put
down this history in a novel. I think that there is more than
enough material for a Gone With the Wind, and I would
welcome a Margaret Mitchell, who would write a novel
depicting the very human and very deeply felt tragedy of
the Expulsion of these victims of politics and of politicians.

I thank you.

Copyright 1999 Museum of European Art

"Note: There was a three volume complete set of the
Expulsions which we believe was published by the Hague
in the Netherlands, shortly after the expulsions were
ordered by the so-called "Big Three".   The expulsions
were supposed to be orderly, but were anything but.
After investigations were ordered by interested parties, the
bodies of the murdered non-combatants were either moved
or cremated to avoid prosecution.   Then the books on the
expulsions were ordered recalled or destroyed, so no one
could learn the truth. The orders for the recall were
probably ordered by someone in high places in
Washington, D.C.
A similar problem happened with the white women
inhabitants of the former Belgium Congo, who were raped,
tortured, their bodies violated, and murdered. A
publication was produced by Belgium at that time was
ordered removed from circulation. An inquiry was made
to the Belgium Consulate in New York, but no answer was
ever forthcoming on why the truth was suppressed.

After hostilities had ceased and several years after world
war II, probably sometime around 1966, I was interested
in receiving information from the German Information
Center in New York regarding information on the two
Germanies, and various films and books were sent to me,
purely for research purposes. When I went to the post
office (the Griffith Street office) in Jersey City, NJ to
retrieve some of the films, I was advised by the clerk to
desist receiving films from the West German Government
or else.    I don't know what happened after that, but I
never saw that clerk again.

Today, in the eastern part of the United States, many of us
German-Americans are still referred to as Nazis. The
media won't permit us to have social articles printed, and
the German stock market information is non-existent
here. This, of course, is not so in South Carolina,
Milwaukee or Chicago, and other large Metropolises in the
south, middle America or even the west coast."

Johannes Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora
German-American World Historical Society

We recommend these books:

A Terrible Revenge, by Dr. Alfred Maurice de Zayas

Primer for Those Who Would Govern, by Hermann Oberth

Castle to Castle, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer

Arno Breker: The Divine Beauty in Art, by B. John Zavrel

Alexander the Great, by Robin Lane Fox

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Copyright 2001 West-Art
PROMETHEUS, Internet Bulletin for Art, Politics and
Science.

========================================

European Refugee Movements
After World War Two
By Bernard Wasserstein

1. Post-war scramble
2. Expulsion of Germans
3. Further expulsions
4. Other wanderers
5. International response
6. Legacy
7. Find out more
Print entire article
Expulsion of Germans

The end of the war in Europe was only the beginning of
the suffering for millions of people left homeless by the
fighting, released from captivity or expelled as an act of
vengeance.

The end of World War Two brought in its wake the largest
population movements in European history. Millions of
Germans fled or were expelled from eastern Europe.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews, survivors of the genocide
perpetrated by the Nazis, sought secure homes beyond
their native lands. And other refugees from every country
in eastern Europe rushed to escape from the newly
installed Communist regimes.

'The expulsions were ... conducted in a ruthless and often
brutal manner.'

At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, British,
American and Russian leaders agreed to '... recognise that
the transfer to Germany of German populations ...
remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will
have to be undertaken.'

They also specified that '... any transfers that take place
should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.' The
expulsions were, in fact, conducted in a ruthless and often
brutal manner.

Some of the people who left those eastern countries were
recent arrivals, who had been settled in German-conquered
territories by the Nazis as part of their long-term plan for
German domination of eastern Europe. But most of those
being expelled came of stock whose ancestors had been
settled in the eastern lands for generations, and who knew
no other place as home.

The Volksdeutsche, as the Nazis had called them were,
however, for the most part, victims of a calamity of which
they were themselves part-authors. Not all were Nazis, but
a majority had become supporters of Hitler. (This is open
to discussion)

Displaced persons in Vienna, 1946 © Even before the end
of the war the greater part of the German population of
East Prussia had fled westwards - although thousands
drowned en route, in overloaded ships that sank in the
Baltic Sea, and which had been torpedoed by Russian
Submarines.

In the city of Königsberg, annexed by the USSR, the food
supply
broke down completely in 1945. People were reduced to
eating Offal,
and human flesh was offered for sale as fried meatballs.
Seven centuries of German civilisation, in the city that had
nurtured philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Johann
Gottfried von Herder, thus ended in cannibalism. By 1949
nearly all the surviving Germans in the region had been
driven out.

'At the peak period ... 14,400 people a day were being
dumped over the frontier.'

In Poland, German-owned farms and houses were handed
over to Poles. Germans were rounded up by Polish militias
and put in camps, before being removed from the country.
In Czechoslovakia, more than 2.2 million Germans were
expelled, and their property was expropriated. At the peak
period, in July 1946, 14,400 people a day were being
dumped over the frontier. About three quarters went to the
American occupation zone of Germany, and most of the
remainder to the Soviet zone.

About 60,000 Germans had already fled from Hungary
before the end of the war, some travelling by boat up the
Danube. After the war the government ordered the
German population to leave en bloc. As their trains left,
some deportees tried to affirm their loyalty by waving
Hungarian flags, singing Magyar folk songs, and chalking
on the sides of the carriages slogans such as, 'We don't say
goodbye, only au revoir!'

Most were sent to Germany, but from some villages the
entire adult
population was deported to labour camps in the Donets
Basin of the
Soviet Union. By the end of the expulsions only about
200,000
Germans remained in Hungary.

Family of German refugees, September1945 © In
Romania, from the autumn of 1944, tens of thousands of
the Swabian Germans of the Banat, and more from the
ancient Saxon communities of Transylvania - long-
established outposts of German peasant and mercantile life
- loaded their wagons and hitched their horses for the long
trek to their ancestral homeland. By 1948 the pre-war
German population of 780,000 had been reduced by more
than half.

'... Germans who were expelled or who departed
voluntarily from eastern Europe ... mounted to 11.5 million
...'

Virtually all the half million Germans in Yugoslavia fled,
were expelled, or were sent to labour camps by the
victorious Communist partisan forces. An estimated 27,000
were sent to camps in the Soviet Union. Violence against
the Volksdeutsche here was probably more relentless than
in any other country.

According to official West German accounts (perhaps
exaggerated) at least 610,000 Germans were killed in the
course of the expulsions. The total number of Germans
who were expelled or who departed voluntarily from
eastern Europe after the end of the war mounted to 11.5
million by 1950.

Other wanderers:

A displaced person returns from a German prison camp ©
As the German presence in eastern Europe was thus
abruptly terminated, the Germans' foremost victims were
also turned into refugees. Surviving Jews from
concentration camps who returned to their homes found
that they were unwelcome. Their property had new
occupants who were generally reluctant to vacate the
premises.

