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GENOCIDE of the Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-1948 "The right not to be expelled
from one's homeland is a fundamental right ... I
submit that if in the years following the Second
World War the States had reflected more on the
implications of the enforced flight and expulsion
of the Germans, today's demographic catastrophes,
particularly those referred to as 'ethnic
cleansing,' would, perhaps, not have occurred to
the same extent ... There is no doubt that during
the Nazi occupation the peoples of Central and
Eastern Europe suffered enormous injustices that
cannot be forgotten. Accordingly they had a
legitimate claim for reparation. However,
legitimate claims ought not to be enforced through
collective punishment on the basis of general
discrimination and without a determination of
personal guilt."[1] These words of the first
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
José Ayala Lasso (Ecuador), were spoken at
the Paulskirche in Frankfurt/Main on 28. May 1995
on the occasion of the solemn ceremony to remember
50 years since the expulsion of 15 million Germans
from Eastern and Central Europe, including the
Danube Swabians of Yugoslavia. There is no question that in
international law mass expulsions are doubly
illegal - giving rise to State responsibility and
to personal criminal liability. The expulsions by
Germany's national socialist government of one
million Poles from the Warthegau 1939/40 and of the
105,000 Frenchmen from Alsace 1940 were listed in
the Nürnberg indictment as "war crimes" and
"crimes against humanity." The Nürnberg
judgment held several Nazi leaders guilty of having
committed these crimes. It is an anomaly that in
spite of this clear condemnation of mass
expulsions, the Allies themselves carried out even
greater expulsions in the last few months of the
Second World War and in the years that followed.
Article XIII of the Potsdam Protocol attempts to
throw a mantle of legality over the expulsions
carried out by Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.
Nothing is said about the expulsions from other
countries like Yugoslavia and Romania. However, the
victorious Allies at Potsdam were not above
international law and thus could not legalize
criminal acts by common agreement. There is no
doubt that the mass expulsion of Germans from their
homelands in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, East
Brandenburg, Sudetenland, Hungary, Romania and
Yugoslavia constituted "war crimes," to the extent
that they occurred during wartime, and "crimes
against humanity" whether committed during war or
in peacetime. Moreover, the slave labor
imposed on persons of German ethnic origin as
"reparations in kind," which was agreed by
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta
Conference, [2] also constituted a
particularly heinous crime, which led to hundreds
of thousands of deaths during the deportation to
slave labor, during the years of hard work with
little food, and as sequel of this inhuman and
degrading treatment. American and British
historians have not given the flight and expulsion
of fifteen million Germans, in the process of which
more than two million perished, the attention that
this enormously important and tragic phenomenon
deserves. Nor has the American and British press
fulfilled its responsibility to inform the general
public about these events. On the contrary, the
issue has been largely ignored and subject to
taboos, even to this day. Only the occurrence of
the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia
during the last decade of the 20th century
[3] allowed obvious parallels to be drawn,
and some discussion on the subject of the Germans
as victims has finally ensued. Much more is
necessary. Whereas some studies about
the expulsion of the Germans by Poland and the
former Czechoslovakia have been published, there is
relatively little information available concerning
the fate of the Germans from the former Yugoslavia.
That is why the publication of this book must be
welcomed, and its dissemination among the press and
in the schools should follow. Testimonies of
survivors of this "ethnic cleansing" of Germans
should be recorded in video and on paper for future
generations. Survivors of this awful crime against
humanity should also speak to students in high
schools and universities. Let us remember the words of
the noted British publisher and human rights
activist, Victor Gollancz, one of the first
courageous voices to recognize the moral
implications and thus condemn the mass expulsion
and spoliation of the Germans: "If the conscience of men
ever again becomes sensitive, these expulsions will
be remembered to the undying shame of all who
committed or connived at them ... The Germans were
expelled, not just with an absence of over-nice
consideration, but with the very maximum of
brutality."[4] But in order that the
conscience of mankind become sensitive, it is
necessary to have full information, open discussion
without taboos - i.e. freedom of expression. Let us
hope that this book will help us understand that
all victims of "ethnic cleansing" are deserving of
our attention and of our compassion. Alfred M. de
Zayas, J.D. (Harvard), Ph. D.
(Göttingen) Senior Fellow, International Human
Rights Law Institute, Chicago Member, International
P.E.N. Club Reference
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