tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:FFA0BD4B-0291-464A-85F3-7603AFCBB9BBODF History in English2013-05-26T15:44:53ZOstdeutsches Diskussionsforumwebmaster@ostdeutsches-forum.netFeedCAPhttp://www.odfinfo.de/images/ODF.icoWelcome to the English-speaking section of the East German Discussion Forum! / ODF - Die ostpreußische Internet-Gemeinde * Infos und Diskussionen über Politik, Geschichte, Reisen und Kultur * Spezialgebiet: Ostpreußen (Rußland, Polen, Baltikum)World War II - Lost and forgotten: German 'wolf children' in Lithuania.tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:A38BFD2E-E7C0-4463-8FAD-D76D1C29B7152013-05-26T15:41:01Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/en/History/Images/Wolfskinder-1.jpg" title="Wolf children" alt="" />
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The Second World War ended in May 1945 - but not for the German "Wolfskinder," or "wolf children." On their own, they made their way from East Prussia to Lithuania, a decision they'll never forget. <br /><br />
When Alfreda Pipiraite turned 18, she believed she'd made it. "But no, they said to me, 'You German pig! You Hitlerist! Fascist!' And so on," she told DW. "It was particularly painful whenever a member of my family called me that."<br /><br />
After all, Alfreda was really Luise, a German born in 1940 in the town of Schwesternhof in East Prussia, today in the Russian region of Kaliningrad. At the age of four she was adopted by a Lithuanian family as a so-called "Wolfskind," or wolf child. During the chaotic final stages of the war, more than 5,000 children, according to historian Roth Leiserowitz, fled from East Prussia to Lithuania, looking for food as well as peace.
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Such children were robbed by the Second World War of practically everything: their parents, their home, their language. It also robbed them of their past and what could have become of them.<br /><br />
The children, most of whom are believed to have been between four to twelve years old, stumbled away through forests, alone or in groups, some of them without shoes. Their bellies were bloated, their arms no more than twigs, their teeth beginning to rot. Sometimes they ate grass, at other times frogs - and often, simply nothing.<br />...Wartime Expulsions Left Trail of Torture, Rape: Interviewtag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:74EF151F-1D25-414E-9824-E1D7DC3DEF5C2012-10-18T07:19:31ZIt was ethnic cleansing on a scale never seen before. As many as 14 million people, mainly women and children, were forcibly removed from their homes and deported to a country devastated and demoralized by war. <br /><br />
More than 500,000 Germans died in the post-World War II expulsions from eastern Europe. Yet the world had largely forgotten this manmade tragedy until the Irish historian R. M. Douglas (the R. stands for Ray), a professor at Colgate University in New York, published “Orderly and Humane.” <br /><br />
Nearly 70 years after the event, it is the first comprehensive academic study of the episode and has been welcomed in Germany, where discussion of the expulsions is still a political hot potato in relations with its eastern neighbors. <br /><br />
“I tried for a very long time, as long as I possibly could, not to write this book,” Douglas said in an interview in Berlin, where he was promoting the German translation. “I knew what a lot of work it was, and how sensitive it was.” <br /><br />
The 10 years of writing and research that followed reveal the expulsions were anything but “orderly and humane” -- the words used by the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union in the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, which ordered this mass exodus. <br />...The European Atrocity You Never Heard About. By R. M. Douglastag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:3FB06F55-EBDF-426A-81C6-D96C7EEED4032012-06-12T20:21:35Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/en/History/Images/The-European-Atrocity-1.jpg" title="In the largest episode of forced migration in history, millions of German-speaking civilians were ..." alt="" />
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The screams that rang throughout the darkened cattle car crammed with deportees, as it jolted across the icy Polish countryside five nights before Christmas, were Dr. Loch's only means of locating his patient. The doctor, formerly chief medical officer of a large urban hospital, now found himself clambering over piles of baggage, fellow passengers, and buckets used as toilets, only to find his path blocked by an old woman who ignored his request to move aside. On closer examination, he discovered that she had frozen to death.<br /><br />
Finally he located the source of the screams, a pregnant woman who had gone into premature labor and was hemorrhaging profusely. When he attempted to move her from where she lay into a more comfortable position, he found that "she was frozen to the floor with her own blood." Other than temporarily stanching the bleeding, Loch was unable to do anything to help her, and he never learned whether she had lived or died. When the train made its first stop, after more than four days in transit, 16 frost-covered corpses were pulled from the wagons before the remaining deportees were put back on board to continue their journey. A further 42 passengers would later succumb to the effects of their ordeal, among them Loch's wife.<br />...The Forgotten Genocide - The Story of the Ethnic Germans. A documentary by Ann Morrisontag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:4F1508B0-20C6-48DE-9051-8591DAFFFF9C2011-12-29T12:14:52ZMemories of a painful secret held for over fifty years are now finally being brought to light. THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE: The Expulsion after WWII, is an in-depth, feature length documentary that examines the sufferings put upon Ethnic Germans living behind the Iron Curtain. Through interviews with survivors, the memory of this sad period in human history is preserved, and hopefully provides peace to the almost 15 million souls lost.<br /><br />