'Hundreds of thousands ... fled westwards ... most of them
hoping to get to North America.'

In Poland and Slovakia pogroms broke out, in which Jews
were killed. Over 100,000 Jews infiltrated to the western
powers' occupation zones in Germany and Austria. Most
sought permission to enter Palestine - but the British
mandatory government there denied entry to all save a
handful. They therefore remained stuck for years in so-
called displaced persons' camps.

Other wanderers were also on the move in the early
months of the peace. Nearly two million Poles were
compulsorily transferred from eastern areas of Poland that
had been annexed by the USSR. They took the place of
Germans expelled from the formerly German regions of
Pomerania and Silesia, now transferred to Poland.

Half a million Ukrainians, Belorussians and others were
deported
from Poland to the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of
Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Croats, and
others,
fearful of reprisals for wartime collaboration, fled
westwards from
all over eastern Europe, most of them hoping to get to
North America.

The integration of the millions of refugees in their
countries of arrival was not easy. European states were, in
the main, too preoccupied with the sufferings of their own
citizens and with the tasks of reconstruction to have much
compassion to spare. The millions of Germans from the
east who suddenly found themselves in a fatherland that
most of them had never seen before became for a while a
dangerous element in politics, easy prey to nationalist
demagogues spouting irredentist talk.

'Over two million Soviet citizens were returned by the
western Allies to areas under Soviet control.'
The international response to the refugee crisis took both
legal and organisational form. The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights of 1948 guaranteed a '... right to seek
and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution',
and forbade the arbitrary deprivation of nationality. The
Geneva Convention on Refugees of 1951 defined refugees,
accorded them specific rights, and prohibited their
refoulement (or forcible return) from countries of refuge.

Meanwhile a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration (UNRRA) had been created in 1943.
UNRRA was succeeded by the International Refugee
Organisation, established in 1946; and that in turn gave
way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
in 1950. All these bodies, however, were plagued by
political conflict, in particular the outbreak of the Cold
War.

UNRRA was limited under its Articles of Agreement to
assisting in the 'repatriation or return' to their home
countries of 'displaced persons'. It transported millions of
former concentration-camp dwellers, forced labourers and
other victims of the Nazis to countries such as France,
Belgium, and Greece.

Over two million Soviet citizens were returned by the
western Allies to areas under Soviet control. They were
moved in batches, generally in return for equivalent
numbers of citizens of western countries, an equivalence
insisted upon by the Soviet authorities.

Many of the Soviets departed willingly. But others did not,
and their forcible return conflicted with the 'non-
refoulement' principle. Many citizens of east European
states that were taken over by Communists also resisted
repatriation. Most sought refuge in western Europe, the
United States, Canada, or Australia.

Cold War considerations, combined with calculation of
labour requirements in industries such as mining, led
Britain, Australia and other countries to grant Poles and
some others permanent settlement. The creation of the
State of Israel in 1948 finally provided a secure refuge for
Jews who had been hounded from their homes in central
and eastern Europe. But the buoyant United States
economy held out the most tantalising hope to refugees.

Legacy:

American refugee policy in the post-war period was driven
by conflicting tendencies towards isolationist restrictionism
and Cold War internationalism. The former approach was
staunchly advocated by powerful figures in Congress and
important organs of public opinion, for example, the
Chicago Tribune.

'The deepening of east-west conflict in the early years of
the Cold War provided the context for subsequent US
legislation.'
In 1948 the Displaced Persons Act, primarily inspired by
anti-Communism, finally led to a relaxation of US
immigration policy. The US Escapee Program was
established in the same year, and offered sanctuary to a
limited number of refugees from Communist countries.

The deepening of east-west conflict in the early years of
the Cold War provided the context for subsequent US
legislation. The Refugee Relief Act of 1953 provided for
the admission over three years of 214,000 refugees - of
these, it was laid down that 186,000 should be from
Communist countries.

By 1959 some 900,000 European refugees had been
absorbed by west European countries. In addition, 461,000
had been accepted by the USA, and a further 523,000 by
other countries. But many 'hard-core' refugees still
remained in camps. At that point the United Nations
launched an ambitious effort to resolve the refugee
problem once and for all.

World Refugee Year, in 1959-1960, was designed as a
'clear the camps' drive. It achieved some significant
results - at any rate in Europe. By the end of 1960, for the
first time since before World War Two, all the refugee
camps of Europe were closed.

But the global refugee problem was far from solved. In
Africa and Asia millions of fugitives from persecution,
hunger, and natural disasters continued to scramble for
secure homes. Europe, hitherto mainly an exporter of
refugees, henceforth became a net importer. Today the
United Nations estimates that over 17 million asylum
seekers, refugees and stateless people are seeking homes
worldwide.

Published: 2005-04-28

=================================
Dealing with the Legacy
of World War 2:

The Expulsion of German
Minorities from Eastern Europe:
Current Debates and Tensions!!

Student: Cecile Combes
Universite' Marc Bloch
     Strasbourg
Date: January 2006

Introduction:

The expulsion of German minorities from Eastern
territories after the 2nd World War is a part of history that
has for a long time been surpressed. Germany has always
been haunted by its historical culpability. But since 2002, a
change in attitudes
occurred- partly due to the increase in the number of
reports on this subject, as Quentin Perret’s noticed.

1) Since 2000, the project led by the German League of
Expellees to build a Centre Against Expulsion in Berlin
which mainly focused on the fate of the German minorities
continues to fuel tensions between Germany and Poland.

2) Further conflicts between the two countries arose in
2004 and these were due to demands from the Prussian
Claims Society concerning goods left by Germans in
Poland more than 50 years ago. Debates are now mainly
focused on the Centre and the image it might convey to the
next generations if it is built in Berlin. This idea was
strongly criticised by both German and Polish politicians
and intellectuals. But Angela
Merkel (German Chancellor) supports the building of the
Centre in Berlin although the Polish President
Kwasniewski warned Germany about the bad
consequences this construction could have on their
bilateral relationships. Many questions remain
unanswered in this debate: do past events still have
influence on Polish society and its views on Germany?
What role would the Centre Against Expulsion play and
does it hide any danger concerning the way past historical
events will be understood?

First of all, I will explain the origins of the current tensions
between Germany and Poland. The second part of my
work will be focused on the emergence of ethnic cleansing
in the 19th century and what it implies, considering the
millions of Europeans involved.

1. Quentin Perret, Allemagne : polémique sur le « Centre
des expulsions », available from http://repid.
com/articleImprim.php3?id_article=126.

2. Zentrum gegen Vertreibung who were victim of it. The
third part will deal with aspects of German expulsions from
Eastern territories that were decided at the Potsdam
Conference on August 2, 1945.

Finally, the German exodus from Poland itself will be the
subject of the fourth part, with focus on the Polish case.

