Posted on 08/10/2006 4:35:26 AM PDT by twinself
GERMANY is publicly recalling its suffering in the confusion after the Second World War when millions of civilians from Eastern Europe were expelled. As the newly liberated Poles and Czechs sought revenge on their former oppressors, many German women were raped, beaten and robbed; some were nailed to cartwheels. Now the suffering of Germans is being remembered in an exhibition opening in Berlin today.
For Erika Steinbach, the moving spirit behind Forced Paths, it is the first step towards creating a permanent centre in Berlin to commemorate the 12 million Germans deported from Eastern Europe. “We owe it to ourselves,” the Christian Democrat politician said yesterday. “We owe it to history and our collective memory.” However, Angela Merkel’s Government is bracing itself for a fierce response from the nationalist leadership of Poland.
Lech Kaczynski, the Polish President, says that the centre is an attempt to represent Germans as victims. “It will be better for relations between our countries if this centre never comes into existence,” said the President, who with the Prime Minister, his brother Jaroslaw, makes no secret of his distrust of Germany.
Relations between Berlin and Warsaw are difficult. The Polish prosecutor has opened a case against a German newspaper for describing the twins as potatoes. A Catholic newspaper close to the Government has published a list of German correspondents in Poland, urging readers to make their anger known.
Earlier, one Polish magazine cover depicted Frau Steinbach in a black SS uniform straddling the Chancellor then, Gerhard Schröder. The impression, then as now, was that the Association of Deported Germans had become such a powerful lobbyist that it was forcing a rewriting of German history.
The exhibition tries to depict the deportation of Germans as one of many mass ethnic expulsions carried out in the 20th century. But Wolfgang Benz, the director of the Anti-Semitism Research Centre in Berlin, said that any attempt to commemorate the expelled Germans had to make clear “that the deportations were above all the result of Nazi extermination policies”.
Define expulsion. You´ll find out that even NSDAP members fit under the definition. That´s not historic revisionism. The adequate response would have been sentencing the Nazis and allowing those who could not be convicted to live in their houses, not to pursue all Germans (from ages 0-100). But that was not the way it went. And not every expelled is a victim. A victim is someone without guilt.
Define Nazi soldier. A Nazi in uniform (SS or Wehrmacht)? Or a German soldier? If German soldiers opposed the regime (and didn´t kill civilians intentionally or so), I view them as victims of the Nazi regime. If they didn´t want to risk or lose their lives for Hitler, they were abused by the Nazis.
Only Germans whom lived before WWII on the territories of modern Poland (Czech Republic etc) can be considered as expelled. Every soldier who served under Hitler can be called Nazi soldier, his personal views are not important if he did everything what was ordered.
If you think that Wehrmacht soldiers fought according to chivalric code in old European sense you couldn't be more wrong. They ruthlessly killed women and children, pillaged and burnt civilian houses, fired at fleeing convois from the 1st day of WW2. They showed no honor only good fighting skills. If you want examples for the above I can provide you with many. Whether you want it or not for occupied nations every single German soldier was, is and always will be a NAZI. The British and Americans have nothing to say here and nobody really cares that they let go Wehrmacht after the thing was finished. Collective memory of Jews, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and other occupied nations sets the naming standard here.
Post #64 was to you, my friend.
Post #64 was to you, my friend. Sorry Lukasz, my mistake.
Of course the Germans who were sent to "new Lebensraum" during the war are not expelled, since their ´new homes´ were founded illegally.
“We took this challenge before our Lord and our conscience, and it must be done, because this man, Hitler, he is the ultimate evil.”
Claus Graf Schenck von Stauffenberg
He was a true anti-Nazi, he wanted the conscience and our Christian values to be the leading spirits for our government. "In general, they seemed to be aiming for a type of Christian socialism. ... Aversion to Nazi policies of genocide and patriotic concerns were for many conspirators, intrinsically bound."
http://hometown.aol.com/baronvanc/militarx.htm
In the KZ, several ten thousand oppositionals (communists, socialists, Christians, students, Jehova´s Witnesses, Gypsies, Gays) were imprisoned or killed. They are all victims, too. Again: GUILT AND VICTIMHOOD ARE INDIVIDUAL.
Provide the definitions!
Of course the Germans who were sent to "new Lebensraum" during the war are not expelled, since their ´new homes´ were founded illegally.
So Erica’s father was not expelled as she herself.
I cannot understand your twisting logic, once you wrote in this forum that Lublin (occupied by Germans only during WWII) where your current president Kohler was born is German fatherland. Your input in this thread belongs to the same category of nonsense. If you want encyclopedia definition, you can post it yourself. I have already write what I think.
Damn. That was tough, but I don't withdraw my post, actually that picture should be posted many more times in this thread.
BuHuHaHa!
German Soldiers who killed intentionally civilians (no matter whether Poles, Soviets, Italians, etc) are criminals, not necessarily Nazis. A Nazi is someone who believes in the ideals of the Nationalsocialist ideology (e.g. the superiority of the white or aryan "race").
I didn´t know that President Köhler was born on occupied territory. I thought it was Germany then.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
Bump for a well written and thoroughly thoughtful post.
Show me where. Guilt is individual, so a German soldier who fulfilled his regular tasks but despised the Nazis, and eventually got shot by a Soviet - was a victim of the Nazi regime. He was at a place he didn´t want to be, doing a task he didn´t want to fulfill but had to in order to avoid serious consequences and got killed for it. This young man has lost his life for a senseless and criminal mission of the Nazis.
If so - It was an obligation to bomb Hamburg, Bremen and Dresden, too. It was an obligation to attack German convois and important routes. It was just usual obligation.
Bull. It was an obligation for the pilots, yes, but not for those who gave the orders to kill German civilians. In Hamburg, Dresden, Bremen and many more cities, the target were civilians. It´s revisionism to say that the railways were the target - even the bomberpilots have never claimed that. It was in order to shock and awe the people. It´s hard for me to understand that you defend these attacks on civilians after all your defense of the civilians who suffered in a war. Don´t you get it that the passport makes no difference in guilt and victimhood?
Why only civilians?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.