how you can support german expellees OR LOBBIES

The Institute for Research of Expelled Germans is a completely apolitical organization with NO AFFILIATION to political lobbies, expellee groups, or legal pressure organizations. Therefore, we do not assist expellees. However, many of our visitors have asked how they can help raise awareness of expellee history or pressure for restitution....

Despite suffering one of the worst human rights abuses and refugee diasporas of the 20th century, the history of displaced ethnic German civilians is almost unknown in popular awareness. So too, the involved governments of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and to a far lesser extent Hungary and Romania have made very little effort to commemorate this history. Compensation, if it is necessary, has largely been out of the question at this point.

In general, the courts and member states of the human rights-conscious European Union have declined to discuss the issue. Germany has refused to demand restitution or commemoration of the German expellees from Poland or the Czech Republic because it would understandably damage auspicious political relations and greatly hamper positive trade opportunities (read our essay on the history of this problem). Because of the new atmosphere of social justice and human rights instated by the European Union, now is the time to commemorate the deaths of at least 400,000 German civilians in the largest forced migration of the twentieth century.

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 simply describing the expulsions and documenting the ongoing political debate over restitution.

It is crucial to understand that, rightfully so, many observers are suspicious of any efforts to commemorate any German victims. The suffering of ethnic Germans 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 apologetically 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 against Jews and other ethnic groups rather than being victims of genocide at the same time. It is important that anyone working to commemorate the German expellees strongly rejects any notions of Holocaust denial, revisionism, or any attempt to justify the atrocities of the Third Reich or divert blame from the Germans onto other ethnic groups that were subject to genocide at the same time.

Keep in mind that in the strictest legal terms, the expulsion of Germans was NOT a genocide because the intended cause of the expulsions was not to exterminate the Germans (see our explanatory article). It would be wise to avoid such a term because it is not only incorrect in a scholarly context, but it is often received by listeners and readers as inflammatory, exaggerated, and revanchist. For similar reasons, it would be best to use the most accepted scholarly death toll of roughly 400,000 rather than insist on the maximum of 2,280,000.

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, etc. 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 and the movement to commemorate their story 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.