I) The origins of the debates between Germany and Poland:

A) The agreement over compensation claims:

The Prussian Claims Society was created in 2000 and in
early September 2004 its President, Rudi Pawelka, claimed
that he had gathered hundreds of complaints of former
German expellees from Polish territories. Therefore, he
demanded compensation for their lost property. The
Prussian Claims Society was in addition ready to take
cases to both Polish and European courts. In response to
this highly contested decision, on 10th September 2004, the
Polish parliament called on the government to estimate the
total damages Germany caused to Poland in World War II
and to begin talks with Berlin.

The text of the resolution stated: “Parliament declares
that Poland has not yet received war reparations payments
and damages for the enormous extent of destruction and
material and non-material cost brought on by German
aggression, occupation and genocide”.3

The German Chancellor at that time Gerhard Schröder
and Poland’s Prime Minister Marek Belka met on 27th
September in Berlin and they decided to set up a joint team
of lawyers in charge of dealing with claims for reparations.
Their work was to ensure that “individual claims which
could be lodged in the courts by Germans are considered
null and void.”4

But both politicians agreed that no reparation claims would
be taken into account. Marek Belka insisted that the
resolution agreed by the Polish parliament had no legally
binding effect for him or his government. On the German3
Dennis Stute, “Berlln Shocked By Polish Reparations
Vote”, 12th September 2004, available from http://www.
dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1325939,00.html4 BBC
News, Germans and Poles settle WWII row, 27th
September 2004, available from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3692444.stm
side, Gerhard Schröder stated that both countries
considered the question of reparations settled.

Tensions worsened then in July 2004, when the German
parliament decided to open European talks about the
construction of a Centre Against Expulsion. This project
was set up by the two chairpersons of the BdV (German
League of Expellees), Erika Steinbach and Peter Glotz,
that was created on 6th September 2000.

B) The project of The Centre Against Expulsion:

The objective of the Centre was to counteract
displacements and expulsions of peoples all over the world,
to outlaw and to prevent expulsions and thus create
understanding and reconciliation among nations. The
Centre would be built in Berlin and focused on expulsions
that affected both Germans after the Second World War
and European populations in general.

The project has four parts: the first part of the exhibition
concerns the expulsions and displacements before 1933
(with the focus on Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey); the
second part focuses on the displacements that took place
from 1933 to 1945 under National Socialist Germany and
the Soviet Union; the third part deals with the expulsions
from 1944 to 1950, following the Conference of Potsdam;
The last part is dedicated to the expulsions from 1950 to
the present.

An important part of the exhibition is, nevertheless,
focused on the German minorities exclusively and this
triggered anger among Poles as it will be explained later.

The initial part of this exhibition consists in defining the
concept of home country. The purpose is to show how
Germans experienced their home country before they were
expelled from the various settlement areas. The emphasis
is also put on the relationships between the German
minority and the ruling majority in Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary.

The second part is dedicated to the situation of flight and
expulsions of the Germans from Eastern Europe towards
the end of the Second World War and after the Potsdam
Agreement. The conditions in which the refugees had to
flee are tackled in this part.

The third part deals more especially with the living
conditions of the expellees in the occupation zones.

Finally, the last part of the exhibition is about the new
beginnings of the minorities in the newly formed German
Democratic Republic (GDR) as well as abroad as many
emigrated to the USA, SouthAmerica or Australia.5

C) The debates over the Centre against Expulsion:

The main bone of contention concerns the nature of the
Centre itself and the image it will convey to future
generations, especially if it is built in Berlin, the former
capital of the third Reich. The Polish-German affairs
specialist Jerzy Haszynski fears that young Germans will
believe that the victims of the Second World War were two
People: the Jews and the Germans. The Memorial of the
Holocaust has indeed recently been built in Berlin so the
Centre Against Expulsion should, according to him, not be
in the same city.

Haszynski denounces the fact that Poles are portrayed as a
nation of perpetrators and accused Erika Steinbach of
comparing the suffering of the German expellees to those
of Holocaust victims. The newly elected Polish President
Kwasniewski also confirmed his opposition to the building
of the Centre, pointing out that some Germans would like
to revise history and see Germans as victims rather
than perpetrators.

In Germany, Angela Merkel clearly supports the idea of
building this Centre of Expulsion. She assured that the
centre will not become a monument to German martyrdom
and will not change the German approach to the history of
the Third Reich and its consequences.6   Unlike her, the
former Chancellor Schröder was opposed to the idea of
building the centre in Berlin and he asked several times
the BdV to reconsider whether Berlin was really the right
place for the memorial. Along with intellectuals such as
Günter Grass and the President of the German Parliament
Wolfgang Thierse, Schröder promoted the idea of a more
European-focused centre that would be located in Poland
or in the city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec that is situated on the
German-Polish 5 Centre against Expulsion, available from
http://www.z-g-v.de/english/aktuelles 6 Hardy Graupner,
Berlin Close to New “ Centre of Expulsion”, 1st August
2005, available from
http://dw-world.de/popups/popup_printcontent/0,,
1664849,00.html border.7

Now that the issue that divides Germany and Poland is
defined, it is important to consider the phenomenon that is
at the very origin of this conflict, that is to say ethnic
cleansing.

Before focusing on the German expulsions from Poland, it
is worth trying to understand what factors led to ethnic
cleansing and its characteristics.

II) The origins of ethnic cleansing:

A) Evolution of the conception of state and nation:

“Ethnic cleansing" is always directed at a particular ethnic
group or nation perceived as harmful, and the goal is
always the complete removal of that group from a given
territory”.8

By the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th
century, the emergence of racist ideas made it desirable to
"cleanse" societies and nations. Ethnic cleansing finally
became a common practice in Europe in the 20th century
and it occurred in four major waves. Before 1933, it
mainly affected South-Eastern Europe. The second wave
lasted from 1933 to 1945 and was the result of the German
conception of a racially clean "Lebensraum" and the
advance of the German army.

From 1944 to 1950, the Allies themselves adopted ethnic
cleansing for their post-war European order. This period
led to the expulsion of millions of people, among them
German minorities. Finally, from 1950 onwards, ethnic
cleansing mainly affected Eastern European states.

The development of the idea of a nation and the
conception of the modern nation in the 19th century were
the two main factors that triggered nationalist feelings and
then expulsions. From the late eighteenth century on,
various European states began to introduce a set of
homogeneous institutions over territories with distinct
legal, economic and political systems. The concept of
centralization was seen as necessary 7

Expatica, German WWII expellee centre plan angers
Poles, 18 July 2005, available from http://www.expatica
com/source/site_article.asp
subchannel_id=52&story_id=22034&name=German8
Philip Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations, Ethnic
Cleansing in East-Central Europe ,Lanham, 1944-1948 p
44-47 for modern state bureaucracy. It was argued that
bureaucracies needed clear national subdivisions of
populations to operate effectively. State business was more
efficiently conducted in a single language, state-run schools
taught uniform curricula throughout entire territories and
military service demanded the inculcation of a single,
coherent sense of belonging.

