[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Propaganda

[Ed SONNENBURG]

I think that when people hear or read true stories of what happened in 
Russia or Poland
to German minorities it seems exaggerated and is just waved away as 
propaganda.
>We just think that it is impossible for humans to do something so bad to 
>another human.  Also since these bad things happened to Germans it doesn't 
>matter because they just got back what they deserved because of Hitler.  To 
>this day Germans are still supposed to feel mass guilt for what happened 
>years ago.
>many German girls and women did get raped and had German/Russian children.  
>We had a lady in our church with a child.   Russian teenage girls known as 
>"Flintenweiber" or rifle girls would roam in packs and when they caught 
>German soldiers would brutalizeand torture them.  One living man says he 
>ran away and wasn't caught but he hiid and then saw these girls tie his 15 
>year old friend to two different tanks and drive in opposite directions 
>tearing him apart.  At times when the Russians caught men between 16 and 60 
>they were executed on the spot.  I sometimes wonder how my grandfather 
>lived and made it to Canada.  Even right after the war the allies gave the 
>Poles three days to do whatever they wanted to Germans.  Anyone who had 
>mistreated a Pole during the war was lucky to survive.  Poles had already 
>come onto my grandather's property and taken him away but his Polish 
>servant put in good words for him and so he survived.
>Older people just don't want to talk about it.  Have a tape recorder handy 
>if you get some of the older people to start talking.


>
>---------------------
>A couple of dozen books were produced in Germany in that time frame, and 
>all
>that I have seen would qualify as propaganda. "The call of the fatherland,"
>for example, is an odd way to refer to the forced migrations that were part
>of the deal with the Soviet-German invasion of Poland in 1939.
>
>It should be noted that when these books refer to Volhynia, they are
>referring to Polish Volhynia, not the Russian side. The migration from
>Russian Volhynia was a few years later under decidedly different
>circumstances.
>
>I think it would be valuable to gather as much information as we can from
>the survivors of that period. That would complement the official
>documentation (ie, the EWZ files) and help correct any misconceptions that
>may have resulted from the publication of those books.
>
>Dave Obee
>
>
>