Ethnic cleansing has happened many,
many times on this tired old planet, and it will, unfortunately, continue to
happen as long as people speak a different language, worship their god
differently, or have—Oh my god, different customs.
Many movies and books have appeared
about World War II and The Holocaust. Yes, the Jews were systematically being
exterminated: Millions and millions kicked out of their homes, hauled away in
railroad cars to work camps and death camps. Throughout history the Jews have
had to struggle against those who hated them for the simple reason of their
being a Jew.
But this post is not about Jews.
I remember seeing old footage of
refugees somewhere in Europe walking aimlessly and
carrying suitcases and holding onto young children. I was young too. I didn’t
know who these people were, except as the adults said: Refugees. More
importantly, I didn’t care. I was young, I didn’t know those people—and I just
didn’t care. I had other things to do.
Unfortunately, my attitude was the
same as most others. Nobody knew those people walking, carrying belongings, hanging
onto young children, and few people cared.
Until I read the book “A Terrible Revenge”
by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, loaned to me by a friend whose wife was there and
witnessed the carnage. I had no idea those people, those refugees walking, were
very likely ethnic Germans who had been kicked out of their homes, sometimes
with as little as fifteen minutes notice. Well, didn’t Germany
start the war? Didn’t they deserve receiving a little hardship after all the devastation
they caused?
Well, yes, Germany
started it, but it wasn’t the German people, and it certainly wasn’t the ethnic
“eastern” Germans living “then” in what is now western Poland,
parts of Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Rumania,
Yugoslavia, and
Russia.
Here’s what happened. Hundreds—yes,
hundreds—of years ago, these nations, these “lands” just mentioned,
evidently put out the word for people to come for free land if they would but conquer
the wilderness, and the industrious Germans came, by the hundreds, probably
thousands. They conquered the wilderness, built homes, started businesses, and
became citizens of the new lands, but they didn’t deny their language or their culture
as Germans.
What happened was very similar to
what happened in America
mainly in the Nineteenth Century. Homesteaders were offered free land in the
west: Just go and claim it. In that case it was the Native American who had to leave.
On both sides many people were slaughtered.
But this post is also not about the
Native American.
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| This photo has little to do with the post, except that it shows the quiet and peace before a storm. |
When World War II came, or “ended”
(the cleansing went on from near the end of the war, 1944, to long after the
war, 1950.) One “could” say it happened quietly and far behind the scenes.
After all, they were Germans: They started it. They were just getting
what they gave.
The peaceful Germans from the east
didn’t start it, but they definitely paid for all the transgressions by the
Nazis. The book was hard to read in the sense of the violence perpetrated on these
people, ‘hard to read,’ yet also hard to put down.
I have to believe it was because of
the Russian army likely being right over the hill that drove the Poles, Czechs,
etc., to turn into such unfeeling monsters. (The Russian soldiers were
unfeeling monsters too, but remember who was pushing them.) The soldiers (whoever;
I’m not going to specify who did what) would come in the night, order the
family to pack maybe one bag (and it could weigh just so much, or else) and get
out of their house and off their land. Then the families would be separated.
The husbands and fathers went to certain work camps. The women and girls after
being raped would go to different work camps. The smallest children would stay
with grandparents, who then were sent somewhere else or just sent onto the road.
Sound inhumane? What I just
described were the lucky ones. Sometimes the family would be massacred, tortured
first, then bayoneted, shot, beat to death, eyes gouged out, crucified, the
women raped by any number of men one after the other and “then” murdered. I
guess the worst I read was two girls tied together, then their arms and legs
tied to two vehicles which then pulled the two girls apart.
But, hey! They were all Germans!
They had just put all of Europe through hell! They deserved
to get what they gave!
Sometimes, the so-called lucky ones
would be separated for years in distant Russian work camps, mines, so-called
reparations for war damage. Then again, the so-called lucky ones were often just
told to leave, to go somewhere else, to carry their one piece of baggage and go,
to give birth along the road, to starve there, to freeze there, to give up and
lie down and die there.
The next time you think your life
is awful, Americans, women especially, think of this: When these people were
sometimes herded onto railroad cars, for days, weeks at a time, with very
little to eat, packed so closely they couldn’t even sit down, men, women,
children, old and sick people all together, if they were lucky the train would
sometimes stop for a potty break. If the train more likely did not stop, their
“potty” was a hole in the floor of the corner of the railroad car.
I said that to the American women,
mainly, because when these things happened everybody was treated the same:
Didn’t matter if you were a woman, a child, a pregnant woman, or sick. If you
were ethnic eastern German you were going to pay! Either by instant death, or
brutality that made one probably pray for death.
Number of ethnic Germans in the
eastern territories: 9,575,000
Number that died through flight and
expulsion: 2,111,000
Yes, millions died, and more
millions actually eventually made it to a bit of safety in West
Germany, but, to them, Germany
itself was a foreign land.
That was a main plan by old man
Stalin of Russia. His plan was for the defeated Germany
to be overwhelmed by an influx of eastern ethnic Germans. His plan didn’t work.
Instead West Germany
soon became an industrial powerhouse.
In the end, it needs to be told
that these ethnic eastern Germans lived sometimes for hundreds of years,
generation after generation, right next to the native inhabitants of Poland,
etc. They all were friendly and neighborly; they were citizens…but I guess war
changes all of that.
A strange thing, in “my” mind
anyway: After the brutality shown these Germans for years and years many were
finally just released to find their family and maybe a new life. But did the
inhuman monsters who released them think that nobody would ever “tell” on them?
They must have thought that. And for a good many years nobody “did” tell. But
this book is full of testimonials by people who were there and have finally “told.”
In the very end I will copy almost
word for word the last paragraph in the book, before credits, etc. (Anything in
parentheses will be my addition.)
The expulsions and deportations for
slave labour were carried out systematically, as official Allied policy (in
other words “OKed” by the Americans and British) …as part of the peace
settlement (mainly to appease the Russians.) Even if Americans and Britons did
not directly perpetrate these crimes, we become responsible by virtue of joint
decisions at Tehran, Yalta,
Potsdam (the peace talk locations.)
The “ethnic cleansing” constituted a crime against humanity, but the victims
have remained unpitied and unknown. Seldom is there compassion for the
vanquished. Seldom any justice in retribution.
Thanks for reading
Contact
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