Enlightment thinkers, such as the German philosopher
Johann Gottfried Herder, began to discuss identities based
on language, culture and shared values. While the
French model embraced political values such as "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity" to assert its identity, others, such as
Germany, relied more on a cultural and linguistic definition
of identity. Many of the Eastern European nations did not
have their own states before 1918 which made the cultural
or linguistic model much more appealing. All the European
nations that had already codified languages (such as the
Poles, Germans, Danes…) could easily build a sense of
national identity whereas others (such as Bulgarians,
Croatians, Albanians, Ukrainians…) standardized their
languages over the course of the century.

The concept of nationalism transformed from an abstract
ideology into a social reality and the cultural elite that
aimed at spreading a sense of nationality had little
tolerance for those outside their definitions. But state
building often clashed with the aspirations of newly
formed national groups and the process of linguistic and
cultural standardization met with more opposition the later
it occurred. For example, in Central and Eastern Europe,
a number of autonomist or separatists movements began to
demand independence using the very terms with which
their oppressors were demanding homogeneity. These
newly created nations emphasized centralization as well
and they themselves were intolerant towards culturally
different groups or minorities. As movements for national
political independence grew, so did the desire of states and
dominant national groups to suppress them.

All the great European multinational empires- Ottoman,
Habsburg, and Romanov - tried to unify their populations
but could not do so on the basis of nationality. They
nevertheless failed to create institutional mechanisms by
which the various emerging national groups could be
integrated and by the end of the 19th century,
multinational states were in serious danger.

The formation of nation states was even more difficult for
countries founded after World War 1 such as Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that had to start from
scratch. In addition these countries had to establish their
own rules over different and disputed territories, often
partially inhabited by ethnic minorities. In this context,
ideas related to the assimilation of minorities began to
emerge in Europe.9

B) Attitudes toward minorities:

In the 19th century it was commonly believed that
“nondominant ethnic groups” could be assimilated within
a few generations. 10

For example, Prussian officials were convinced they could
“lift” Slavic speakers to supposedly higher levels of
German
culture. But assimilation policies failed most of the time
and minorities began to be considered as a hindrance to
the development of states. Attitudes toward minorities
especially hardened after World War 1 and during the
interwar period, attempts to homogenize disputed
territories went hand in hand with centralization. Distinct
borders were drawn and each side made careful
distinctions between “them” and “us”.

Mixed identities or mixed ancestry were less and less
tolerated and, in some cases, nation became synonymous
with ancestry. Great feats in the field of science, for
example medicine, also explained the emergence of ethnic
cleansing ideas. The concept of “national engineering” was
developed in Prussia in the 19th century and it was used to
secure its rule over Polish territories. Ethnic Germans
were settled in those territories in the 1830s and the aim
was to change the ethnic composition of areas inhabited by
Poles. The Poles adopted the same attitude toward
Ukrainians in the 20th century so as to preserve the
Polishness of territories that were dominated by
Ukrainians. To put it in a nutshell, state formation and
nation building made ethnic cleansing possible in 9 Philip
Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations, Lanham, 2001
10 Philip Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations,
Lanham, 2001 large parts of Europe. In addition,
intolerant attitudes toward minorities and ideas of national
engineering began to spread among Europeans. The
Holocaust represented a highpoint in ethnic cleansing, of
course, still it should not been forgotten that the procedure
continued after the Second World War, directed against
Germans.11

II) The legal basis of the expulsion of German minorities:
the Potsdam Agreement:

A) Motives of the Soviet Union, Poland and
Czechoslovakia:

The uprooting of German populations from Eastern-
Central Europe was an idea that was first of all supported
by Czechoslovakia.12 This was first due to the fact that it
had the largest number (close to 3.5 million) and the
largest percentage (about 23%) of German minorities
among all countries in Europe. In addition, the interest of
this
massive minority, of which the bulk were the Sudeten
Germans, collided too often with those of the
Czechoslovak state and this had always caused friction,
even before the rise of Hitler. The Czechs had also not
forgotten the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the
consequences it had on Czechoslovakia.13   Dr Eduard
Benes, the exiled President
of Czechoslovakia who had been exiled during the Third
Reich, initiated ideas about the expulsion of German
minorities as early as 1940 and his plan appealed to
President Roosevelt.

Poland, the other Slavic victim of Hitler, totally agreed
with the expulsion of Germans from their country.
Although the Polish leaders had different political
orientations, they did not discuss this issue.

Last but not least, Stalin was very supportive of this idea
for several reasons. First, he was more eager than the
Western powers to “solve” all minority problems in his
sphere of influence. Second, Stalin calculated that the mass
expulsions would sharply help the Sovet Union. 12 G.C
Paikert, The German exodus, a selective study of the post
World War II expulsion of German populations and its
effects, The Hague, 1962, p 9-13

13 On 29th September 1938, Adolf Hitler, Neville
Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini
signed the Munich Agreement which transferred the
Sudentenland to Germany. This increased German
antagonism toward its eastern neighbours and therefore
made Poland and Czechoslovakia more dependent on
Soviet protection. Stalin also argued that ethnic Germans
could never adapt to Soviet standards because of their
different background and would only prove disruptive of
Communist conformity. By dumping millions of ethnic
Germans into war-devastated and overcrowded Germany,

Stalin also thought Communism would spread further. He
hoped that all these homeless Germans would succumb to
radicalism and that he could extend the Soviet influence.

B) Motives of the Western Allies: Great Britain and the US:
Great Britain and the US accepted the proposition of the
expulsions because they were eager to collaborate with
their wartime ally, the Soviet Union. They also tended to
sympathize with the Soviet troops who gave their lives to
fight the German enemy.

Memories of the monstrous treatment of millions of Jews
also played a major part in their view of German people.14
It is worth mentioning that British and American leaders
referred to the Treaty of Lausanne (January 1923) that
had mandated the Greek -Turkish transfer of populations.
15
Germans began to flee from eastern territories in early
1945 as the Red Army gained ground in Eastern Europe
and it did not take long time before Germany capitulated.
These Germans feared revenge from the victims of Nazism
as soon as the Nazi control would cease. The second phase
of the exodus was dominated by the vindictive measures of
Poland and Czechoslovakia. This period lasted from May
to July
1945 and is often referred to as the “wild” phase. This
phase was dominated by revengeful feelings from both
nations.

