ZGram - 9/7/2003 - "It's about time!"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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

September 7, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I will predict that if the Germans succeed in this one, Germany will 
never be the same!

[START]

Telegraph Network - Sunday 31 August 2003

Anger over tribute to Germany's 'war victims'

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

(Filed: 31/08/2003)

Germany is embroiled in a bitter row with its future European Union
neighbours to the east over plans for a lavish Berlin memorial to the 15
million Germans expelled from central Europe at the end of the Second World
War.

The project has been championed by Germany's two million-strong Expellees'
Association, which says the suffering of Germans driven out of Nazi Reich
territory in Poland, Czechoslovakia and former East Prussia by the advancing
Red Army has been ignored.

During the clearances, thousands of women were raped by Soviet soldiers and
many people sent to labour camps.

To mark their plight, the Expellees' Association plans a [Euro]100 million (£69
million) Centre against Expulsion containing a permanent exhibition and
library. Controversially, it aims to build the centre next to the city's
Holocaust memorial which is now under construction.

The project has been condemned by Polish and Czech critics who see it as an
attempt to portray the Germans as war victims. Last week, Czech officials
protested to Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, who was visiting
Prague to discuss the Czech Republic's forthcoming EU membership.

An embarrassed Mr Fischer was asked by hostile Czech journalists whether the
memorial centre was intended "as Germany's welcome to the EU's new member
states". The issue is likely to overshadow a visit by Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder to the Czech capital this week.

In Poland, Marek Edelman, one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto
uprising against the Nazis, said the centre risked "casting the executioner
in the role of a victim". He added: "It will give the impression to future
generations of Germans that only Jews and Germans suffered during the war."
Walter Stratmann, a spokesman for the Expellees' Association, defended the
project. "For decades, Germans have been brought up to think of themselves
merely as perpetrators of Nazi war crimes. We want to show that the German
people also suffered terribly as a result of being expelled."

The centre has the backing of three German states and 400 towns and cities,
which have levied a [Euro] 5 cent tax on each person to fund it. Although Mr
Schröder opposes the project, the Expellees' Association says he has no
authority to halt it.

Leading Polish and Czech politicians, including the former Polish foreign
ministers Wladyslaw Bartoszewksi and Bronislaw Geremek, have signed a joint
appeal stating: "Setting up such a centre as a national German project
creates mistrust among neighbours and cannot be in the interest of our
countries."

They said that proposals to build the centre next to Berlin's Holocaust
memorial showed that the project aimed to "weigh up the suffering of one
group against the other". Millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from
central Europe in 1945. Most were driven from territories such as East
Prussia, Pomerania and Sudetenland - areas now belonging to Poland, Russia
and the Czech Republic.

Others were expelled during the late 1940s and 1950s, under the terms of the
1945 Potsdam treaty. Most of them resettled in western Germany, where they
became - and remain - a significant force in regional and national politics.

Erika Steinbach, the Expellees' Association president, dismissed her Polish
and Czech critics, saying Germany should be allowed to mourn the plight of
its people. She added: "Millions of those expelled were children. How can
they be held responsible for the Nazis?"

[END]