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”.
As much as I say that it was ok to send the Germans from former Polish regions back after the war, I say that the way it was handled was often enough too brutal, even murderous. Also, women, children and elderly were hit the most, and not those who expelled the Poles who formerly owned the houses.
I have had exchanges with twinself in the past. Tried to be very friendly and joke a bit.
S/he does just hate Germans.
Have you actually and finally informed yourself about the military resistance? Stauffenberg, Beck et al. were opposed to Hitler as early as in 1938. Beck - a General then - even resigned as a protest of the Prague invasion.
You attack Stauffenberg for his quote? HE was the man to kill another man - Hitler. So it´s fully understandable that he justifies his planned killing. And the entire plot was designed to knock out NOT ONLY Hitler but the entire leadership.
Also , you think that we will we penetrate souls of German soldiers to figure out what was their motivation when they killed Polish civilians or soldiers. We care less about their motivation, we see only effects of their actions.
And s/he is not the only one. There are other Poles as well. No matter what we do, we are still and forever the evil Nazi face for them. As long as the twins rule our eastern neighbour there won´t be much change, I fear. Let´s see what they´ll get for their hatred.
Revenge? Why revenge, for what? We want the historical facts and the truth to be taught and faced. You don´t face the truth. Maybe you should visit the exhibition?
In general. There are exceptions, e.g. when the enemy drops his gun and surrenders.
As Poland's economy grows (assuming the twins don't screw it up) they will become more relaxed in their attitudes. The problem is the result of an inferiority complex. The brothers are the political expression of it. And, Germans do tend to act arrogantly sometimes, so that doesn't help.
Fostering mre Polish/German dialogue is something the Bertelsmann Foundation should probably do.
And that´s exactly your fault. I say most Soviet soldiers who participated in the oppression of your country after WW2 didn´t want that. Most probably just wanted to do their jobs at home instead of being in a uniform. It´s a socialist/communist claim, but I think that with regard to the world wars I and II it´s true - it´s always the average people who suffer the most in a war and get no profits from it.
It´s not me having problems with my country´s past. You may have got that wrong. I say that it´s YOU still blaming Germany for what happened more than sixty years ago. We just commemorate the victims of war and expulsion, and you call that revisionist, "the Nazis want to rewrite history, etc". I feel no guilt for WW2. I´m born 1981, and I just have the responsibility that this never happens in Europe again, or better in the world. However, I think you have no right to tell us who to mourn. We know that the Nazis started the war and that Poland and the Soviet Union suffered the most under them (when it comes to numbers). But we also remember our German victims of the Nazi regime and also the victims of crimes against humanity by Poles, Czechs or Soviets after the war. Two wrongs don´t make a right.
Germany = The modern Germany
This is not exclusively Polish attitude, go anywhere in Eastern Europe (and perhaps western as well) they will tell you the same. If Germans soldiers were so good why they did not get rid of NSDAP? Your attempts to justify their presents on Polish territories are pathetic. It was their sovereign decision if they followed Nazi orders.
Perhaps you are one of those arrogant Germans with bad taste o humor and internal feeling that you know something about Polish politics? It is not enough just to consider yourself otherwise.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
Mass shootings of civilians happened far more often in Eastern Europe, and the only prominent cases of mass murder (except for the KZ) I know of in West Europe were SS atrocities in Italy.
As I said, soldiers were more or less free to refuse orders which meant to kill civilians. So those soldiers who did are criminals of the lowest class. They were NOT free to decide whether they should fight the enemy by all means. They were compelled to be in the armed forces, and refusing orders meant to be deployed to the penal bataillon (where almost noone came back from) or the death penalty within a few days, in the last months of the war immediately. One could see many hanged soldiers in German cities for running away in 1945...
Oh, and you should know what it means to live in a dictatorship. Why haven´t the Poles liberated themselves from the Soviets earlier? Because resistance is quite hard in a dictatorship. People were arrested by the Gestapo for having said "nothing improved under Hitler". We cannot expect from the people to stand up, but we can admire those who did and risked or lost their lives for that.
Three steps:
1. Punish the Nazis.
2. Forgive those who were silent for fear, who cared for their own lives.
3. Praise those who actively fought the Nazis.
The hard cut on the cost of millions of Germans prevented further "ethnic cleanings". We should have the backbone to divide different ethnic groups for instance in Kosovo to prevent further violence among them today. Living next to each other won´t work.
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