Monday, September 5, 2011

The expulsion of German and Prussian families from East Prussia is a war crime.

The expulsion of German population of East Prussia in Germany, which took place in 1945-1948, was nothing but a war crime in peacetime. The Nazism and Fascism should have been convicted for sure, and many Nazi criminals were punished, but the forced eviction of civilians from their homes in peaceful time is a crime of the 20th century. Total forcibly evicted around 200,000 people. The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Potsdam Conference actually legalized the deportation of Germans from the Eastern Europe. From Potsdam Agreement:
V. City of Koenigsberg and the adjacent area. The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government to the effect that pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement, the section of the western frontier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is adjacent to the Baltic Sea should pass from a point on the eastern shore of the Bay of Danzig to the east, north of Braunsberg-Goldap, to the meeting point of the frontiers of Lithuania, the Polish Republic and East Prussia. The Conference has agreed in principle to the proposal of the Soviet Government concerning the ultimate transfer to the Soviet Union of the City of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it as described above subject to expert examination of the actual frontier. The President of the United States and the British Prime Minister have declared that they will support the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement.
Meanwhile, although a significant number of refugees, the problem of the expulsion of Germans from East Prussia, has remained a taboo subject for a long time. The cohabitation of German and Soviet civilians in East Prussia, which lasted for more than three years 1945-1948, was unique in the history of both nations. Two parallel worlds, each existed by itself, but by force of circumstances, forced to interact with each other, and even cooperate. Due to human nature, between these "worlds" quickly began to appear sincere and deep human connection. One of the main results of cohabitation was overcoming of open hostility of the Soviet people to the Germans. East Prussia (later Kaliningrad region) was the only Russian territory, where it happened so fast. The tendency to bring the two nations together are actively constrained by the policy of the authorities, and then was artificially aborted by the deportation of the German population in 1947-1948 years. Until 1951only a small number of Germans left in the region. Most of them were highly skilled professionals needed for the local economy. The last group (193 people), was sent to the GDR in May 1951.
In those postwar times, even in the Red Army were the voices opposing the bias of society towards the German population. One of these voices was a literary critic Lev Kopelev. When the German-Soviet War broke out in June 1941, he volunteered for the Red Army and used his knowledge of German to serve as a propaganda officer and an interpreter. He entered an East Prussia with the Red Army through the East Prussian Offensive. He sharply criticized the atrocities against the German civilian population. He was arrested in 1945 and sentenced to a ten-year term in the Gulag for fostering bourgeois humanism and for "compassion towards the enemy". Released in 1954, in 1956 he was rehabilitated. The present and future generations should erase the historical mistakes. We all, Russian and Germans paid in full for our mistakes. We're saying to Germans and Prussian families: "Welcome back to Konigsberg". It is a long way for the returning of Germans, but the first steps are taken.


  1. For Prussia's Freedom, the history must be known:

  2. Do not see the connection of Vatican and the expulsion of German population.

  3. A Remarkable article! Congratulations! Best wishes!



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