Federation of Expellees
Encyclopedia
The Federation of Expellees or Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) is a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 formed to represent the interests of Germans who either fled their homes in parts of Central and Eastern Europe
Central and Eastern Europe
Central and Eastern Europe is a term describing former communist states in Europe, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90. In scholarly literature the abbreviations CEE or CEEC are often used for this concept...

, or were expelled
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...

 following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

Historical background

It is estimated that in the aftermath of World War II between 13 and 16 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the territories of Eastern Germany (present-day part of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

), the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

 (mostly from the Vojvodina region
Vojvodina
Vojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...

), the Kaliningrad Oblast
Kaliningrad Oblast
Kaliningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia situated on the Baltic coast. It has a population of The oblast forms the westernmost part of the Russian Federation, but it has no land connection to the rest of Russia. Since its creation it has been an exclave of the Russian SFSR and then the...

 (formerly northern part of East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...

) area of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 and other East European countries. The first president of the federation was a former Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 judge and activist Hans Krüger. Today, the position is held by a CDU politician Erika Steinbach
Erika Steinbach
' is a German conservative politician and president of the Federation of Expellees. She has been representing the Christian Democratic Union and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990...

. The federation claims to represent the diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...

 of ethnic Germans and their families.

German laws concerning the expellees

Between 1953 and 1991 the West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 government passed several laws dealing with German expellees. The most notable of these laws is the "Law of Return" which granted West German citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...

 to any ethnic German
Ethnic German
Ethnic Germans historically also ), also collectively referred to as the German diaspora, refers to people who are of German ethnicity. Many are not born in Europe or in the modern-day state of Germany or hold German citizenship...

. Several additions were later made to these laws.

A central issue addressed by the Law of Return is the inheritability of refugee status. According to the Federal Expellee Law
Federal Expellee Law
The Federal Expellee Law is a German federal law of May 19, 1953 which regulates the rights of German refugees from Central and Eastern Europe and defines - in § 6 - who is considered expellees and therefore entitled to get German citizenship, if they wish so...

http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bundesrecht/bvfg/index.html Par. 7/2, "the spouse and the descendants" of an expellee are to be treated as if they were expellees themselves, regardless whether they have been personally displaced. The Federation of Expellees has steadily lobbied to preserve the inheritability clause, as a change might deeply affect its ability to recruit new members from the post-WWII generations.

Recent developments

Under previous governments, especially those led by the CDU, the West German government had shown more rhetorical support for German refugees and expellees. Although the Social Democrats
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 showed strong support for the expellees especially under Kurt Schumacher
Kurt Schumacher
Dr. Kurt Schumacher , was chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1946 and first Leader of the Opposition in the West German Bundestag parliament from 1949 until his death...

 and Erich Ollenhauer
Erich Ollenhauer
Erich Ollenhauer was the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1952-1963.- Early political career and exile :...

, social democrats in more recent decades have traditionally been less supportive — and it was under Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....

 that West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 recognized the Oder-Neisse line
Oder-Neisse line
The Oder–Neisse line is the border between Germany and Poland which was drawn in the aftermath of World War II. The line is formed primarily by the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, and meets the Baltic Sea west of the seaport cities of Szczecin and Świnoujście...

 as factual as part of his Ostpolitik
Ostpolitik
Neue Ostpolitik , or Ostpolitik for short, refers to the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic beginning in 1969...

.

In 1989-1990 the German government realized they had an opportunity to remove the division between the Federal Republic of Germany and Soviet created German Democratic Republic. However, it was believed that if this was to be realized it had to be done quickly. One of the potential complications were the claims to historical eastern Germany, since unless these were renounced, some foreign governments might not agree to German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...

. The Federal German government thus agreed to the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany
Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany
The Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic , and the Four Powers which occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the...

 (Two Plus Four Agreement), which officially re-established both German states' sovereignty. A condition of this agreement was that Germany accept the post-World War II frontiers created by the victors. Upon reunification in 1990, the constitution
Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is the constitution of Germany. It was formally approved on 8 May 1949, and, with the signature of the Allies of World War II on 12 May, came into effect on 23 May, as the constitution of those states of West Germany that were initially included...

 was amended to state that Germany's territory had reached its full extent. Article 146 was amended so that Article 23 of the current constitution could be used for reunification. Once the five "reestablished federal states" in the east had been united with the west, the Basic Law was amended again to show that there were no other parts of Germany, which existed outside of the unified territory, that had not acceded.

