contributing content and support for expelled germans

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Visitors may freely submit their own articles, photos, research, information, and perspectives to be added to any article. Please include your name and source material. You may even submit the content or articles of another author or website, so long as you give full credit to that source and author. We may edit your submissions in spelling, images used, or portions that are deemed illogical or insufficiently substantiated with evidence. Below are some criteria for articles or content submissions to be accepted:

1) the article or content must be entirely your work. If it is not your work, you must give full citation to the source, or get permission from the author or website first.
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How to contributing your support for the tragedy of expelled Germans

Despite suffering one of the worst human rights tragedies of the 20th century, the story of the 15-18,000,000 displaced German expellees is almost completely unknown. So too, the involved governments of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia (the former Yugoslavia), Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom have made absolutely no effort to commemorate this tragedy. The human rights-conscious European Union has consistently declined to discuss the issue. Germany has refused to demand restitution or commemoration of the German expellees by Poland or the Czech Republic because it would understandably damage auspicious political relations. Since over 2,000,000 German civilians died out of starvation and even murders, the disaster of the German expellees can arguably be considered ethnicity-based genocide comparable to the crimes against the Jews, Ingush, Chechens, and Tatars during the same timeframe. With the new atmosphere of social justice and human rights instated by the European Union, now is the time to honour the suffering of one of the 20th century's largest refugee communities.

Because of the severity of this tragedy and its completely unknown status, it is crucial for as many researchers and individuals -- in Germany, Austria, and abroad -- to raise awareness of these flagrant human rights crimes. The Institute for Commemoration of Expelled Germans encourages its visitors and contributors to spread information about the fate of the German expellees to newspapers, online news sources, scholarly journals, essays, university classroom dialogues, forums, websites, human rights conventions and symposia, and even to politicians. Any effort can make a difference, even writing an article for an online newspaper that "on this day in 1945" the sorrow of innocent German civilians began, etc.

It is crucial to proliferate this awareness of the race-based forced labor, expulsion, discrimination, and even in some cases ethnic cleansing and murders of German civilians very meticulously. The suffering of German civilians has been ignored due to many factors: 1) the legacy of undeniable German Nazi crimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, etc.; 2) the false perception of apologetically defending a German irredentist claim to these regions (like Prussia via Lebensraum) and; 3) the longstanding emphasis by the West and the Jewish community on the Germans as the perpetrators of genocide against Jews and other ethnic groups rather than being victims of genocide as well. It is important that anyone working to commemorate the story of the German expellees strongly rejects these single-sided far-right, neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denying revisionist, or Lebensraum tendencies. The crimes of the Third Reich cannot be denied.

However, these were not 15-18,000,000 soldiers of anti-Jewish SS killing squads who were expelled from their homes. They were civilian settlers who in many cases had been an integral part of the region for over 500 years. These civilian cultures and communities were completely vanquished solely because of their race, language, and culture. It is this tragedy -- arguably a genocide -- that must be commemorated.

Please spread links to the Institute and raise awareness and commemoration of the story of the German expellees to forums, websites, newspapers, politicians, and in human rights symposia as vociferously as possible.