NY Times Article on German WWII Refugees --- Justice Due?

[ChemEng]

There was an interesting article today in the NY Times on a German refugee family. At the end of WWII, they were driven out of their home in what was eastern Germany, but is now part of Poland. The Germans would like to recover their farm, but a Polish family has been there for over 10 years (not the original family who kicked them out). This is reflective of a trend in Germany of portraying the German people as victims of WWII, just as the Jews or Polish were victims. One hears about how the allied bombing campaign was as unjust as anything done by the Hitler regime.

I'm curious about how far to take these situations. Think of the following:

1. Poles wanting land back from Russians in the old eastern part of Poland taken over by Russia in 1939.
2. Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians wanting to kick out Russians from their territories.
3. Native Americans in both North and South America wanting compensation or land back from the European conquest.
4. The people dislocated upon the partition of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh.
5. Tibetans who were displaced when communist China took over their land.
5. The whole Palestinian and Israeli issue.

When do land or compensation claims become "outdated" for lack of a better word? Are the Germans "sore losers," or do they have a just claim?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/europe/04GERM.html

[donsu]

1. just claims

nt

[dfong63]

2. if the German postwar claims are "outdated", then the Jewish claims

... which date from during and before the war, must be even moreso. is that the standard we want to go by?

[ChemEng]

3. I don't know the answer...

I wish I did. But I fear the seeds for future conflict are ready to sprout. Taken as a whole, I believe Jewish WWII claims are an order of magnitude more justified than those of German refugees. But note that bad things don't happen to a people, but to individuals and families. So an individual German will have a hard time understanding why his claim should be ignored, even if they were (in the unlikely situation) anti-Nazi.

If you acknowledge Jewish WWII claims, what about Palestinian's claims from 1947? I fear that Palestinians are in the same box are the German refugees from what-is-now Poland.

[Yupster]

4. It worked

The Russians used a solution of taking land that worked. The entire German population was moved out of Eastern Germany. Cities that had been German national treasures for 1,000 years were stripped of every German citizens. In what many believe was the largest number of rapes to ever take place in one period of time, the Russians forcibly removed every German. East Prussia disappeared from the map as did Konigsberg, Danzig, Stettin, Breslau, Samland, Goldap, Allenstein, Pillau, Elbing, Oppeln, Namslau, Deutsch Kron and countless other towns, villages and cities.

The Russians had no claim to any of this land. They just took it, but they took it in a succesfull way. By chasing every civilian out, they avoided any type of Palestinian problem. There are no demonstrations for the last 50 years for these people to get their land back. It's just gone. I've always thought that weird.

Anyway, I've wondered whether guys like Sharon do not look at the example of the Soviets and see that while Germany had the Oder River to chase people across, his problem area also has a river to chase people across too.

[Yupster]

7. Oops - mistake in my above post

It should have read the Russians had the Oder River to chase people across, not the Germans. The Germans by this point were the chased, not the chasers.

[Cleita]

5. The ordinary German was a victim of Hitler

in much the same way we, who didn't support Bush, have become victims of his policies too. However, to compare this type of victimization to what Hitler's Nazis did to the Jews, Slavs, Russians, Poles and Gypsies is not really fair. Although all Germans eventually suffered because of Hitler, they didn't suffer the same atrocities of his targeted scapegoats.

[Yupster]

6. Weirdest land anomoly

After WWII, the German province of East Prussia was taken away and divided roughly in half between Poland and the USSR. The German population was chased away.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the southern half of what used to be East Prussia remains with Poland. The northern half is quite a situation though.

Once Lithuania declared its independance from Russia, this piece of land became separated from the rest of Russia. Now it sits as a part of the Russia, land that was German for 1,000 years, which Russia had no claim to. Yet, it remains part of Russia, far apart from the rest of Russia as an enclave between Poland and Lithuania and the Baltic Sea.

I don't know why the world, and especially Europe has never seemed to care about this situation, which is just plain stealing someone else's land. In fact, many of the kids of the families that had their farms stolen from them are probably among the demonstrators in Germany for the last 25 years for all different causes but their own.

It is quite an akward situation, but it has been prety much ignored.