The federation today

When in charge of government, both CDU and SPD have tended to favor improved relations with Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

 and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

, even when this conflicts with the interests of the displaced people. The issue of the eastern border and the return of the Heimatvertriebene
Heimatvertriebene
Heimatvertriebene are those around 12 million ethnic Germans who fled or were expelled after World War II from parts of Germany annexed by Poland and Russia, and from other countries, who found refuge in both West and East Germany, and Austria...

to their ancestral homes are matters which the current German government, German constitutional arrangements and German treaty obligations have virtually closed.

The refugees' claims were unanimously rejected by the affected countries and became a source of mistrust between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. These governments argue that the expulsion of Germans and related border changes were not enacted by the Polish or Czech governments, but rather were ordered by the Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

. Furthermore, the nationalization of private property by Poland's former communist government did not apply only to Germans but was enforced on all people, regardless of ethnic background. The situation is further complicated by the fact that parts of the current Polish population in historical eastern Germany are themselves expellees (or descendants of expellees) who were expelled from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union
Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union
Immediately after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic, which Poles referred to as the "Kresy," and annexed territories totaling 201,015 km² with a population of 13,299,000...

 and were forced to leave their homes and property behind as well.

The fact that some Germans settled in Poland after 1939 and the treatment under German law of these ex-colonists as expellees are issues which add to the controversy. However, the majority of expelled Germans had lived in Eastern Europe for many centuries, and the majority of German colonists in Nazi-occupied Poland were Baltic and other East European Germans themselves displaced by the Nazi-Soviet population transfers
Nazi-Soviet population transfers
The Nazi–Soviet population transfers were a series of population transfers between 1939 and 1941 of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans and ethnic Russians in an agreement according to the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.-...

.

In 2000 the Federation of Expellees also initiated the formation of the Center Against Expulsions . Chairwoman of this Center is Erika Steinbach, who headed it together with former SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 politician Prof. Dr. Peter Glotz
Peter Glotz
Peter Glotz was a German social democratic politician and social scientist.Glotz was born in Eger, Sudetenland , to a German father and a Czech mother. His father, an insurance-clerk and member of the Nazi party, worked for an "aryanized" Jewish factory in Prague...

 (†2005).

In February 2009, the Polish paper Polska wrote that over one third of the Federation top officials were former Nazi activists, and based this on an article published by the German magazine Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

in 2006. The German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...

 wrote that Der Spiegel said this not in respect to the Federation of Expellees, but in respect to a predecessor organization that was dissolved in 1957.

Recently Erika Steinbach, the chair of the Federation of Expellees has rejected any compensation claims. The vice president of the Federation Rudi Pawelka is however a chairman of the supervisory board of the Prussian Trust.

A European organisation for expellees has been formed - EUFV. Headquarter is Triest, Italy.

Organization

The expellees are organized in 21 regional associations (Landsmannschaften) according to the areas of origin of its members, 16 state organizations (Landesverbände) according to their current residence, and 5 associate member organizations. It is the single representative federation for the approximately 15 million Germans who after fleeing, being expelled, evacuated or emigrating, found refuge in the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federation claims that the organizations have reported approximately 2 million members, and are a political force of some influence in Germany. This figure was disputed in January 2010 by the German news service DDP, which reported an actual membership of 550,000. According to Erika Steinbach only 100,000 of the members contribute financially.

The current president of the federation is the German politician Erika Steinbach
Erika Steinbach
' is a German conservative politician and president of the Federation of Expellees. She has been representing the Christian Democratic Union and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990...

 (CDU), who also is a member of the German Parliament
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

.

The federation helps members to integrate into German society. Many of the members assist the societies of their place of birth.

Charter of the German Expellees

The Charter of the German Expellees of August 5, 1950, announced their belief in requiring that "the right to the homeland is recognized and carried out as one of the fundamental rights of mankind given by God", while renouncing revenge and retaliation in the face of the "unending suffering" (unendliche Leid) of the previous decade, and supporting the unified effort to rebuild Germany and Europe. The charter has been criticised for avoiding mentioning Nazi atrocities of Second World War and Germans who were forced to emigrate due to Nazi repressions. Critics argue that the Charter presents the history of German people as starting from the expulsions, while ignoring events like Holocaust: professor Micha Brumlik
Micha Brumlik
Micha Brumlik is professor of education at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. From October 2000 to 2005 he was director of the Fritz Bauer Institute for the Study and Documentation of the History of the Holocaust.-Books :* Die Gnostiker * Schrift, Wort, Ikone Wege aus dem...

