ZGram - 8/3/2003 - "The Observer: 'We were war victims too, Germans insist'"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

August 3, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Balance was long overdue, and changes are finally coming.  It is 
finally happening - as the article below documents.  This is a 
political glove in the ring - make no mistake about it.  If this 
project gets off the ground in Germany, others will follow.  That's 
how we are going to win!

Take a look:

[START]

We were war victims too, Germans insist

Hannah Cleaver in Berlin
Sunday August 3, 2003
The Observer

The photographs show exiles, pathetic bundles of belongings strapped 
to their backs or clutched in their arms, in grainy black and white 
trudging through Europe to an unknown future.

New laws meant that, because of their ethnic origins, these people 
had to abandon their homes and any possessions they could not carry 
and leave a country where they suddenly had no place.

But this is not the infamous Nazi ethnic cleansing of Jews, Poles or 
Russians: these were Germans - some of the 15 million expelled from 
European countries following the defeat of the Third Reich.

The Germans as victims have been historically omitted in the face of 
the Holocaust, the multiple invasions and the Blitz. Modern Germany 
was born soaked in collective guilt for the horrors the country had 
inflicted. That guilt is part of the national psyche.

Those who tried to speak about German suffering were collectively 
shouted down, portrayed as revisionists or neo-Nazis. Many were. But 
as the decades pass, payments are slowly being made to some of the 
Nazis' victims and efforts are under way to return looted property, 
and increasing numbers of Germans feel able to talk about the losses 
they suffered.

A hesitant trend, sparked by Günter Grass's recent book involving the 
1945 sinking of a ship packed with German refugees fleeing Soviet 
troops, is leading to a re-examination of the German experience. This 
year's 60th anniversary of the 'firestorm' bombing of Hamburg by the 
RAF brought graphic accounts of the slaughter and provoked debate 
over the justification for burning tens of thousands of people to 
death.

And now efforts are being made to commemorate the suffering of 
Germans driven from Eastern Europe. Led by the Association of the 
Banished, the plan is for a museum and centre dealing with the 
expulsion of Germans from countries which include the former 
Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Erika Steinbruch, conservative MP and head of the association, told 
The Observer: 'We want to make it clear what happened to these 
people, the 15 million who were thrown out of their homelands in the 
Baltics, Romania, so many countries. They were chased out because of 
their German ethnicity.

'We want to look at how Germany changed as a result of these people 
coming into the country and bringing with them lots of traditions 
that made a difference to Germany. We also want to help in making it 
impossible that such banishments ever happen again in Europe.

'This discussion is necessary. Every life is equal. The Jews who 
suffered in Germany were German. There were Germans in the Balkans 
who lost their homelands after the Hitler-Stalin pact. These were 
Germans who suffered under Hitler.

'There is a more relaxed discussion now. That's necessary. It is part 
of the process of self-discovery, of the very complicated moral 
problems Germany has with itself. This is only just starting. I'm 
very optimistic we can do this.'

She has political support, and backing from intellectuals within and 
outside Germany, but has come up against resistance to its focus on 
German victims as well as the idea of basing it in Berlin.

Recently 65 politicians, intellectuals and authors wrote an open 
letter against the association's nationalism. Signatories included 
German parliamentary president Wolfgang Thierse, Grass, Czech Deputy 
Prime Minister Petr Mares, and former Polish Foreign Minister 
Vladislav Bartoszewski.

'The design of such a centre as a predominantly national project... 
awakes the mistrust of our neighbours and cannot be in the joint 
interests of our countries. It carries the danger of setting the 
suffering of one against that of the other and to neglect the 
differing causes and contexts of expulsion.'

[END]