Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939-1950

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You could not be signed in. Sign In Forgot password? The evacuation focused on women, the elderly and children — a third of whom were under the age of fifteen. The camps were guarded by Danish military units. According to Danish physician and historian Kirsten Lylloff, these deaths were partially due to denial of medical care by Danish medical staff, as both the Danish Association of Doctors and the Danish Red Cross began refusing medical treatment to German refugees, starting in March By this time, all of Eastern and much of Central Europe was under Soviet occupation.

This included most of the historical German settlement areas , as well as the Soviet occupation zone in eastern Germany. The Allies settled on the terms of occupation , the territorial truncation of Germany , and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from post-war Poland , Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the Allied Occupation Zones in the Potsdam Agreement, [93] [94] drafted during the Potsdam Conference between 17 July and 2 August Article XII of the agreement is concerned with the expulsions and reads:.

The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner. The agreement further called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans for resettlement among American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones comprising post—World War II Germany.

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Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the terms at Potsdam are referred to as "wild" expulsions Wilde Vertreibungen. They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet-occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the first half of In Yugoslavia , the remaining Germans were not expelled; ethnic German villages were turned into internment camps where over 50, perished. In late the Allies requested a temporary halt to the expulsions, due to the refugee problems created by the expulsion of Germans. After Potsdam, a series of expulsions of ethnic Germans occurred throughout the Soviet-controlled Eastern European countries.

Of the many post-war forced migrations, the largest was the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, primarily from the territory of Czechoslovakia which included the historically German-speaking area in the Sudeten mountains along the German-Czech-Polish border Sudetenland , and the territory that became post-war Poland. Poland's post-war borders were moved west to the Oder-Neisse line , deep into former German territory and within 80 kilometres of Berlin.

Polish refugees from the Soviet Union were resettled in the former German territories that were awarded to Poland after the war. During and after the war, 2,, Poles fled or were expelled from the eastern Polish regions that were annexed by the USSR; 1,, of these refugees were resettled in the former German territories. The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was reached at the Potsdam Conference.

According to the West German Schieder commission , there were 4. Between , and , Germans were affected by wild expulsions between May and August Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became East Germany. About , ethnic Germans determined crucial for industry were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia.

In , research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of , to , deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15, and 30, dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported. Violent deaths 5,; Suicides 3,; Deported ; In camps 6,; During the wartime flight ; After wartime flight 1,; Cause undetermined ; Other misc. In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary.

Three percent of the German pre-war population about 20, people had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many had returned. Overall, 60, ethnic Germans had fled. According to the West German Schieder commission report of , in early between 30—35, ethnic German civilians and 30, military POW were arrested and transported from Hungary to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. In some villages, the entire adult population were taken to labour camps in the Donbass.

Data from the Russian archives, which was based on an actual enumeration, put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Hungary at 50, civilians, of whom 31, were deported to the USSR for reparations labour implementing the Order In , official Hungarian figures showed , German speakers in Hungary, including German-speaking Jews, , of whom had declared German nationality. Accordingly, mass expulsions began. About , German-speaking Hungarian citizens were stripped of their citizenship and possessions, and expelled to the Western zones of Germany. Other research indicates that, between and , , were expelled to western Germany, , to Austria, and none to eastern Germany.

Acquisition of land for distribution to Hungarian refugees and nationals was one of the main reasons stated by the government for the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Hungary. An order of 15 June halted the expulsions. A governmental decree of 25 March declared all expulsion orders void, allowing the expellees to return if they so wished.

In the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by , Germans remained in Hungary; 60, had been assimilated into the Hungarian population, and there were 57, "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified. During the war he was an officer in the SS and was directly implicated in the plundering of cultural artifacts in eastern Europe.

After the war he was chosen to author the sections of the demographic report on the expulsions from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. The figure 57, "unresolved cases" in Hungary is included in the figure of 2 million dead expellees, which is often cited in official German and historical literature. They were only allowed to take guilders with them. The remainder of their possessions were seized by the state.

The Allied forces occupying the Western zone of Germany opposed this operation, fearing that other nations might follow suit. Throughout until May , as the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe and the provinces of eastern Germany, some German civilians were killed in the fighting. While many had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, frightened by rumours of Soviet atrocities, which in some cases were exaggerated and exploited by Nazi Germany's propaganda, [] millions still remained.

By , 3,, had been transported to Germany, 1,, were naturalized as Polish citizens and , Germans still remained in Poland. According to the West German Schieder commission of , 5,, Germans remained in Poland in mid, 3,, had been expelled and , remained in Poland by During the military campaign, most of the male German population remaining east of the Oder—Neisse were considered potential combatants and held by Soviet military in detention camps subjected to verification by the NKVD.

Members of Nazi party organizations and government officials were segregated and sent to the USSR for forced labour as reparations. In mid, the eastern territories of pre-war Germany were turned over to the Soviet-controlled Polish military forces. Early expulsions were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities [] even before the Potsdam Conference placed them under temporary Polish administration pending the final Peace Treaty, [] in an effort to ensure later territorial integration into an ethnically homogeneous Poland.