 pointed out that one third of signatories were former devoted Nazis and many actively helped in realisation of Hitler's goals; Ralph Giordano
Ralph Giordano (writer)
Ralph Giordano is a German writer and publicist.Giordano was born to a Sicilian father and a Jewish mother....

 wrote in Hamburger Abendblatt
Hamburger Abendblatt
The Hamburger Abendblatt is a daily newspaper in Hamburg, Germany, published by Axel Springer AG. The paper used to appear Monday through Saturday only, but since 29 October 2006 it has also published a Sunday edition to compete with the Hamburger Morgenpost's introduction of a Sunday edition...

 "the Charter doesn't contain a word about Hitler, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Not to mention any sign of apologies for the suffering of the murdered people", "avoids mentioning the reasons for expulsions" and called the document "example of German art of crowding out the truth (...) The fact that the charter completely ignores the reasons for the expulsions deprives it of any value".

German Bundestag proposes 5th August as displaced before Memorial Day!
After a partial-emotional debate, the Bundestag on Thursday 10 February 2011, the request of the coalition parties to "60 years of the Charter of the German expellees" (17/4193, 17/4651) with the votes of the CDU and FDP adopted. An amendment of Alliance 90/The Greens (17/4693) was refused. The application worthy CDU / CSU and FDP, the "Charter of the expellees' of 5 August 1950 as a "major milestone on the road to integration and reconciliation" and the earnings of displaced persons from the former German eastern territories after the Second World War. They also call on the Federal Government, August 5 as a possible national day of remembrance for the victims of the expulsion of . Check

Criticism

The large Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita
Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)
Rzeczpospolita is a Polish national daily newspaper, with a circulation around of 160,000. Issued every day except Sunday. Rzeczpospolita was printed in broadsheet format, then switched to compact at October 16, 2007...

 reported that during BdV meetings in 2003, publications using hate-language to describe Poles butchering Germans were available for sale, as were recordings of Waffen SS marches on compact disks, including those glorifying the Invasion of Poland
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...

. Also, far right groups openly distributed their materials at BdV meetings. While the BdV officially denied responsibility for this, no steps were taken to address the concerns raised.

Presidents

  • Hans Krüger
    Hans Krüger
    Hans Krüger was a former member of the NSDAP party and other Nazi organizations who served as a judge in occupied Poland during Second World War. After the war he became West German politician of the Christian Democratic Union...

     (1959–1963)http://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de/derbdv/historie-2.php3?druck=1 (resigned from his post due to his Nazi past )
  • Wenzel Jaksch
    Wenzel Jaksch
    Wenzel Jaksch was a Sudeten German Socialdemocrat politician and the President of the Federation of Expellees in 1964-66.-Biography:...

     (1964–1966)
  • Reinhold Rehs
    Reinhold Rehs
    Reinhold Rehs was a German politician and chairman of the Federation of Expellees in 1967-70.Rehs was born in Klinthenen, district of Gerdauen, East Prussia as a son of a teacher of Huguenot descent, his family lived in East Prussia since their flight from France...

     (1967–1970)
  • Herbert Czaja
    Herbert Czaja
    Dr. Herbert Czaja was a German Christian Democratic politician and advocate for Germans expelled after World War II...

     (1970–1994)
  • Fritz Wittmann
    Fritz Wittmann
    Dr. Fritz Wittmann is a German politician and lawyer.Wittmann was born in Plan bei Marienbad in Czechoslovakia's Egerland. He was a member of the German Parliament and president of the Federation of Expellees from 1994-1998...

     (1994–1998)
  • Erika Steinbach
    Erika Steinbach
    ' is a German conservative politician and president of the Federation of Expellees. She has been representing the Christian Democratic Union and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990...

     (1998—)
    • Vice president (since 1992): Wilhelm von Gottberg
      Wilhelm von Gottberg
      Wilhelm von Gottberg is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union.Gottberg was born in Bartenstein , East Prussia. His family fled from East Prussia during World War II....