The third phase of the expulsion was actually provided by
the Potsdam agreement that gave a legal basis to the
expulsions. When President Truman (United States),
Prime Minister Attlee (Great Britain) and Stalin met for
the Potsdam Conference on August 2, 1945, they agreed
that post-war Europe should be rearranged to prevent
future wars. In particular, the German minorities in 14 G.
C Paikert, The German exodus, p 20-21
15 Philip Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations,
Lanham,2001, p 50

East Central Europe had to be “dissolved” to prevent
future violence. The Allies indeed decided the “transfer”
of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary .

Accordingly, over five million Germans were forced to
leave their homelands before 1949. The Potsdam
Agreement was meant to improve the treatment of
Germans and the “transfer” had to be carried out in a
“humane and orderly manner”. But the Allies failed to
implement this measure and according to some German
historians, Czech as well as Polish authorities acted in a
spirit of revenge.16 It seems that the expulsions were
permeated by resentful feelings and did not take place are
they were meant to like it will be illustrated in the
following part as the expulsions from Polish territories
lustrate it.

III) The German exodus from the Eastern territories: the
Polish case17

A) The Polish motives:

Polish demands for the expulsion of German minorities
addressed first territories that had been controlled by
Germany during the war. The Poles had plans for getting
back territories such as Lower Silesia. They were eager to
define precisely the Pole and argued that Germans and
Poles could not live together anymore. They applied the
principle of “collective guilt” to the Germans.

The desire for revenge permeated Polish society and the
Poles treated the Germans badly: they stole as much as
they could from them (furniture, clothes,
valuables and foodstuffs) and rape and pillage were
common.

B) The carrying out of the expulsions:

German homes were open territories and the Poles took
whatever they wanted from the dwellings. Those who tried
to defend themselves were often beaten or sent to
internment camps or labour camps that had been used
during the third Reich. Rules in 16 G.C Paikert, The
German exodus, a selective study of the post World War II
expulsion of German
populations and its effects, The Hague, 1962,p 7

17 N.M Naimark, Fires Of Hatred, Ethnic Cleansing In
Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge, Massachussets,
2001, p 108-137. the camps about discipline were often
adopted from the Nazi example. Germans suffered from
disease, malnutrition and beatings; stomach typhus was
the biggest killer, veneral disease was rampant and
uncontrollable given the lack of medicine. They were
forced to wear the letter N for Niemiec (German) on their
sleeves; they were forbidden to enter restaurants, theatres
or taverns and they were placed under Polish authorities
outside the law. Nevertheless, the treatment of the
Germans depended on their status on the Volksliste
(People’s List) that had been established by the Nazi
administration during the war. Volksdeutsche (local
Germans) who had been a minority in pre-1939 Poland had
their rights and property taken away and they were treated
as traitors, sometimes immediately executed or sent to
prisons and camps. As for
Reichdeutsche (Germans from the Reich), they were either
prosecuted as war criminals or deported to the Soviet
Union for forced labour. Others, mostly Silesians, were
allowed to apply for “verification” as Poles.

C) Re-Polonization and De-Germanization:

Forced deportation to occupied Germany was the fate of
most Germans who lived in the new areas that were
designated for Polish occupation: Lower Silesia, eastern
Pomerania, eastern Brandenburg and the southern part of
East Prussia. Re-Polonization and De-Germanization were
of the highest priority and communists and leaders firmly
supported expulsion. Towns and streets were renamed,
German
storefronts were taken down, “Prussian-Hitler” memorials
were taken down, German inscriptions were removed from
buildings, church interiors and gravestones. People were
forbidden to speak German though they could hardly
speak Polish, especially in Silesia. From April 1946 on, the
government forbade the use of German in public places
and even at home. But Polish authorities nevertheless
experienced difficulties to getting the people of Silesia to
think of themselves as part of a unified Polish nation.

D) Problems encountered by the Polish authorities:

The region of Upper Silesia clearly illustrates the problems
that were encountered by governors. The region had
always been disputed between Poland and Germany and
after 1945 it was granted to postwar Poland. Millions of
what Polish authorities called “indubitable Germans” were
expelled, but those Silesians referred to as “ethnic Poles”
insufficiently aware of their “Polishness” were allowed to
stay on, after being sifted out from “indubitable Germans”
by a process of “national verification”.18

Although the Silesian Governor Zawadzki was strictly
against the mixing of Poles and Germans, he could not
solve the identity problem of Silesians who felt neither
Polish nor German. His plans are illustrated by the
following sentence: “Now the task consists of the shaping
of these two distinct biological groups into a single entity”.
But many Silesians felt themselves closer to German than
to Polish culture. This was enhanced by the fact that many
Silesians were sent to camps even before it was determined
that they were eligible for verification. In September 1947,
Zawadzki was still annoyed that so much German was
spoken both on the streets and in private, despite the laws
against it. Zawadzki recognised that the Silesians were
handled in a disrespectful manner but he explained that
this only happened because the newly arrived Poles wanted
their homes and their lands back. So the identity problem
among the expellees remained quite important once they
were settled in the new territories. Measures had to be
taken later on by the German government to help them to
integrate to reassert their identity.

18 Tamasz Kamusella, Silesians, 12th November 2005,
available from http://www.languagehat.
com/archives/002171.php

Conclusion:

Today, the building of a Centre dedicated to the former
expellees is primarily a problem in terms of the symbolic
message such a monument would have. More precisely,
both Polish and German intellectuals and politicians are
worried about the consequences it could have on the
perception of the Second World War. They fear a
victimization of the Germans and do not embrace the
Centre Against Expulsion proposed by the BdV because
they believe it to be too focused on the fate of German
expellees. The history of ethnic cleansing helps to
understand why the Centre is such a divisive issue. In
particular, it is important to consider the fate of German
minorities after the Second World War. This began even
before the capitulation of Germany in 1945 and the
Potsdam Agreement gave a legal basis to their expulsion.
Actually, the expulsions took place in circumstances that
did not comply to what had been agreed at the Potsdam
Conference . The feelings of former German expellees
must be mixed because some of them feel fully integrated
in today’s Germany whereas others still do not agree with
the issue of compensation. By joining expellee
organisations they try to defend their interest and to
reassert their identity as they claim that the German
expulsions were not sufficiently taken into account
compared to the expulsion of other
populations.

Bibliography:
Nationalism:

- Ferrrari Jean, L’idée De Nation, Editions Universitaires
de Dijon, Dijon,1986

- Woolf Stuart, Nationalism In Europe 1815 To The
Present, Routledge, London, 1996

Expulsion and ethnic cleansing:

- Bade J.K, Deutsche Im Ausland-Fremde In Deutschland,
Migration In Geschichte Und Gegenwart, Verlag C.H.
Beck, Munich, 1992.

- Benz Wolfgang, Die Vertreibung Der Deutschen Aus
Dem Osten, Fischer Taschenbücher, Frankfurt am Main ,
1985.

