[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] More on Germans in Poland

[Günther Böhm]

Ed Sonnenburg schrieb:

>Good suggestion to do a search but with all the experiences my GRs went
>through in Poland a more appropriate search would be "Poland, the devil's
>playground".  Most of the older people I talk to get a bad taste in their
>mouth and a scowl on their faces.   A Polish proverb is "if it isn't nailed
>down it is mine".  In 1976 my parents visited Poland and talked to some
>people.  The Poles were still waiting for the Germans to come and get the
>communists out of their country.
>
Good morning Ed,
we should abstain from mixing up two completely different experiences:

   1. the expropriation and expelling of Germans from the present
      Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia after WWII and
   2. a traditional German prejudice on Polish sincerity.

Independently from being a prejudice, the second has NOTHING to do with 
the first. Shortly after WWII you could have called the Germans a 
'people of thieves'. Stolen were any kinds of crops from the fields, 
coal and timber from the freighttrains, aliments from the allied 
military canteens, whiskey and cigarettes from the PX shops, non-ferrous 
metal from the railway tracks and factories, furniture from the ruins 
and so on. This action was commonly called 'organisieren'.

The expropriation and expelling of Germans on the other hand was carried 
out on the basis of allied treaties and none of the affected peoples - 
neither the 'loosing' nor the 'winning' - was asked. But common 
expropriation and expulsion wasn't invented by the allies. Hitler and 
the nazis were masters of it.

Günther from Germany