tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:7D592D7E-EF68-468A-95CA-AAC253713D85ODF News in English2013-05-26T20:20:05ZOstdeutsches Diskussionsforumwebmaster@ostdeutsches-forum.netFeedCAPhttp://www.ostdeutsches-forum.net/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)EP criticises Czech opt-out from Lisbon Treatytag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:C1F8D27E-D2CB-4D3C-B41F-DD8A89DA7C2B2013-05-26T15:45:13Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/en/news/2009/Images/Lisbon-Treaty-2.jpg" title="Vaclav Klaus" alt="" />
<br />
Strasbourg, May 22 (CTK) - Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus's effort to push through an opt-out from the Lisbon Treaty was unfortunate and this is why the European Parliament's negative stance on it is logical, Czech MEP Zuzana Brzobohata (Social Democrats, CSSD) said yesterday.<br /><br />
Brzobohata, who represented the European Social Democrats in a debate in the EP's constitutional committee, has opposed the opt-out since the beginning.<br /><br />
The European Parliament (EP) yesterday recommended that the EU member states not deal with the opt-out from the Lisbon Treaty connected with the application of the EU Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which Klaus as the then head of state pushed through in 2009.<br />...Russian day care on graveyard sparks outrage.tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:6FC6FA45-906D-428A-9C17-630A9BD951232013-02-10T10:52:00Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/en/news/2013/Images/Friedhof.jpg" title="" alt="" />
<br />
The decision to build a new kindergarten atop an old German cemetery in what was once East Prussia has sparked outrage, forcing Russian authorities to exhume and rebury 150 bodies before work can continue. <br /><br />
Barely an hour after digging into the ground in Baltijsk, a small coastal town near Kaliningrad, workers were faced with bones of German residents past, buried when the town was called Pillau. <br /><br />
Historians caught wind of the discovery and the town administration found itself in the firing line of local outrage. “The graveyard is clearly marked on up-to-date maps,” Valery Limonov, a history researcher.<br /><br />
How building permission was granted is a mystery to Limonov, who said that there should have been a geological survey prior to giving construction the go-ahead. The town council said that they had no idea though. <br /><br />
“From the outside there was nothing to see, the area has been used as parkland for decades,” said the council in a statement. It added that in no way did they want to hurt the feelings of the former inhabitants of Pillau.<br />...Czech election candidate questions post-war expulsion of Germans.tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:31E5DE4E-5F91-482E-9665-2F11DD6D91112013-01-22T20:59:38Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/en/news/2013/Images/Karel-Schwarzenberg.jpg" title="Schwarzenberg" alt="" />
<br />
A candidate in the Czech presidential elections has found himself the target of fierce criticism after he stirred up a historical storm by questioning the morality of the post-war expulsion of millions of Germans. <br /><br />
Touching on one of the most sensitive subjects in Czech history Karel Schwarzenberg challenged the legitimacy of the Benes Decrees. Named after Edvard Benes, the first post-war president of Czechoslovakia, the decrees led to the forced deportation of some three million of ethnic Germans and Austrians from Czech lands in an effort to cleanse the country of a people regarded as a fifth column and responsible for the Czech's wartime suffering. <br /><br />
"What we committed in 1945 would today be considered a grave violation of human rights and the Czechoslovak government, along with President Benes, would have found themselves in The Hague," said Mr Schwarzenberg. <br />...Nationalism - Stoking anti-German sentiment in Polandtag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:73259080-18CE-41C2-9157-86A752A051F52012-12-26T14:49:30Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/aktuelles/2012/Images/Wahlkampf-1.jpg" title="" alt="" />
<br />
Polish opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski is playing with the primal fears and cultural resentment of his countrymen toward Germans and Russians for his own political gain - and not without success. <br /><br />
It was just another one of the countless events organized by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the nationalist-conservative opposition Law and Justice Party (PiS). For weeks, Kaczynski has been touring the countryside. This time, he was in Opole, in Silesia, in southwestern Poland.<br /><br />
"I am glad you are here with us - in the region where the constant incidents and provocations by the German minority and Upper Silesia Autonomy Movement have made peaceful life impossible," said Slawomir Klosowski, chairman of the local PiS chapter, during his welcoming address to the assembled guests.<br /><br />
These were words Kaczynski likes to hear. "Our relationship to the German minority in Poland is connected to our relations with Germany," he said during his speech. "If the PiS comes to power, the German minority in Poland will lose its privileges."<br /><br />
The Germans, he went on to say, should have as many rights as the Poles in Germany; this "asymmetry" needs to stop.<br /><br />
What the former Polish prime minister means by a special privilege is the constitutionally guaranteed exemption of ethnic minority political parties from the 5 percent hurdle for representation in the Polish parliament, the Sejm. Currently, as the only minority represented in the Sejm, the ethnic Germans have one seat, but that doesn't matter, said Kaczynski, who called the rule superfluous and "absurd" and a piece of legislation that needs to be abolished.<br />...Remembering Europe's touchy issue of expulsiontag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:3E2613A4-5589-4CE0-93AE-50EB9E3184A52012-10-18T07:15:56Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/en/news/2012/Images/Remembering-1.jpg" title="" alt="" />