First-hand accounts are given by unbelievably strong, determinedly positive people as they speak of their experiences. They talk about their lives before the genocide, the armies invading their homes and killing and kidnapping their family, their neighbors, themselves. They described the impossible conditions of their imprisonment-the cold, the starvation, the forced labor, the brutality, and the death. All unexplained, all unjustified. <br /><br />
Though these stories are hard to hear, they should not remain unspoken, and nobody could tell them better than the ones who lived through it. While working on the project, Ann was often met with surprise or confusion when she explained the nature of it, she also found people -in growing amounts- who knew about the tragedy that took place and wanted others to know as well. Ann met with people from all over the country, began communicating with people internationally, and the project grew into the documentary DVD. <br /><br />
The DVD includes an historical overview and commentary by several noted historians. <br />
...History: The Assault on East Prussia (complete documentary)tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:FCF34088-1F79-4F77-B572-5485348544192011-02-10T16:23:23ZVideo-documentary<br />
time: 49.30 minutes<br />
...History: Dresden on Fire and resurrection of the Frauenkirchetag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:726799DB-5711-48E9-AD89-61F940713AC52011-02-13T16:20:21ZPowerPoint-Presentation<br />
time: 18.00 minutes<br />
...History: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:BE6E8642-D9DA-4B7F-AFC2-7364FEC16B012006-08-14T16:18:18ZIn the aftermath of World War II, Prussia--a centuries-old state pivotal to Europe's development--ceased to exist. In their eagerness to erase all traces of the Third Reich from the earth, the Allies believed that Prussia, the very embodiment of German militarism, had to be abolished. <br /><br />
But as Christopher Clark reveals in this pioneering history, Prussia's legacy is far more complex. Though now a fading memory in Europe's heartland, the true story of Prussia offers a remarkable glimpse into the dynamic rise of modern Europe. <br />...History: Anglo-American Responsibility for the Expulsion of the Germans, 1944-48tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:719E761D-6F6C-4863-8A89-7F98ABB9F64B2000-02-14T16:15:48ZALFRED DE ZAYAS<br />
merican and British historians have not given the enforced flight and expulsion of fifteen million Germans and the end of World War II the attention that this important and tragic
phenomenon deserves. In itself this deliberate avoidance of a legitimate field of historical research and publication merits our attention today, considering that the flight and expulsion of the Germans constitutes the largest mass transfer of population in history, a veritable demographic revolution in central Europe, and
a form of genocide in the course of which more than two million human beings perished.<br />
...History: How three million Germans died after VE Daytag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:7E2ABB3E-6812-426E-8EB6-67A87782ECED2007-04-14T16:13:35ZNigel Jones reviews After the Reich:
From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift by Giles MacDonogh<br /><br />
Giles MacDonogh is a bon viveur and a historian of wine and gastronomy, but in this book, pursuing his other consuming interest - German history - he serves a dish to turn the strongest of stomachs. It makes particularly uncomfortable reading for those who compare the disastrous occupation of Iraq unfavourably to the post-war settlement of Germany and Austria.<br /><br />
MacDonogh argues that the months that followed May 1945 brought no peace to the shattered skeleton of Hitler's Reich, but suffering even worse than the destruction wrought by the war. After the atrocities that the Nazis had visited on Europe, some degree of justified vengeance by their victims was inevitable, but the appalling bestialities that MacDonogh documents so soberly went far beyond that. The first 200 pages of his brave book are an almost unbearable chronicle of human suffering.<br />...History: Polish-speaking Germans and the Ethnic Cleansing of Germany East of Oder-Neissetag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:C6A8B341-B970-4CCB-BD94-A36AB83275992000-02-14T16:09:10ZPDF-File 3.758 KBHistory: Raped by Red Army soldiers, they talk for the first timetag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:6B3B638D-522A-4CB2-9317-19B8E96790392009-04-10T16:07:03ZThe women were in their 20s when they were raped by Red Army soldiers invading Germany at the end of World War II. Sixty years later, close to two million women are talking about their ordeal for the very first time. <br /><br />
"The Americans retreated from the East German town of Halle and the Russians marched in. When that happened my female friends all fled, but I couldn’t run because my leg was injured. So the Russians attacked me. And they raped me."<br /><br />
It was the end of July 1945, when 19-year-old Ruth Schumacher was raped by four Russian soldiers.<br />...History: 'They raped every German female from eight to 80'tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:5745280F-FEE1-4ED4-93C9-F21631549D662002-02-14T16:04:49ZAntony Beevor, author of the acclaimed new book about the fall of Berlin, on a massive war crime committed by the victorious Red Army.<br /><br />
"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons' with German women," wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. "Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis." <br /><br />
The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour. <br />...History: Charter of the German Expelleestag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:931B7D7F-E2D4-47E3-8FC7-D8E7776B19A31950-08-14T16:01:33ZConscious of their responsibility before God and men, conscious of their affiliation to the Western Christian community, conscious of their German origin, and realizing the common task of all nations of Europe, the elected representatives of millions of expellees, after careful deliberation and after having searched their conscience, have resolved to make public a so-lemn declaration to the German people and to the entire world, defining both the duties and the rights which the German expellees consider their basic law and an indispensable pre-condition for the establishment of a free and united Europe.<br />...