Kommentare zu: Germany’s History Problem

Von: Elaine C. Tillinger, PhD

Elaine C. Tillinger, PhD — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:22:00 +0000

Kommentar von Krystian :
Are you living in a dream world? It is very obvious to me that you DO NOT know your history. You are a racist, that is also obvious. So you served in the Australian Army, big deal, does that make you an expert?!
I am a child of the survivors of genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Many of my family members died in death camps set up by Tito and his Partisans with Soviet backing
YES two million ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) died as a result of the largest expusltion in history: 14-15 MILLION ethnic Germans were expelled, over two million were ethnically cleasned! The death camp at Knicanin was the the worst.
Tito and his partisans, with the help of Gypsies, turned several ethnic German (Donauschwaben villages into “special camps” where thousands died between October 1944-48. Thousands were shipped off to Russia as slave labor, most did not return. After their incarceration, the Volksdeutsche had to work as slave laborers for the Yugoslaves for 3 years. Read your history before you make assumptions and accusations.

I have been reseaching this topic, it seems, my entire life. I grew up wit this, so don’t say it is a fairy tale; don’t insult the millions of Voldksdeutsche who lost their homes and land, never able to return. Your explanation of NAZI’s helping to evacuate Volksdeustche rings true, however, thousands stayed behind.

How long have you studied expulsion, ethnic cleansing and genocide? Are you a scholar? If so, a very poor one.

I’d like to hear your response, but you better come back with historical facts that support your false claims! I’m waiting. Let’s see who is telling the truth!

I take this very personally; you are saying our history is a fairy tail, well, do your homework and you will see that you are the one telling the fairy tale.

Von: Krystian

Krystian — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:10:01 +0000

This is not a reliable article. First, Rumia was until 1772 in the Kingdom of Poland. Only as a result of the first partition of Poland it was incorporated into Prussia. In the inter-war Poland Rumia was also in Poland. The town was populated by Slavic Kashubians and Poles.
Second, Steinbach parents did not hail from the region, so how came she claims to ba an expellee? If my son was born in occupied Afganistan ( I did serve in the Australian Army in Afghanistan), would he become an expellee?
Third, the number of 2 million dead as a result of expulsions is a fairy tale. Until this day nobody bothered to come up with any reliable method of documenting the dead. What we have is an inflated guess. Germans were being evacuated by the Nazis long before expulsions, many people were also escaping before the Red Army during harsh winter and under heavy Soviet bombardment. All these events create a scenario that is very easy to manipulate with numbers.
I think that Germans as a nation are hopeless. They are constantly looking for trouble. Let history pass, it is water under bridge.

Von: alfred de zayas

alfred de zayas — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:06:25 +0000

Good article, Amanda!
When I studied history at Harvard back in the 60s and 70s the issue of the expulsion of the Germans simply did not exist. It was never mentioned. I learned about it by chance in a seminar at Harvard Law School and was shocked to realize that something as big as the expulsion of 15 million human beings with 2 million casualties in the process could be blithely ignored. I took a Fulbright Fellowship and wrote a book about it “Nemesis at Potsdam” (Routledge) – Die Nemesis von Potsdam (Herbig, 14th revised and enlarged edition 2005), and a popular version “A Terrible Revenge” (Palgrave/Macmillan, 3rd edition 2006). Although the books were well reviewed in the scholarly press, the subject matter remains practically unknown in the United States.
Amanda’s article sheds light on the German-Polish aspect of it. There is, of course, a German-Czech aspect, a German-Hungarian, a German-Yugoslav aspect. Several of the expelling countries, notably Hungary, have apologized for the expulsion and even invited the Germans to come back, if they so wish. This is a human rights issue. And the first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Dr. Jose Ayala Lasso spoke in 1995 and 2005 to the German expellees as victims of collective sanctions incompatible with recognized human rights norms. There is no question that these German men, women and children of East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, East Brandenburg, Bohemia, Moravia etc. did not deserve “ethnic cleansing” from homelands that their ancestors had cultivated since the 12th and 13th centuries. Life is complex. History is complex. But there is no “collective guilt” — and these German expellees were quite simply victims — not perpetrators.
Professor Dr. iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas
Geneva School of Diplomacy
former Chief of Petitions at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, retired.