- Maikert N.M, Fires Of Hatred, Ethnic Cleansing In
Twentieth-Century Europe, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusettets, 2001

- Murphy Robert, Nemesis At Potsdam: The Anglo-
Americans Expulsion Of The Germans: Background,
Execution, Consequences, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London and Boston, 1979.

- Paikert G.C , The German Exodus, Publications of the
research group for European migration problems, The
Hague, 1962.

- Schechtman J.B, Postwar Population Transfers In
Europe 1945-1955, University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia,1962

- Ther Philip and Siljak Ana, Redrawing Nations, Ethnic
Cleansing In East-Central Europe 1944-1948, Rowman
and Littlefield Publishers, New York, 2001

- Ther Philip, Deutsche Und Polnische Vertriebene,
Gesellschaft Und Vertriebenenpolitik In Der SBZ/DDR
Und In Polen 1945-1956, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
Göttingen, 1998

- Zayas A.M, The German Expellees: Victims In War and
Peace, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1993

Identity:

- Chaumont J.M, La Concurrence Des Victimes, Génocide,
Identité, Reconnaissance, Paris, 2002.

- Thiesse A.M, La Création Des Identités Nationales, Seuil,
Paris, 1999 The Centre Against Expulsion:

- Graupner Hardy, Berlin Close To New “Center Of
Expulsion”, August 2005, available from http://www.
de/dw/article/0,2144,1664849,00.html (accessed 31st
October 2005)

- Michel Laetitia, Les Relations Germano-Polonaises
Fragilisés Par Le Débat Sur Les Expulsions, Allemagne d’
aujourd’hui, janvier-mars 2005, Septentrion Presses
Universitaires Diffusion, Paris.

- Pätzold Brigitte, April 2005, Polémique Sur Les
Souffrances De L’Allemagne, Le Monde Diplomatique,
available from http://www.mondediplomatique.
fr/11117/91ad276fb2 (accessed 31st October 2005)

- Perret Quentin, 2003, La République Des Idées, available
from http://www.repid.com/article.php3?id_article=126
(accessed 27th November 2005) - http://www.z-g.v.de

- Die Welt, October 2005, Kaczynski: Vertriebenenzentrum
Sollte Besser Nich Gebaut Werden, available from
http://www2.welt.de/data/2005/10/26/794393.html?prx=1
(accessed 2nd November 2005)

- Expatica’s German news in English, German WWII
Expellee Centre Plan Angers Poles, July 2005, available
from
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?
subchannel_id=52&story_id=2034&name=German+WWII
+expellee+centre+plan+angers+Poles (accessed 31st
October 2005)

- Deutsche Welle Staff, Poland Rejects Berlin Expellee
Centre, August 2005, available from http://dw-world.
de/dw/article/0,2144,1681377,00.html (accessed on 31st
October 2005)

==========================
Oder-Neisse: History Hijacked

"The last champion of romanticism" was a nobleman born
on March 10, 1788. in the Upper-Silesian castle of
Lubowitz near Ratibor. Duke Joseph Freiherr von
Eichendorff matriculated at the University of Halle and
became a follower of the Romantic School of poetry. His
first poems were printed in Berlin, among them the famous
song In einem kuehlen Grund.    The young baron fought
against Napoleon, married and became a lawyer in Breslau.

In 1820, he received an educational position at Danzig and
took a lively interest in the restoration of the Marienburg,
a castle of the Teutonic Order and inspiration for his
tragedy "Der letze Held von Marienburg." His most popular
production was "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts." In
1831, Catholic Eichendorff was called to Berlin as
councillor in the high office of the ministry of public
worship. The following years were spent mostly in Berlin,
where Eichendorff devoted his genius to the history of
literature, and he wrote a definitive history of the poetical
literature of Germany. After the death of his wife in 1855,
he lived with his family at Neisse.

Two years later, after finishing his swan-song, the epic
"Lucius," he died. There is hardly another German poet
who found so many composers for his songs.    It is
difficult to fathom that there would come a day when
simply singing one of his German Silesian folk songs could
incur an automatic death sentence, or that lovely Schloss
Lubowitz and the original Eichendorff monument would
be crudely levelled. The town is Polish now, its German
citizens expelled in 1945 by gunpoint, their homes and
properties stolen. German inscriptions on old gravestones
were defaced to further obliterate the memory of their
centuries long presence.

Winston Churchill, in his mentally displaced wisdom,
proposed the brutal plan adopted at the 1945 Potsdam
Conference for putting Poland "on wheels" and "rolling it
westward" into German lands. As a result of his final
solution to the "German problem", millions of Poles were
displaced from territories granted to the USSR and even
more millions of Germans were expelled or fled from lands
thay had inhabited since the 13th century.

The Oder-Neisse as the border of a new postwar Germany
was deceptively described as "tentative" until a final peace
settlement with Germany. The issue was not laid to rest by
Germany until it was forced to sign it as the high price for
German reunification or nothing at all. Treaties
recognizing the border and calling for friendship and
cooperation between Poland and reunified Germany
(Germany cannot be totally unified until Danzig, the
Sudetenland, and Prussia (usw) are wholly returned to
Germany) were signed in 1990 and ratified a year later.
Churchill's final solution had not only resulted in the
genocide of German civilians, it cut many ethnic German
towns and areas in half. "I bet you don't know that the
final solution by some of the so-called Allies. Churchhill
particularly, was to murder the entire German race, to
appease the Soviets, and to lay bare the German homeland
for a thousand years, so that nothing could ever grow on
that land again.   It especially was resolved to rid Europe
and eventually the entire world of any form of religion
and adopt the philosophies of Karl Marx in a sought of
Communistic Utopia, where those who still believed in
God, would subsequently also be put to death. Universally
this would have to be, if their invented Utopia were to
succeed."

Stolen Heritage: German Silesia

German Silesia was bounded by Brandenburg, Posen,
Russian Poland, Galicia, Austrian Silesia, Moravia,
Bohemia and Saxony. Besides the bulk of the old duchy of
Silesia, it comprised Glatz, a fragment of the Neumark and
part of Upper Lusatia, taken from Saxony in 1815. The
province was the largest in Prussia, was divided into three
governmental districts, those of Liegnitz and Breslau
comprising lower Silesia, and of Oppeln taking in the
greater part of mountainous Silesia (the Sudeten
Mountains).

Full of rivers, streams, hills and low mountains, Silesia
was also comprised of fertile pastures and meadows and
forests abundant with deer and game, tremendous fisheries
and mineral wealth. About a third of the land was in the
hands of large estates. Merino sheep were
introduced by Friedrich the Great, and the Prussians also
gave Silesia its first public schools and a new, viable future.