Around 1,, [] [] [] German citizens of Slavic descent were "verified" as " autochthonous " Poles. At the Potsdam Conference 17 July—2 August , the territory to the east of the Oder—Neisse line was assigned to Polish and Soviet Union administration pending the final peace treaty. All Germans had their property confiscated and were placed under restrictive jurisdiction. By early , , Germans had already been expelled from there, and , had been verified as having Polish nationality.

In the February census, 2,, people were classified as Germans and subject to expulsion, and , were subject to verification action, to determine nationality. Those Polish citizens who had collaborated or were believed to have collaborated with the Nazis, were considered "traitors of the nation" and sentenced to forced labour prior to being expelled. Besides these large camps, numerous other forced labour, punitive and internment camps, urban ghettos and detention centres, sometimes consisting only of a small cellar, were set up.

At certain periods, they could be in the tens of percent of the inmate numbers. Those interned are estimated at —, German nationals and the indigenous population and deaths might range from 15, to 60, persons. The indigenous population were former German citizens who declared Polish ethnicity. Douglas describes a chaotic and lawless regime in the former German territories in the immediate postwar era. The local population was victimized by criminal elements who arbitrarily seized German property for personal gain. Bilingual people who were on the Volksliste during the war were declared Germans by Polish officials who then seized their property for personal gain.

The Federal Statistical Office of Germany estimated that in mid, , Germans remained in the northern part of the former East Prussia, which became the Kaliningrad Oblast. They also estimated that more than , people surviving the Soviet occupation were evacuated to Germany beginning in German civilians were held as "reparations labour" by the USSR. Soviet records indicated that Poles died in captivity. The attitudes of surviving Poles varied.

Many had suffered brutalities and atrocities by the Germans, surpassed only by the German policies against Jews, during the Nazi occupation. The Germans had recently expelled more than a million Poles from territories they annexed during the war. On the other hand, in many instances Poles, including some who had been made slave labourers by the Germans during the war, protected Germans, for instance by disguising them as Poles.

Their status as a national minority was accepted in , along with state subsidies, with regard to economic assistance and education.

The attitude of Soviet soldiers was ambiguous. Many committed atrocities, most notably rape and murder, [76] and did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans, mistreating them equally. Richard Overy cites an approximate total of 7. The ethnic German population of Romania in was estimated at , The pro-German Hungarian government , as well as the pro-German Romanian government of Ion Antonescu allowed Germany to enlist the German population in Nazi-sponsored organizations. During the war 54, of the male population was conscripted by Nazi Germany, many into the Waffen-SS.

The roughly , ethnic Germans who remained in Romania were treated as guilty of collaboration with Nazi Germany and were deprived of their civil liberties and property. Many were impressed into forced labour and deported from their homes to other regions of Romania.

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In , Romania began a gradual rehabilitation of the ethnic Germans: In the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by , , were counted as expellees in Germany or the West, , Germans still remained in Romania, 32, had been assimilated into the Romanian population, and that there were , "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified.

During the s many began to leave, with over , leaving in alone. By , the number of ethnic Germans in Romania was 60, The Baltic , Bessarabian and ethnic Germans in areas that became Soviet-controlled following the Molotov—Ribbentrop Pact of were resettled to the Third Reich , including annexed areas like Warthegau , during the Nazi-Soviet population exchange. Only a few returned to their former homes when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and temporarily gained control of those areas.

These returnees were employed by the Nazi occupation forces to establish a link between the German administration and the local population. Those resettled elsewhere shared the fate of the other Germans in their resettlement area. The ethnic German minority in the USSR was considered a security risk by the Soviet government, and they were deported during the war in order to prevent their possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders.

In August the Soviet government ordered ethnic Germans to be deported from the European USSR, by early , 1,, Germans were interned in "special settlements" in Central Asia and Siberia [] Life in the special settlements was harsh and severe, food was limited, and the deported population was governed by strict regulations. Shortages of food plagued the whole Soviet Union and especially the special settlements.

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According to data from the Soviet archives, by October , , Germans remained alive in the special settlements; [] an additional , Soviet Germans served as labour conscripts during World War II. Soviet Germans were not accepted in the regular armed forces but were employed instead as conscript labour. The labour army members were arranged into worker battalions that followed camp-like regulations and received Gulag rations. Otto Pohl, 65, Germans perished in the special settlements.

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He believes that an additional , unaccounted for people "probably died in the labour army". By it had increased to 1. The calculations of the West German researcher Gerhard Reichling do not agree to the figures from the Soviet archives. According to Reichling a total of , Soviet ethnic Germans were deported during the war; he estimated that , died in forced labour.

In the Soviets found , of these resettlers in Soviet-held territory and returned them to the USSR; 90, became refugees in Germany after the war. Those ethnic Germans who remained in the borders of the Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany in remained where they were until , when the Red Army liberated Soviet territory and the Wehrmacht withdrew westward. They were released from the special settlements by an amnesty decree of 13 September , [] and the Nazi collaboration charge was revoked by a decree of 23 August Memel was integrated into the Lithuanian Soviet Republic. The remaining Germans were conscripted for forced labour.