Regional

  • Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen
  • Landsmannschaft Schlesien
  • Deutsch-Baltische Gesellschaft
  • Landsmannschaft der Banater Schwaben e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft Berlin-Mark Brandenburg
  • Landsmannschaft der Bessarabiendeutschen e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Buchenlanddeutschen (Bukowina) e.V.
  • Bund der Danziger e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Dobrudscha- und Bulgariendeutschen
  • Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben, Bundesverband e.V.
  • Karpatendeutsche Landsmannschaft Slowakei e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Litauen e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Oberschlesier e.V. - Bundesverband -
  • Pommersche Landsmannschaft - Zentralverband - e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Sathmarer Schwaben in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Siebenbürger Sachsen in Deutschland
    Landsmannschaft der Siebenbürger Sachsen in Deutschland
    The Landsmannschaft der Siebenbürger Sachsen in Deutschland is a German organisation formed in 1946 by those who were resettled in Germany from Transylvania...

     e.V.
  • Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft Bundesverband e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Ungarn
  • Landsmannschaft Weichsel-Warthe Bundesverband e.V.
  • Landsmannschaft Westpreußen e.V.

State

  • Landesverband Baden-Württemberg
  • Landesverband Bayern
  • Landesverband Berlin
  • Landesverband Brandenburg
  • Landesverband Bremen
  • Landesverband Hamburg
  • Landesverband Hessen
  • Landesverband Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
  • Landesverband Niedersachsen
  • Landesverband Nordrhein-Westfalen
  • Landesverband Rheinland-Pfalz
  • Landesverband Saar
  • Landesverband Sachsen / Schlesische Lausitz
  • Landesverband Sachsen-Anhalt
  • Landesverband Schleswig-Holstein
  • Landesverband Thüringen

See also

  • All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights
    All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights
    The All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights was a right-wing political party in West Germany, which acted as an advocacy group of the Germans fled and expelled in and after World War II.-History:...

  • Organised persecution of ethnic Germans
    Organised persecution of ethnic Germans
    The Organised persecution of ethnic Germans refers to systematic activity against groups of ethnic Germans based on their ethnicity.Historically, this has been due to two causes: the German population were considered, whether factually or not, linked with German nationalist regimes such as those of...

  • Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
    Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
    The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II and collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war...

  • German eastward settlement
  • History of Poland
    History of Poland
    The History of Poland is rooted in the arrival of the Slavs, who gave rise to permanent settlement and historic development on Polish lands. During the Piast dynasty Christianity was adopted in 966 and medieval monarchy established...

  • History of Pomerania
    History of Pomerania
    The history of Pomerania dates back more than 10,000 years. Settlement in the area started by the end of the Vistula Glacial Stage, about 13,000 years ago. Archeological traces have been found of various cultures during the Stone and Bronze Age, of Veneti and Germanic peoples during the Iron Age...

  • History of Silesia
    History of Silesia
    Silesia has been inhabited from time immemorial by people of multiple ethnic groups. Germanic tribes were first recorded within Silesia in the 1st century. Slavic White Croats arrived in this territory about the 6th century establishing White Croatia. The first known states in Silesia were those of...

  • History of Prussia
  • History of the Czech lands
    History of the Czech lands
    The history of the Czech lands includes the following periods:* Slavs: Bohemians and Moravians – arrival into Czech area during the 6th century * Samo’s realm * Moravian principality in Moravia* Great Moravia...

  • Ethnic cleansing
    Ethnic cleansing
    Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....


Further reading

  • Brumlik, Micha
    Micha Brumlik
    Micha Brumlik is professor of education at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. From October 2000 to 2005 he was director of the Fritz Bauer Institute for the Study and Documentation of the History of the Holocaust.-Books :* Die Gnostiker * Schrift, Wort, Ikone Wege aus dem...

     Wer Sturm sät. Die Vertreibung der Deutschen, 2005
  • Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered (Eastern European Studies, 18) Luisa Lang Owen and Charles M. Barber, Texas A&M University Press, January, 2003, hardcover, 288 pages, ISBN 1-58544-212-7
  • Alfred M. de Zayas: A terrible Revenge. Palgrave/Macmillan, New York, 1994. ISBN 1-4039-7308-3.
  • Alfred M. de Zayas: Die deutschen Vertriebenen. Ares, Graz, 2006. ISBN 3-902475-15-3.
  • Alfred M. de Zayas: Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht. Universitas, München, 20001. ISBN 3-8004-1416-3.
  • Norman Naimark: Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001.
  • Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees: The Expulsion of the "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War. Florence, Italy, University Institute, 2004.

External links

Bund der Vertriebenen - Official homepage For latest developments: http://cdu.de/politik-a-z/vertriebenen/inhalt.htm
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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