[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] expulsion of Germans from the East at end of WWII

Tue May 14 12:49:18 PDT 2013

Hello All,
My mother, brother, sister and grandparents were part of the expulsion.
According to family my mother was never quite the same after that, and only
my grandmother knew what happened to her but she never told anyone.  

Trudy Gollan Krueger
Michigan USA

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 18:43:18 -0500
From: Sigrid Pohl Perry <perry1121 at aol.com>
To: ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] expulsion of Germans from the East
	at the end of the Second World War
Message-ID: <51917A96.2020105 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

To all,

My family also lived through forced resettlement in Poland in 1940 and
escape from the advancing Russian army early 1945. The recent issue of the
New York Review of Books reviewed a book published last year by R.M. 
Douglas: Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second
World War. Douglas's book tells the story of the forced relocation of 12 to
14 million ethnic Germans from central and southern Europe after borders
were changed by treaty. Most of these refugees were women and children
because the men had already been drafted into the German army and some
500,000 died during the journey to a Germany ill equipped to care for them.

The review by Paul Wilson, "Kicking the Germans Out of the East," can be
read here:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/23/kicking-germans-out-eas
t/?pagination=false

Another review of Douglas's book is here: 
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/orderly-and-hu
mane-the-expulsion-of-the-germans-after-the-second-world-war-by-rm-douglas-8
076666.html

It is available in some libraries. An hour long podcast is available: 
http://newbooksinhistory.com/2013/02/14/r-m-douglas-orderly-and-humane-the-e
xpulsion-of-the-germans-after-the-second-world-war-yale-up-2012/ 

Survivors were often reluctant to talk about these experiences in families,
and history books both in Germany and abroad have ignored the story until
recently.

Sigrid Pohl Perry

On 5/13/2013 6:26 PM, Helen Gillespie wrote:
> To all,
>
> Some members of the listserv might have families that experienced the
expulsion from Eastern Europe during the Second World War. Sometimes these
folks did not talk about their experiences.
>
>
> The German magazine Der Spiegel regularly puts special issues covering
specific topics.  In 2002, they covered the flight and expulsion of Germans
from the East. Unfortunately it is in German.  The PDF versions (on the left
side of the page) do include some photos.  Some are pretty grim.Although the
articles don't cover Wolhynians specifically, their experiences would be
about the same.
>
>
>
> http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelspecial/index-2002-2.html
>
> My own family experienced some of this.
>
>   
> Helen
>
> ---------------------------------
>
>
> The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he
is a parent of the future.
> --Herbert Spencer
> _______________________________________________
> Ger-Poland-Volhynia site list
> Ger-Poland-Volhynia at sggee.org
> https://www.sggee.org/mailman/listinfo/ger-poland-volhynia
>    

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 20:09:47 -0400
From: Kenneth Browne <kbrowne01518 at gmail.com>
To: Helen Gillespie <hgillespie at rogers.com>
Cc: SGGEElistserv <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] expulsion of Germans from the East
	at the end of the Second World War
Message-ID: <519180CB.5080707 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 05/13/2013 07:26 PM, Helen Gillespie wrote:
> The German magazine Der Spiegel regularly puts special issues covering
specific topics.  In 2002, they covered the flight and expulsion of Germans
from the East. Unfortunately it is in German.  The PDF versions (on the left
side of the page) do include some photos.  Some are pretty grim.Although the
articles don't cover Wolhynians specifically, their experiences would be
about the same.
>
>
>   
> http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelspecial/index-2002-2.html
>
> My own family experienced some of this.
>
>   
If you copy the above URL and paste it into the left side of Google
translate you will get a decent translation of the article, with links to
the inside pages preserved and translated, into English or whatever language
Google Translate offers.

I have letters written in Yiddish and English from an ancestress who had
been expelled from Poland and was living in Berlin between 1931 and 1937. I
have been unable to determine whether she and her family died during the
Holocaust, although I suspect so. The letters were written to my ggf who was
a German Lutheran, but the author described herself as Jewish and as his
sister in law.

I will be poring over this 2002 article to see if I can learn anything new
and specific about how and when ethnic Germans were kicked out of Poland and
had passports confiscated.

--
Kenneth Browne researching: BROWN(E) LEIGHTON TAYLOR CLOUGH/CLUFF LACHMANN
RUSSELL NOURSE MORSE PETTENGILL NOBLE SMALL WOLF MROCH LUEDTKE HECKBERT
MANTEI

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 22:33:59 -0500
From: Carol Duff <carolduff at me.com>
To: Sigrid Pohl Perry <perry1121 at aol.com>
Cc: ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] expulsion of Germans from the East
	at the end of the Second World War
Message-ID: <BD9A03B5-D10A-489E-92C1-F38412D4C8CF at me.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I also witnessed a lot of prejudice of Germans moving back from other areas
because "their dialect was not correct."

------------------------------

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