By Edmund Lorenz
Translation from Polish by Piotr Bein
Dateline: 25th October 2004
INTRODUCTION The present “push to the east” by the German State is based partly on the cleverly constructed “freedom of movement” of European citizenship and free capital movement and partly on the claim that millions of Germans were “unjustly” expelled after the war from parts of Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Prussia and that they should now return. This contrasts with the German Government’s collaboration in the 1990s with Kosovo Albanians, Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims to ethnically cleanse one million Serbs from their historic homelands. Needless to say a country which was responsible for mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Poles, Czechs, Serbs, gypsies, Russians and millions of Jews during the Second World War is hardly in a position to claim victimhood!
We at Freenations are pleased to publish this translation by Piotr Bein of an article by Edmund Lorenz about the ethnic cleansing of Lorenz’s family by the Nazis. It is one of the characteristics of the most evil political and religious aggressors that they are expert at portraying themselves as “victims”. Hitler carefully planned and manipulated some Polish forces into moving against his troops so that he could claim “Polish aggression” as the reason for an invasion of Poland in 1939! Similarly he claimed that Germans were “victims” in Czechoslovakia thus justifying the invasion of that country. It was the Nuremberg Trials after the war which established in international law that purported attacks on minorities within another country could not be a just cause for war (one of the many reasons why the recent Yugoslav war was illegal).
Lorenz also mentions the lack of historic official knowledge of the ethnic cleansing that happened during the war. This is reminiscent of the marginalising of the work of the Serb Museum of the Victims of Genocide (under the directorship of Professor Milan Bulajic who now works alone) in the last few years – see www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2004-09-23.html When such crimes are not well documented and do not remain in political discourse the chances of their repetition are great.
Here is Edmund Lorenz recollections of the ethnic cleansing of his family from Western Poland by the Nazis. He describes the history of such cleansings and the highly controversial nature of German historic claims to parts of Poland. The translator’s note is also of great interest as regards the migrations of peoples in Central and Eastern Europe.
Edmund Lorenz:
I bought a copy of “Atlas geograficzny” [Geographic Atlas] for secondary schools (publisher Demart, 2001). On page 17, I found interesting maps of deportation of Poles in 1939-1949. They upset me, as I did not find any mention of deportations of Poles by Germans in 1939 from the Poznan voivodship and neighbouring region. It was then that my large family of seven was deported from Sroda Wielkopolska to Gubernia Generalna.1 My younger sister was 3 years old at the time and did not remember much, but I was 7 and will never forget those dramatic events until I die.
On a December afternoon before Christmas, I remember distinctly, three armed Germans interrupted our family dinner, ordering us to leave the house within 20 minutes. My parents spoke German. My sister and I broke into tears at once, while Mom started to dress us up promptly. Dad tried to „negotiate” some more time to get out because of children. He partially succeeded as the time was extended a bit.
In the last moment, parents managed to take one quilt from a bed, and wrapped it in a sheet. But Mom had to leave the house undressed, without a head cover. There was no time to go back to dress herself, for in the meantime other Germans in the party managed to seal all the rooms.
A designated, large gym in a school, guarded by soldiers, was a staging point for all expelled. Once the gym filled up after a few days, we were all transported to the train station. A long train of cattle cars was waiting for us. Our car, locked from the outside and guarded and escorted by soldiers during the train journey, was tightly packed with people like ourselves. By coincidence, our train stopped parallel to a similar one at a station – expellees in cattle cars. In little windows we could see sad faces. To a question whom and from where they were, they responded: from Strzelno and Mogilna.
My father used to be a Wielkopolska insurgent2 and perhaps for this reason we were expelled, that will say, sentenced to loss of lifetime possessions. I heard from my now deceased parents that Germans had planned future transportations to be more efficient, as they were preparing a transition camp near the city of Lodz3 where families were to be separated. I have not been able to obtain any information about it to date. Our December expulsion started a five-year ordeal that was very difficult to survive, for the whole family.