<br />
Over centuries, millions of Europeans have been expelled for ethnic and political reasons, including Germans after World War II. A plan is finally on the table that might just honor the victims - and not Nazi crimes. <br /><br />
The idea for a documentation center where the fate of displaced people is told first came up 13 years ago. It was the end of the 1990s when Erika Steinbach, a conservative politician and president of the League of Expellees - an advocate group for Germans and their descendents who were expelled from eastern Europe after World War II, proposed her plans for a Center Against Expulsions. And her plan met with firm resistance.<br /><br />
Voices both in Germany and neighboring countries quickly pointed out that such an institution could present a lopsided view of history. In Poland, Steinbach was accused of labeling Germans as the victims in the aftermath of World War II, without adequately emphasizing that the fate of the ethnic Germans living in eastern Europe after the war was a consequence of the heinous crimes the Nazis had committed in Europe.<br /><br />
For years, Poland has been a major opponent of the plan to build a Center Against Expulsions in Germany and the political elite in Poland has lobbied at the highest political level to prevent Steinbach from implementing her initiative.<br /><br />
Steinbach's plan was at a stand still until 2008, when the German government decided to found its own organization tasked with creating a permanent exhibition on expulsion. To smooth over ties to Poland, Steinbach was left out of the picture entirely. <br /><br />
The protests ceased, in both Poland and Germany. Poland trusted the German government to present a balanced historical view, according to official statements from Warsaw.<br />...Leader of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia urges action against Benes decreestag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:C2126CBB-DE25-41D7-9E17-62588DB902672012-10-04T17:41:29Z<img src="http://www.odfinfo.de/aktuelles/2012/Images/Siedlungsgebiete-der-Sudetendeutschen-k.jpg" title="" alt="" />
<br />
Failure to revoke the part of the Benes decrees, which impose collective guilt to ethnic Hungarians and Germans in Slovakia is a disgrace to Europe, Jozsef Berenyi, leader of the Party of the Hungarian Community (MKP), told a Budapest conference on Saturday.<br /><br />
Berenyi welcomed the fact that the issue of invalidating these “gravely amoral, discriminative rules of law” had been raised in European Parliament’s Petitions Committee. This is all the more important as Slovakia and Hungary would never be able to resolve the issue through bilateral negotiations, he said.<br /><br />
Although the EU “verbally declared that an entire nation cannot be considered guilty”, the related legislation is still in force in Slovakia, Berenyi said.<br /><br />
Bela Bugar, leader of the inter-ethnic Most-Hid party, said that demand for revoking some of the Benes decrees did not challenge the legal continuity of the Slovak state. He said that not even the ethnic Hungarian community demands that all Benes decrees be declared nul and void.<br />...History: The European Atrocity You Never Heard About. By R. M. Douglastag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:3F811D01-22D8-4DB4-BDDF-00853B597DC52012-06-16T11:04:45Z<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 ..." alt="" />
<br />
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 />...German minority in Poland to get own radio station?tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:82017707-F74D-445D-93C0-3BF5BE6004D62011-10-28T12:54:38ZThe German minority in the Opole [Oppeln] region, southern Poland, is planning to set up a regional radio station which would go on air in 2012.<br /><br />
The move comes off the back of an announcement by Parliament’s sole German minority MP, Ryszard Galla, who said that documents for the radio’s concession to broadcast are to be filed by the end of November.<br /><br />
The station would be based in Opole [Oppeln], and would broadcast throughout the province as well as the western fragments of the Silesian province, including Gliwice [Gleiwitz], as well as eastern portions of the south-western Lower Silesian [Upper Silesia / Oberschlesien] province.<br /><br />
However, the German minority station would not just broadcast programmes in the language. “Due to concessionary stipulations, we have to broadcast 30 percent of our programming in Polish,” Galla told MPs, adding that the station’s mission will be to provide news and educational programmes.<br />...German Minority Youth Association HQ vandalisedtag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:E27980C5-2A10-4CA5-BACB-FCA949323D1B2011-10-17T12:52:44ZGraffiti has been daubed on the offices of the Youth Association of the German Minority in Poland and a swastika painted on a car belonging to a member of the organization in Opole [Oppeln], southwestern Poland [Upper Silesia / Oberschlesien]. - The vandalism was reported to local police on Friday afternoon. - Given that the use of Nazi symbols is illegal in Poland, Maciej Milewski, a spokesman for the city's police, said that the painting of the swastika, “will be treated as the propagation of fascism”. - Around 104,000 ethnic Germans live in the Opole region, some 71 percent of Poland's entire German minority.EU ministers approve Klaus’ human rights opt-out billtag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:40BB7922-5E29-46D1-BF11-A8D0BCE8ADD72011-10-11T06:58:05ZEU foreign ministers have given their approval for a Czech bill on an opt-out from the human rights charter in the Lisbon Treaty <br /><br />
