At the end of war world two,
Germans who lived in Poland and the Czech Republic faced harsh and cruel expulsion
under the guise of reconstruction. As Naimark
describes in Fires of Hatred, both
new and old wounds allowed the Czechs and Polish to expel their German minorities,
with no resistance from the Allied forces, and even direct encouragement from
the Soviet Union. With the goal in mind
making it sure that a reunited Germany had no ties to lands in either Poland or
the Czech Republic in the future, the expulsion of the Germans was a popular
idea at the time. No matter how uncomfortable
the situation made certain Allies, the expulsion of the Germans to create an ethnically
consistent Czech Republic and Poland was carried out. Germans had little time to leave either
country, were forced into work camps, raped, stolen from, treated no better
than “work animals.” Poland even
criminalized the usage of the German language in public and in private. Though reparations have been made on both
sides, tensions between the three countries are still at times visible.
The current relationship between
Germany and Poland is much more positive since Germany’s reunification and reemergence
as a major player in European politics. Poland’s
former president Lech Walesa recently stated he believed that Poland and
Germany should unite as one country.
Walesa, who was instrumental in the fall of the Soviet Union, claimed that uniting
the two countries was a “logical conclusion” going on to say “the Germans have
done us a lot more evil, and the relationship we have now is much better than that with Russia.
Why?” Walesa believes the reason why the
relationship between Germany and Poland has reached such a point that the two
countries (as he believes) can become one is “because after the war, Germany
fully confessed to all its dirty tricks. It’s necessary to say once and for all
who did something evil, full stop. Until we do, the wound won’t heal.”
However, the relationship between
Poland and Germany is not all flowers and roses. Only recently did Poland’s Foreign Minister
Randoslaw Sikorski criticize Germany’s “selective historical memory,” when
speaking on a German miniseries Our
Fathers, Our Mothers about the Polish underground Home Army in world war
two. Just this year Miloš Zema, the
Czech Republic president said “When a citizen of some country collaborates with
a country that has occupied his state, an expulsion is a subtler [form of]
punishment than, for example, a death penalty," insinuating that the
Germans were lucky that they were only expelled from their homeland and not
killed.
Meanwhile Germany is criticized for
a planned holiday that would honor the millions who were forced to leave Eastern
Europe after the end of the war. While understandable
if the only argument was that the supposed holiday should not share the same
date as Holocaust Memorial Day, the proposed date that is not the only critic critiques
have offered. Most critiques come from
linking the holiday to the Charter of German Expellees, which offers nothing
about the “cause of the war, about the mass crimes of the National Socialists,
about the murder of the Jews, Poles and Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and other
persecuted groups.” In fact, the main argument
seems to be against equating the suffering of German “expellees” to the victims
of Nazism and that doing so looks bad for Germans and is not politically correct.
It would seem as if Sikorski’s
comment on “selective historical memory” is an apt comment. Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic all
wish to recognize and honor the horrific effects of war world two on their
countries, while forgetting what their country has done to its neighbors. Zema’s comments are particularly absurd,
while Sikorski skates over his own selective memory. Walesa’s idea on the unification of Germany
and Poland was met a harsh reaction and waved off by his countrymen. Germany’s idea for a holiday commemorating the
atrocities faced by its people in the Czech Republic and Poland while poignant,
seems offensive when the proposed date for the holiday is shared with Holocaust
Memorial Day, but it is equally offensive to simply wave the idea off because
it is linked to an outdated charter. The
“insensitive” nature of the proposed holiday has little to do with the holiday
itself and much more with “selective historical memory.”
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