The original population of Silesia was probably Celtic, and
about the year 1138, Silesia was first transferred to the
Germans. The independent dynasty was drawn up under
the influence of Barbarossa and two princes who in 1163
divided the sovereignty among themselves as dukes of
Upper and Lower Silesia.. The whole of sparsely
populated rural Silesia was covered with German
settlements by the 12th century. As late as 1905, three-
fourths of the inhabitants were German, but to the east of
the Oder, Poles formed the bulk of the population, with
15,500 Czechs in the southern part of the province and
25,000 Wends near Liegnitz.
The capital was Breslau, the largest and most important
town which was refounded about 1250 as a German town.
By the end of the 13th century, Silesia had virtually
become a German land and Breslau grew to be a leading
center of trade.

The rich Silesian duchies partitioned their territories with
each new succession and by the end of the 14th century the
country had been split up into 18 small bickering
principalities. In 1290, the Silesian princes sought the
protection of the German dynasty then ruling in Bohemia.
The intervention of these kings resulted in the
appropriation of several petty states as crown domains.
The earliest of these Bohemian overlords, King Johann
and the emperor Karl IV restored order
vigorously. Later, however, the Bohemians brought no
benefit, but
involved Silesia in the destructive Hussite wars and then in
a series of
invasions from 1425 to 1435 which devastated the country
and put the German element of population in Upper Silesia
in a weaker position, and a complete restitution of the
Slavonic nationality seemed imminent on the appointment
of the Hussite, Georgte Podiebrad, to the Bohemian
kingship in 1457. The burghers of Breslau fiercely
repudiated the new suzerain and before he could enforce
his claim he was ousted by Hungarian King Matthias
Vorvirus around 1469. Through cofiscations of the nobles
lands, Corvinus asserted his dominance and instituted a
permanent diet of Silesian princes and tried to establish an
effective central government. But the Silesians, who
experienced financial discomfort at Corninus' hands,
began to resent the control of the Bohemian crown, and
under his successor Vladislav, the secured semi-autonomy
which was theirs until the outset of the Reformation which
the predominantly Catholic Silesians accepted. German
Kinf Ferdinand I reimposed the Bohemian crown upon
them, and the Silesians lost power completely. From 1550,
Silesia passed almost completely under foreign
administration. First under the Habsburgs,
which united the kingship of Bohemia with Austria and the
imperial
crown.

The Thirty Years War brought Silesia almost total ruin. It
was estimated that 75% of the population perished, and
commerce and industry were at a standstill. A greater
measure of religious liberty was secured for the Silesians
by representatives of King Karl XII of Sweden, and
effective measures were taken by the emperor Karl VI to
stimulate traffic between Silesia and Austria, but the
country remained very poor in the earlier part of the 18th
century.

Finally, in 1740, Silesia went under Prussian rule and
Friedrich Wilhelm, II, despite the Seven Years War,
brilliantly managed to bring Silesia back to normalcy. He
made yearly visits to the country and kept himself in touch
with it, enacting numerous political reforms including the
strict Prussian enforcement of religious toleration, bring
peace. By judicious regulations he brought about a
dramatic increase of Silesian industries and he revived the
mining and weaving operations.

Silesia was occupied by French troops during the
Napoleonic wars, and in 1815, it was enlarged by receiving
back a portion of Lusatia which, until then, had become
detached from Silesia in the 11th century and annexed to
the Kingdom of Saxony.

"Austrian Silesia" was a duchy and the smallest province
of Austria. In 1900, the population included 44.69%
Germans, 33.21% Poles and 22.05% Czechs and Slavs. It
was all that was left of Austria's part of the country after
the Seven Years War. It formed with Moravia, a single
province until 1849, when it was created into a separate
duchy.

The Beginning of the End

Silesia was German and only 25% Polish when the
victorious Allies hacked it up at the Treaty of Versailles
and parcelled it out between the newly endowed Poland
and the newly hatched country of Czechoslovakia.
Austrian Silesia suffered the same fate. Encouraged by the
Allies' desire to weaken any future strength of Germany
and Austria. Poles and Czechs were brought into the
German cities and towns to create a new voting majority.
Ethnic Germans here and in all of former Prussia began to
experience violent attacks and discrimination* once
German protection was removed. Protests were lodged
with international organizations were ignored. Germany
took back possession of these German parts of Silesia in
1939 (with the full authorization of the Allies), and this
marked the beginning of new hostilities. Communication,
even friendly discussions between German and Austria,
was one of the No-Nos set forth by the so-called victorious
Allies, with heavy penalties to be exacted upon both
nations, including invasion and re-occupation. The French
member of the Versailles team, a would-be "God person"
was even buried standing up in his grave, and his hatred
of anything German goes back many generations.

*Approximately 58,000 ethnic Germans in Poland were
reported as dead or missing by 1940. When the first
edition of government documents went to press on
November 17, 1939. 5,437 cases of murder against men,
women and children of the German minority in Poland had
been reported. Between that date and February 1, 1940,
the number of identified victims mounted to 12,857 and in
additions to these victims, more than 45,000 persons
weremissing without a trace. The atrocities
included murder, mutilation, beatings, rape, robbery and
arson.

With the German defeat in 1945, all of Silesia was
suddenly occupied by the Soviet Red Army. Following
their violent pattern of genocide, Red Army soldiers
embarked upon another horrendous spree of rape, and in
one instance 182 Catholic nuns were raped in Neisse and
in the diocese of Kattowitz, they left behind 66 pregnant
nuns, some with venerial diseases produced by the sex-
crazy red-army soldiers. Even small children were not
spared the horrors of violent sexual assault and little girls.
even eight years and younger, were being attacked as often
as their mothers. Boys who tried to protect their mothers
and sisters were shot, as were many of the victims
afterward.   And like by the Czech Partisans,
young girls and their mothers were crucified, and while
nailed to the
barn doors, house doors, usw were raped continuously
until death, and some were used for target practice even
prior to death, completely with the authorization of their
commanders, who were also part of the rape and kill
brigade. Silesian Germans, some of whom had roots in
Silesia going back centuries, and who before World War II
amounted to about 4 million, were collectively labelled
German partisans and either fled or were murdered, put in
camps, sent to the Gulags or expelled. Often, the men
would be rounded up from the villages and camps and
marched a short distance away and shot and buried in
mass graves.

Under the terms of the agreements at the Yalta Conference
of 1944 and the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, German
Silesia east of the rivers Oder and Lusatian Neisse was
transferred to Poland.   Poles from lands stolen by Stalin
were trucked in and resettled there before the blood had
even dried. There is not much mention of the past
German presence in Silesia today, and most reminders
have been cleanly purged.   Most of the Silesian Germans
were resettled in Bavaria (this state willingly took them in
as refugees and tried to resettle them as easily as possible)
and they formed a large organization in Munich which is
still a power to reckon with today; and the partisans and
the so-called Allies even tried to stop the Sudeten Germans
from forming such an organization.   (It should also be
said that the Sudeten German organization has promoted a
let-live theory that would prevent what happened in the
Sudetenland after World War II from ever happening
again, regardless of who was involved.   Their
humanitarian ideas are world renowned, and they should
be recognized as such and should, in our opinion, receive
the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was not just adults who were expelled from their
homes. Childen became adults overnight when suddenly
orphaned or when separated from their parents, and they
had to face the hard and dangerous treks alone, at the
mercy of the elements and vicious predators. The violence
used to obliterate the ethnic memory of Germans was
degrading, even sometimes fatal.

