[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Resettlement after WW2

[Richard J Flanagan]

Darel,

 

               The resettlement of German refugees from Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Russia and other points east in 1945 was the
embodiment of absolute chaos.  A good account of this is given in Germany
1945: From War to Peace by Richard Bessel, Harper Collins, 2009.  Basically,
12 million refugees (corresponding to the entire population of Canada)
poured into German reception centers, which could ill cope with the influx.
It is true that there was an orderly resettlement of Bessarabians in 1939
and Volhynians in 1941, but it was into Poland and these people were
uprooted once more in 1945 and so ended up as refugees twice.  Many Canadian
refugee families from Eastern Europe have accounts of fleeing west in the
winter of 1945 in advance of the Russian army. 

 

               One can see much of this chaos documented in the copies of
the EWZ files in the US archives in Washington.  The files stop after 1944
since the entire refugee process fell apart.

 

               Please have a look at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/about.cfm  for more information and in
particular at http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_imglist.cfm?sub_id=146
<http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_imglist.cfm?sub_id=146&section_id=1
4> &section_id=14 .

 

               Richard 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ger-Poland-Volhynia [mailto:ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at sggee.org] On
Behalf Of Darel Paul
Sent: 1 January, 2017 3:28 PM
To: ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Resettlement after WW2

 

In a previous thread on lost villages, the matter of German resettlement
after WW2 came up.

 

I had the impression from the comments that the resettlement process was
quite organized, and that Germans were expelled from particular villages in
Poland or Volhynia and resettled after the war in particular villages,
cities, or regions in Germany.

 

Is this true? If so, are there sources which list which Polish or Volhynian
villages resettled to which German areas? My German ancestors lived in the
agricultural districts north, south, and west of Konin, Poland.

 

Darel

 

~~~~~

 

Darel E. Paul

Williamstown, MA

 <mailto:darel.e.paul at gmail.com> darel.e.paul at gmail.com

_______________________________________________

Ger-Poland-Volhynia site list

 <mailto:Ger-Poland-Volhynia at sggee.org> Ger-Poland-Volhynia at sggee.org

 <https://www.sggee.org/mailman/listinfo/ger-poland-volhynia>
https://www.sggee.org/mailman/listinfo/ger-poland-volhynia