A contraversial new exhibition in Berlin, entitled "Forced Paths - Flight and Expulsion in Europe During the 20th Century" has got the Polish press up in arms. The exhibition deals with the many forced migrations of people during the turbulent times of the last century, but focuses a lot of attention on the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans (an estimated 12-14 million were displaced) from East European countries in the wake of World War II.
Poles are angry principally because they are seeing this as an attempt by Germans to re-write history and cast themselves as the victims of World War II (a role that the Poles have long coveted for themselves, albeit with more than a little justification). They are also worried that underlying this increased drive for the recognition of German sufferings is a bid to reclaim German land given to Poland after the war.
With Nazi Germany defeated and Stalin in the ascendency, Poland was helpless to prevent a large chunk of its territories being handed over to Soviet states. Wilno became Vilnius the capital of Lithuania, whilst the historic city of Lwow, became Lviv in Ukraine. Meanwhile, as if to make amends, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt gave Poland the bombed out shells of Danzig and Breslau - today's Gdansk and Wroclaw.
This arrangement hardly was hardly favourable to Poland even at the time, as ethnic Poles were forced to leave historic Polish cities and inhabit destroyed German ones. Sixty years later however, with those cities painfully rebuilt and breathing life again, it would be an unbearable insult for Germany to even hint at reclaiming them - after all it was the war which Germany started which led to 17% of Poles being wiped out, the Polish capital being razed to the ground and afterwards Poland having to endure 45 years of Communism.
There's no doubt that the persecution suffered by ethnic Germans at the end of the war was horrific - more so because it has been largely ignored by history - but with the ravages suffered by Poland during and after the war still resounding today, maybe it would be best if the Germans suffered in silence for their sins.
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