Reduced to slaves by their new masters, Germans were
forced to make public apologies for their "collective guilt"
at social and governmental gatherings. Others were sent
to camps with unbearable conditons. Of 8,064 Germans in
Camp Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia, 6,488, including
hundreds of children, died from starvation, disease, hard
labor, and
physical maltreatment including torture.   Girls and
women in those camps were not permitted to wear clothing
while serving their
masters, so that sexual activity could be imposed at any
given time. This repeated itself by the thousands. Illness
brought on by bad water, starvation, exposure, poisoning,
torture, abuse, continuous rapes and suicides were
epidemic. Five times as many Germans died in the first
year after the War's end then died during the five years of
the War itself.

The Lost German City of Breslau
Not Lost but Cut in Two

The greatest German city on the Oder River was Breslau.
Breslau was first mentioned in 1000 A.D.. It was made the
seat of a bishop in the 11th century and it became the
capital of an independent duchy in 1163. Mongols
destroyed it in 1241 and it stagnated until a large influx of
German colonists arrived and soon made it prosperous.
The bishop obtained the title of Prince of the Empire in
1290.   King Johann of Bohemia bought it in 1335, and it
was ruled by his successors until about 1460. Various
privileges were given to Breslau by the Bohemian kings,
and it grew wealthy. The city fell under the rule of
Matthias Corvinus until his death, and in 1490 it again
became subject to Bohemia, passing with the rest of Silesia
to the Habsburg dynasty. From 1526 through the
Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Breslau remained
mostly undisturbed, and it came under the rule of
Friedrich the Great in 1741. Reclaimed by the Austrians in
1757, it was again taken by Friedrich and belonged to
Prussia until the end of World War One.

Breslau was the last major city in eastern Germany to fall
on May 7, 1945. 40,000 Breslauers lad dead in the ruins,
and the city was almost 70% destroyed. Like most of
Silesia, Breslau was placed under Polish administraion
according to the terms of the Potsdam Conference.

Most surviving German inhabitants were expelled, and
those who dared remain were subjected to discrimination,
arrest and harassment. All German property was taken.
By the 1950s, Breslau had been cleansed of Germans,
renamed "Wroclaw" and resettled by Poles. There is no
trace of its German roots. Thousands of Breslau civilians
waited to evacuate the city when they heard news of the
Soviet advance on January 14, 1945. They could not
evacuate until 6 days later because of rail damage and
battles. In panic and desperation, 50,000 to 60,000 left on
foot, mostly women and children, in bitter winter weather.
In the process, some 18,000 frozen bodies were recovered
along the train tracks and secondary roads. 90,000
Breslauers are thought to have died in the evacuation.
Partly because they realized the hopelessness of
evacuating, another 200,000 or so civilians remained in the
inner city, and by February 15, the Soviet noose tightened
around them. Over 30,000 more would die, most from
homicide.

The Red Army went house to house and block to block
embarking on vicious slaughter. For 77 days, the carnage,
rape and mayhem lasted, the Soviets murdering with
chemical weapons and burning people alive. Although the
city was only bombed once, massive destruction took place
in the aftermath and Breslau was largely destroyed.

"...in unending succession were girls, women and nuns
violated... Not merely in secret, in hidden corners, but in
the sight of everybody, even in the churches, in the streets
and in public places were nuns, women and even eight-
year old girls (and younger) were attacked again and
again. Mothers were violated before the eyes of their
children; girls in the presence of their brothers; nuns, in
the sight of pupils, were outraged again and again to their
very death and even as corpses..."
Mississippi Senator Eastland quoting from a letter
smuggled out of Breslau, September 1945.

The Medieval parts of the city and almost all historical
landmarks were gutted. The buildings that escaped bomb
damage were burned and looted by the Soviets. It is said
there was a murdered and disfigured German soldiers
hung on every lamp post in the city. The 40,000 survivors
of the German garrison surrendered and were executed,
thrown into mass graves or taken to the Gulag, from which
few returned. No international inquiries have ever been
set up to discuss the mass murder. And in some cases,
eyewitnesses that managed to survive to report the carnage
were in some cases charged with high treason by the Allies
and hung. Others are still to this day being sought out for
proscecution and capital punishment.   And anyone caught
taking their evidence to the Swiss, as most of the abuses
and crimes were a violation of the Geneva Convention,
were severely punished and executed without a trial. Yet,
evidence is still pouring in regarding the abuses and
violations of Internation Law.

========================================

When the Truth is Distorted By Lies;
Let Us Who Know,
Challenge Their Wisdom

The Sudeten Raiders
                     By
Johannes Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora

During and after the murderous raids of the Partisans
and the following Red Hordes of the Soviet Advance
Savages that had tortured, raped, and murdered over
two million innocent women and children that had
resided in the many villages of the Sudetenland and
other Eastern German areas, the decree of President
Benes was that none of the criminals could be
prosecuted then or ever after.

Retribution because of the scene above...

However, little is said, or even confirmed, that a small
group of surviving women and older children, the
so-called "Sudeten Raiders" did take retribution upon
some of the partisans, by using their own weapons
against them.   Although these raiders were not large
in number, pockets of them swooped down upon the
unsuspected criminals, and swiftly dealt isolated
revenge upon the former perpetrators. These
incidents were so swift, utilizing the darkness of
night, and in cells of no more than five or ten at any
given time. Some of these women and children had
survived the murderous inclinations of the partisans,
and there were a number of units that acted
separately in isolated areas of the villages that
comprised the Sudetenland.

Most of the groups that comprised the Czech
partisans that had dealt their kangaroo justice upon
the innocents of the Sudetenland later left that area
to escape war crime retribution, which was later
rescinded by Benes decrees. These partisans moved
farther away from the east German territories, to
France, England, Canada and elsewhere; but those
caught in the web of the Sudeten Raiders did not fare
that well; and most of the Raiders themselves, also
did not survive.   Little is known about the Sudeten
Raiders, and it is doubtful that anyone of the latter
group is living today. Yet, the existence of the
Sudeten Raiders is still unconfirmed, but something
eerie did happen long, long, ago, in the darkness of
night, in several incidents of rain, fog and poor
visability.   Unconfirmed, or not, retribution did
indeed happen by those few heroic vigilantes of
yesteryear...