how you can support german expellees

Before pursuing how you can study or support German expellees, it is important to note that we are NOT an expellee rights advoacy group, a legal lobby, or activist organisation. We are dedicated to research and scholarly analysis of the position of expellees in relation to their historical experiences and current political aspirations.

Because of the severity of the ethnic cleansings and their largely obscured status in historical memory, it is crucial for as many researchers as possible to raise awareness of these historical processes that collectively targeted any and all who claimed German descent because of universalised links to the crimes of the Nazis. Post-war regimes did not only target the murderous SS killing squads and their supporters, but the entire German ethnicity regardless of their diverse political ideologies. It is this indistinction that must be emphasised when discussing the German expellees. They are a part of a far larger phenomenon of Eastern European history in which the state was defined along lines of exclusive homogeneity. "Collective guilt," both a Hitlerian and Stalinist concept, implicated every member of what was defined as the German community. This community, above all, was demarcated by revanchist post-war states from above. Whilst it is important not to romanticise the expellee experience as one of victimised innocents, they must also not be dismissed as a Nazi "fifth column" or another victim of 'Hitler's War.'

The Institute for Research of Expelled Germans encourages its readers and contributors to spread information about the fate of the German expellees to newspapers, online news and article publications, scholarly journals, essays, university classroom dialogues, forums, websites, human rights conventions and symposia, and even to politicians. Any effort can make a marked impact, even writing an article for an online newspaper that simply describes these events or documents the ongoing political debate over restitution.

It is crucial to proliferate and document this awareness very meticulously and with much reserve. The suffering of ethnic German civilians has been largely ignored due to many factors: 1) the legacy of undeniable atrocities by the German state and its henchmen in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, etc.; 2) the perception of defending Nazi crimes or attempting to make a German irredentist claim to these regions (like reclaiming Prussia from Poland by proving that they are 'rightfully German'); 3) the fear by German, Czech, and Polish politicians to appear to divert blame from Germans onto other peoples and; 4) the longstanding emphasis by the West on the Germans as the perpetrators of genocide rather than being victims of genocide at the same time. Many critics often associate German expellee advocacy with Holocaust denial or criticism of 'Zionism.' Unfortunately, this is far too often a reality. It is important not to frame the expellee experience in contrast with the Holocaust, but only in and of itself.

Please spread links to our Institute (expelledgermans.org), circulate our articles and essays via emails and forums, and raise awareness and commemoration of the story of the German expellees to websites, forums, newspapers, politicians, and in human rights symposia as vociferously as possible. Please encourage the creation of commemorative monuments, foundations, lectures, and academic attention in museums by writing letters, making phone calls. As one of the most-read and unpolitical representative academic groups of German expellees for both German and international audiences, we encourage you to write and submit your articles or contribute your research to our organisation and distribute links to our website.

You can also support German expellees by donating or contributing to recognized political lobbies for restitution and human rights in Germany and the European Union, including the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen) and the Prussian Trust. You can also offer your research and financial support to the International Tracing Service, or the Centre Against Expulsion (Zentrum gegen Vertreibung), a new museum foundation being organized in Germany to commemorate the crimes of forced population expulsions in general, and also plans to devote a section to the 10,000,000 expelled Germans. You can also contact the leading representative group of expelled Germans and Volga Germans in Kazakhstan, the Deutsch-Kasachstanische Assoziation der Unternehmer. For more organisations, see our Links Section.