Ethnic Russians and the families of military staff were settled in the area. In June , , Germans and 41, Soviet citizens were registered as living in the Kaliningrad Oblast , with an unknown number of unregistered Germans ignored. Between June and , roughly half a million Germans were expelled. The last remaining Germans were expelled between November [99] 1, people and January 7. Between , around , Soviet citizens settled the oblast.

After the liberation, Yugoslav Partisans exacted revenge on ethnic Germans for the wartime atrocities of Nazi Germany , in which many ethnic Germans had participated, especially in the Banat area of Serbia. The approximately , ethnic Germans remaining in Yugoslavia suffered persecution and sustained personal and economic losses. About 7, were killed as local populations and partisans took revenge for German wartime atrocities. All furniture was removed, straw placed on the floor, and the expellees housed like animals under military guard, with minimal food and rampant, untreated disease.

Families were divided into the unfit women, old, and children, and those fit for slave labour. Smaller numbers of ethnic Germans also lived in Ljubljana and in some western villages in the Prekmurje region. In , the total number of ethnic Germans in Slovenia was around 28, In April , southern Slovenia was occupied by Italian troops. Gottschee Germans were generally unhappy about their forced transfer from their historical home region.

One reason was that the agricultural value of their new area of settlement was perceived as much lower than the Gottschee area. As German forces retreated before the Yugoslav Partisans , most ethnic Germans fled with them in fear of reprisals. The Liberation Front of the Slovenian People expelled most of the remainder after it seized complete control in the region in May The Yugoslavs set up internment camps at Sterntal and Teharje.

The government nationalized their property on a "decision on the transition of enemy property into state ownership, on state administration over the property of absent people, and on sequestration of property forcibly appropriated by occupation authorities" of 21 November by the Presidency of the Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia. After March , ethnic Germans were placed in so-called "village camps". Most of the children under 14 were then placed in state-run homes, where conditions were better, though the German language was banned.

These children were later given to Yugoslav families, and not all German parents seeking to reclaim their children in the s were successful. West German government figures from put the death toll at , civilians. A total of 48, people had died in the camps; 7, were shot by partisans, and another 1, perished in Soviet labour camps.

By , , of the Germans from Yugoslavia were classified as "expelled" in Germany, another , in Austria, 10, in the United States, and 3, in France. The population of Kehl 12, people , on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Strasbourg , fled and was evacuated in the course of the Liberation of France , on 23 November Fearing a Nazi Fifth Column , between and the US government facilitated the expulsion of 4, German citizens from 15 Latin American countries to internment camps in Texas and Louisiana. Subsequent investigations showed many of the internees to be harmless, and three-quarters of them were returned to Germany during the war in exchange for citizens of the Americas, while the remainder returned to their homes in Latin America.

Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939-1950

At the start of World War II, colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the British and sent, together with Italian and Hungarian enemy aliens, to internment camps in Waldheim and Bethlehem of Galilee. Internment continued in Tatura , Victoria, Australia , until In the State of Israel paid 54 million Deutsche Marks in compensation to property owners whose assets were nationalized.

Estimates of total deaths of German civilians in the flight and expulsions, including Forced labour of Germans in the Soviet Union , range from , to a maximum of 3. English language sources have put the death toll at 2 to 3 million based on the West German government figures from the s. The West German figure of 2 million deaths in the flight and expulsions was widely accepted by historians in the West prior to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.

The German government continues to maintain that the figure of 2 million deaths is correct. Overmans maintains that the studies of expulsion deaths by the German government lack adequate support, he maintains that there are more arguments for the lower figures than for the higher figures.

In a interview, Overmans maintained that new research is needed to clarify the fate of those reported as missing. In particular, Overmans maintains that the figure of 1. Overmans maintains that the , deaths found by the German Federal Archives in is only a rough estimate of those killed, not a definitive figure.

Forced migration in Central and Eastern Europe, (Book, ) [www.newyorkethnicfood.com]

He pointed out that some deaths were not reported because there were no surviving eyewitnesses of the events; also there was no estimate of losses in Hungary, Romania and the USSR. Overmans conducted a research project that studied the casualties of the German military during the war and found that the previous estimate of 4. In his study Overmans researched only military deaths, his project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths; he merely noted the difference between the 2.

Overmans believes this will reduce the number of civilian deaths in the expulsions. Overmans further pointed out that the 2. Haar maintains that all reasonable estimates of deaths from expulsions lie between around , and ,, based on the information of Red Cross Search Service and German Federal Archives. Harr pointed out that some members of the Schieder commission and officials of the Statistisches Bundesamt involved in the study of the expulsions were involved in the Nazi plan to colonize Eastern Europe. Haar posits that figures have been inflated in Germany due to the Cold War and domestic German politics, and he maintains that the 2.

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