The EU’s foreign ministers have given provisional approval for the ratification of an opt-out from the EU Charter of Human Rights called for by Czech President Václav Klaus. If formally accepted, as is expected, the opt-out will be put to the Czech legislature at the same time as the bill on ratification of Croatia’s EU membership. <br /><br />
The Czech opt-out was put forward by Klaus as a condition of his signing the bill of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty passed by the Czech parliament in 2009. His refusal to sign off on the bill before receiving assurances that the Czech Republic would be allowed to vote to on an opt-out from the Charter of Human Rights resulted in the country being the last EU member state to pass the treaty.<br /><br />
The issue will be put to the EU summit on October 23, but the vote by member states’ leaders should be a formality following approval approval by their respective foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday.<br />...Russian lawmakers slam plan to rename Kaliningradtag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:61C629C0-D8C9-409B-AE36-9BDAC9DC1ABC2011-09-21T17:13:52ZRussian State Duma deputies on Tuesday criticized a proposal for a referendum on returning to the city of Kaliningrad its historical name, Konigsberg.<br />
The city is the administrative center of the Kaliningrad Region, Russia's westernmost exclave on the Baltic Sea, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.<br />
Originally named Konigsberg in German, the town was part of Prussia and then of Germany until 1945, but was largely destroyed during World War II. It was occupied by the Soviet Army in 1945 and was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, a high-ranking Soviet official.<br />
Kaliningrad Governor Nikolai Tsukanov was quoted on Monday as saying a referendum could be held on the issue.<br />
"If he did that, he should be fired," said Yelena Afanasyeva, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.<br />
The next step after the renaming could be the desire to separate the region from the Russian Federation, she added.<br />
Communist Vladimir Nikitin criticized the idea as "a well through move to split our society."<br />
He urged the governor to think twice, warning him that such remarks could cost him his political career.Telling the Soviet story - A new film about Nazi-Soviet linkstag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:464EF24B-3500-4794-BAE7-40E16AF989832011-05-08T12:47:05ZBEING burnt in effigy on the streets of Moscow by nationalist hoodlums must count as a kind of Oscar if you are a Latvian filmmaker whose aim is to expose modern Russia's blindness to the criminal history of the Soviet Union. The ire of Young Russia's protest outside the Latvian embassy this week was directed at Edvins Snore, whose film “Soviet Story” is the most powerful antidote yet to the sanitisation of the past. <br /><br />
The film is gripping, audacious and uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of 7m Ukrainians in 1933, it is no mere catalogue of atrocities. The main aim of the film is to show the close connections—philosophical, political and organisational—between the Nazi and Soviet systems.<br />...Havermann: New film broaches taboo topic of post-war expulsionstag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:342098EC-A417-4C7A-BA81-BC2718369C872010-11-27T14:57:46ZThe movie "Habermann" tells the tragic tale of the Germans and Czechs living in the Sudetenland from the day the Nazis marched in until the Germans were expelled after World War II. That history remains a touchy topic.<br /><br />
The expulsion and murder of the so-called "Sudeten" Germans by war-weary Czechs after World War II traumatized the German-Czech relationship. Decades later the two countries are both part of the European Union and share an open border. Yet the fate of the three million Sudeten German expellees has remained a sensitive topic.<br />...Poland Up In Arms Over Erika Steinbach Statementstag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:208F6081-926C-4AB3-AA1D-A4A2B96D7B882010-09-10T12:02:07ZAs the German people address await crucial and numerous decisions from their leaders, the government here seems to drift farther apart still. The latest conflict between officials stems from comments made by Erika Steinbach about Poland’s part in the onset of WWII. An undersecretary of foreign affairs in the Merkel cabinet waded in today condemning Steinback’s comments. At a time when good relations between EU members seems crucial, the EU seems more like a powder keg than a unified continent.<br />...German expellee groups reassert their history as charter turns 60tag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:72B6A90E-6094-47E2-B896-D290349FBB6F2010-08-05T17:36:05ZCritics have questioned the role of ethnic German expellee communities forced to leave their homes after World War II. As the Charter of German Expellees turns 60, the groups have reasserted their presence.<br /><br />
Bundestag President Norbert Lammert spoke out Thursday against the proposal for an official national day of remembrance for German World War II expellees, saying such a day would ultimately not contribute to public awareness on the subject.<br /><br />
Speaking on German public radio on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Charter of German Expellees, Lammert said the German calendar was already full of routine yearly commemorations. He argued that the celebration of significant anniversaries would bring more attention to the cause of ethnic Germans expelled from their homelands in Eastern Europe after the war.<br />
...Germany's strengthened expellees' associationstag:uuid.feedcap.net,2013-05-26:5A059A4F-4534-4C8C-9200-D46F575B228D2010-02-12T21:14:53ZErika Steinbach, president of Germany’s Federation of Expellees (BdV), has said she will not take a seat on the foundation board of the Centre against Expulsions, a museum dedicated to the victims of flight, displacements, forced resettlements and deportations.