There's an uproar over a German government decision to fund a documentation centre for ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second War.
A professor at University of Toronto says the centre is fine so long as the context "of Germany having started and then losing World War II" is properly noted.
Well... .
Yes, there were German settlers who took advantage of land cleared of their former owners -- often by murder. Sending them back to Germany seems almost generous. But what about the millions (yes millions) who were the children of generations in Poland, Czech lands etc? Why should they be blamed for Germany's invasion? (Granted some were traitors to their birth lands -- but hardly all).
Today we see demands that people apologise for actions done by others. No, we are responsible for our own acts and not that of others.
(Ezekiel 18:20) - "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself."
1 comment:
Germany started the war all by itself? That is revisionism of the largest order! Let's not forget that the invasion of Poland took place on two fronts. And let's not forget that while Germany was pummeling the French the Russians had a go at Finland and Romania while eying up other areas of Eastern Europe (ironic that they got it in the end, isn't it?). Let's not forget that the German invasion of Russia was in many ways pre-emptive as the Russians were building up for their little land grab, too. And then let's talk about innocent ethnic Germans like the Volga Deutsch who had lived in the Ukraine for 200 years and contained large numbers of Mennonites. The Volga Germans who didn't flee to Germany during the Russian advances were either killed or transported to Kazakhstan, where many ethnic Germans still live.
It's wonderfully easy to lay all the blame for WWII on the Germans but the USSR had a huge hand in starting it. Their persecution of many ethnic minorities including the Germans as well as their unconscionable treatment of German POWs (yes the Germans were evil to Russian POWs) makes the Communists very much the equals of the Nazis.
Talking about ethnic German refugees is hardly talking about Germans who took land in Poland. There were, and still are, ethnic Germans throughout Europe including Switzerland, Poland, the Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and France. Were these people responsible for the Nazis? Hardly, yet they paid a large price for simply being German.
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