Battles were still raging in the Western territories [of the future Poland], while we returned home, counting on recovering at least part of our livestock and property left behind. We were deeply, painfully disappointed again, unfortunately. Everything was razed to the ground. The orchard was uprooted, the well filled up, buildings taken apart, even the foundations were dug out and land was ploughed over. It is difficult to describe; it must be experienced to be understood. Again, the whole family was left without a roof over our heads and means to live. We had no choice but to leave for Ziemie Odzyskane4 at the earliest opportunity.
At the new place, in the summer of 1945, I witnessed the expulsion of the remaining few Germans who did not flee the advancing front. Others may not, but we certainly can compare. And we must never put an equality sign between the German versus the Polish expulsions. In contrast to Poles, the Germans received a substantially earlier notice about when and where they would gather. They had time to suitably prepare for the transport. At the staging point, I saw their large baggage, not only hand-carried baggage, but also on carts. Today, when world-wide broadcasts are being made about the right of German expellees to compensation and that they deserve monuments, lest future generations will forget their “sufferings”, I dare ask: where is the basic historical justice? Who caused this tragedy? Who was the instigator of all these misfortunes?
If our historians continue to be as impoverished and inept as they are, then the other side will take advantage of it and turn it against us. I would not be surprised at all, if future generations were told that the criminals are victims and victims are the criminals deserving punishment. The atlas I have is a classical proof of that.
Why is it that in our Poland, after almost 65 years have passed since the expulsions, I still can’t find any books, not even short papers by our historians, on the subject? What is more, I wrote to the regional branch of the national archives in Poznan and to a local commission for investigations of crimes against the Polish nation. Both institutions replied: “No archival material exists concerning expulsions from Sroda Wielkopolska.”
The answer speaks for itself. No comment is necessary.
Translator’s notes:
The author’s last name is German (as is the translator’s), a common occurrence in Poland. Polish kings invited German and other Western craftsmen, merchants, and other skilled and educated professions to advance the development of Polish society. The age of industrialization brought a further wave of German addition to the Polish ethnic mosaic, that included Jews, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Muslim Tatars, and a few other minorities.
In turn, Slav names are widespread in Germany. Before year 1000 A.D, Slavs resided as far West as the Elbe River (Hamburg). German blood is actually a Slav-Germanic-Celtic mix. Ironically, Hitler’s Aryan super-race bears Slav characteristics: blond hair and blue eyes. Many German beauties have Slav genes, as do many models and beautiful actresses in the West. Many single Germans make a point of marrying a beautiful Slav woman. Polish and Slav place names, including “Berlin”, are found all over the present territory of Germany. The remnants of the Slavic people from Saxony, Wends, are struggling for survival in the region between Chosebuz (Cottbus) and Budysin (Bautzen) south of Leipzig.
1 General Gouvernement, GG, an entity created by Hitler on part of Polish pre-war territory that was not annexed into the Third Reich. Including parts of Ukraine. Source of labour and resources for the German war machine, supplier of food. In GG, the Nazis embarked on a systematic plan of the biological removal of Poles and other Slavs through terror, exterminations and hunger, and ethnic cleansing to make room for German colonisation (see, for example, http://www.freenations.freeuk.com/voices-sprync.html). The Nazis built in GG the biggest ghettos and death camps, but met with Europe’s strongest guerrilla resistance in the Polish part of GG.
2 An uprising against Prussian (German) occupation of the ancient Polish region of Wielkopolska in 1918-1919. Previous uprisings in the same area took place in 1794, 1806, and 1848.
3 Now Poland’s second largest city.
4 Lands gained by Poland, following WW II. By the post-war treaties of the Allies, in which Poland had little say, Poland lost all its Eastern lands to the USSR, a total of a third of Poland’s pre-war territory. Poles were relocated from the territories appropriated by the USSR, while Germans were moved out of the territories made available to Polish settlement after WW II. In this grand scheme of socio-engineering “exchange”, Poland’s borders were moved onto historically Polish lands to the Odra-Nysa (Oder Neisse) rivers in the West. These “new” lands have been historically Polish, but Germanic aggression successively occupied, annexed and Germanized them.
