About the Center for Flight and Expulsion
The German government agreed in 2008 to create a “visible symbol” against flight and expulsion in Berlin. The main element will be a documentation center that provides a historical overview of flight, expulsion and integration from World War II until the present day in Germany and Europe. The museum is to be conceived by the federal government’s Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation Foundation, which will be a part of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The foundation’s board will include representatives of the German parliament and federal government as well as three representatives of German expellee groups. Members of the German Federation of Expellees (BdV) called for their seat to be occupied by Erika Steinbach, their president, sparking conflict between Poland and Germany.
Erika Steinbach initiated the idea back in 2000 as president of the German Federation of Expellees together with Peter Glotz, founder of the Center against Expulsion. Their plans generated some criticism in Germany, but the complaints from Poland and the Czech Republic were very vocal. Steinbach was accused of attempting to whitewash World War II history and present Germans as victims of the war. The German government rejected Steinbach’s plans, but it nevertheless moved to establish a Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation Foundation that has been bestowed with responsibility for creating a museum and memorial center.
The government plans to set up a documentation center dedicated to the memory of the expellees in Berlin. The focus of the permanent exhibition will be German expellees, but it will also look at other instances of flight and expulsion in Europe during the 20th century – including groups forced out of Germany. Temporary exhibitions are also planned.
At the Potsdam Conference in summer 1945, the anti-Hitler coalition agreed to the Potsdam Treaty. The area areas of German east of the Oder and Neisse rivers were placed under the administration of Poland. The East Prussia region to the north was transferred to the Soviet Union. The expatriation of the German population living in Poland (including what, up until then, had been part of Germany), Czechoslovakia and Hungary was supposed to take place in a “humane manner.
Over 10 million either fled or were forced to leave their homes. At least 473,000 instances of death as people fled or were expelled have been proven. In 1950, East Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse Line as its border with Poland under the Treaty of Görlitz. As Germany reunified in 1990, Germany gave up any demands for its former eastern territories in Poland and recognized the line as the permanent German-Polish border.
Up until 1950, when the main wave began to ebb, several million ethic Germans had been expelled from the areas they had settled. 2.1 million from Silesia; 1.9 million from Czechoslovakia; 1.3 million from East Prussia; 891,000 from Pomerelia; 410,000 from Poland; 225,000 from Danzig (today’s Gdansk); 178,000 from Hungary; 158,000 from the Soviet Union, the Baltic States and Memel Territory; 149,000 from Romania; 148,000 from Yugoslavia; and 131,000 from East Brandenburg (in today’s western Poland). Several hundred thousand people died during the difficult trip or fell victim to soldiers of the Red Army seeking revenge.
