A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944 - 1950
This book touches on a very sensitive subject and one that has been hidden from view. De Zayas takes on a very tough assignment, one that is highly sensitive: how the Germans living in eastern Europe were driven out from their homeland as a result of political negotiating and juggling during WWII. It is a book that should have been written already many years ago. My father, originally from East Prussia, gave this book to me to show me what our family suffered during the years of the WWII and afterwards. Both of my parents were born in Germany. I am a first generation German-American, a native of Wisconsin. This is a book I highly recommend for several reasons. First it teaches us that all ethnic groups during times of war are ugly and hateful to each other. There is no society/culture in the world that is superior over another. Second, history is important to study so that we learn from it and do not make the same mistakes again. Sadly history seems to repeat itself. Third, this is an important lesson about ethnic cleansing; western society just seems to take it for granted that certain ethinc groups can be discrimminated against no matter what. Case in point here is that it has come to be 'accepted', since WWII, that all German people are suposed to be discrimminated against for ' eternity', even those Germans like myself who are innocent and had no part in the Jewish Holocaust. During the 1960's when I was a young child growing up in the U.S.A. I remember the terrible discrimmination against me by others in my community because I was German. I was an innocent child who had to suffer for something I never did. My experiences resulted from events that happened in the 1940's, years before I was even born! --Karin Susan Fester This book tells the tale of millions of ethnic Germans who were murdered, deported or otherwise ethnically cleansed from areas in eastern Europe towards the end of World War II and in the immediate years following the Third Reich's final defeat. This story has rarely been touched upon in books until now. The author recounts many first hand narratives of survivors of the violence that was doled out to anyone of German ancestry who found themselves in areas conquered by the Soviet army plus lists evidence gathered by the German Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. Among the horrors the reader will encounter is the savagery dealt out to citizens of the German town of Nemmersdorf which included crucifictions of women and the mass murder of children. The reader will march along ethnic Germans being forced from their homes in eastern Europe and will witness the wholesale murders that befell many. De Zayas proves that victims know no nationality. I recommend this book for all interested in World War II and the immediate aftermath. --Bobby Dillard Alfred-Maurice De Zayas' book recounts the events that unfolded during the first few-months of 1945 in Germany's historic eastern provinces. This tragedy, that was the extermination of an 800-year old civilization in Eastern Europe, is regrettably an event that still remains an unknown, even in modern western intellectual circles. De Zayas' book decribes the harrowing tale that the 13 million eastern Germans faced: the largest ethnic-cleansing of human beings, the largest maritime evacuation of civilians, and the most horrific naval disasters in history. The book is a monument to the great cruelty and depravity that mankind is capable of, and the little dignity that even moral powers can have for their victims. It is a dedication to the millions that suffered because of their ethnic origin and to the 2.5 million Germans that vanished. Today, the survivors and relatives of these expellees acount for 1/5 of the German population. This book will be intstrumental in understanding the future evolution of Polish-German and Czech-German affairs. A DEFINITE BUY! ----Miguel Rodriguez"De Zayas has uncovered testimony in German and American archives detailing these atrocities, adding a new chapter to the annals of human cruelty. His carefully documented book serves as a reminder that many different peoples have been subjected to ethnic cleansing."--Publishers Weekly "DeZayas's moving plea is that one's home should be a human right. As frontiers once more shift in Eastern Europe, he could hardly have chosen a better moment to deliver it. --The Times ( London )This is an exceptionally well researched book. This history and review of available facts of an untold part of history placed stories I had heard from German refugees while I was a child growing up in West Germany after the war in a clear perspective. The descriptions of historical facts and review of sequence of events at the end of the war have brought more clarity than ever to the questions many of us children have asked ourselves. We were the generation who was not told the whole truth about the terrible atrocities German civilians suffered because they were declared guilty by nationality and birth. It is a good thing to have the truth spoken, especially so if it is presented with a good foundation of facts and excerpts from archives as in this book. The witness acoounts are terrifying and heartbreaking. There has never been justice or recourse for these victims, many of whom have immigrated to Canada and the U.S. and quietly integrated themselves into their newly adopted countries' cultures. It also explains the necessity of crisis centres in the big cities of West Germany designed to assist survivors plagued by the images and traumatic memories they were trying so hard to forget. This is a story that has never been told and was well written and presented in this book. Perhaps some day it will be permitted to be presented to a broader audience...although personally, I won't hold my breath: A nation declared guilty by race and birth, women, children, the innocent, resistance fighters, and ordinary soldiers doing their job of defending as ordered by their country without committing any crimes alike, Germans have been the perfect image for everything dark and evil in the past and present. That projected image is simply too convenient to give up. Revenge is the right word for what happened to the German survivors of World War II in the East, and Ethnic Cleansing is the accurate term. This has recently been recognized by the United Nations,and Germany has finally been in a position to honour the millions who died in that ethnic cleansing after 1945. --By Annette Lorenz