MADELEINE BRAND, host:
This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Madeleine Brand.
ALEX CHADWICK, host:
I'm Alex Chadwick. Coming up, career advice for country music star Vince Gill, crossover or stay down home. Take a listen.
BRAND: But first, Germany is taking another look at its World War II history. After the war, millions of Germans who had lived in what's now Poland and the Czech Republic were forced to return back home to Germany. There is now official recognition that they suffered hardships because of that forced repatriation.
From Berlin, NPR's Emily Harris reports.
EMILY HARRIS: Edith Wich(ph) was among the Germans who were forced or chose to flee their homes on land Germany lost at the end of World War II. She remembers it well.
Ms. EDITH WICH: (Through translator) I was 15 years old. I was expelled twice. First, we have to escape to get to Czechoslovakia in 1945, but we were sent back. Then, after a year, we were thrown out again, under conditions I don't even want to think about or talk about anymore.
HARRIS: Hunger, cold and illness plagued the millions who headed west anyway they could. Many women were raped by advancing Russian soldiers. Incorporating these uprooted and traumatized Germans into postwar society was an enormous challenge. If they ended up in what became East Germany, their experiences were not publicly acknowledged. In West Germany, refugee issues were important, including to politicians after the war. But historian Manfred Gortemaker says they eventually became less mainstream. Then the Berlin Wall came down.
Professor MANFRED GORTEMAKER (History, University of Potsdam): Now, in 1990, with the reunification of Germany, everything changed. Because all of a sudden there was - or seem to be - a possibility to reclaim property, territory, the lost homeland.
HARRIS: One of organization of expellees, the Prussian Trust, is still pursuing land claims in what's now Poland and the Czech Republic. The German government does not support these efforts, but it does support a controversial plan of another expellee group, to create a place in Berlin to document their experiences.
(Soundbite of music)
HARRIS: At an event last month, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the expellee's flight, Chancellor Angela Merkel was the guest of honor.
Chancellor ANGELA MERKEL (Germany): (Through translator) It is our task to keep the memory of flight and expulsion alive for the coming generations. At the core is a basic principle of history that is as simple as it is true: a person who doesn't know where he is from doesn't know where he is going.
HARRIS: Four years ago, the German Parliament voted to support a multinational discussion about creating a center documenting European expulsions. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said putting such a center in the German capital would risk a disproportionate focus on the German suffering. But Merkel's government made it a specific point to somehow commemorate expellees in Berlin. This fall, the expellee association put on a prototype, an exhibition called Forced Paths: Flight and Expulsion in 20th Century Europe. Exhibit curators say the aim is to remind German expellees that many people have had similar experiences.
Unidentified Woman #1: (German Spoken)
HARRIS: Text, photographs and audio tapes of survivors describe the plight of Armenians, Turks, and Greeks on Cyprus, Fins who have to leave what became the Soviet Union, and others. The story of the Germans is presented in most detail. Many of the Germans who have visited say this is a part of history that deserves much wider recognition than it has received. But Matti Buhatung(ph), a 25-year-old student, says it's unbalanced. He's Polish born in Bratslav, what used to be German Breslau.
Mr. MATTI BUHATUNG : (Through translator) For me, it would be better to make an exhibition just about the German expellees. Then you can't blame them for not being objective.
HARRIS: The exhibit caused a furor in his country. Poland's prime minister marked the exhibit opening by visiting a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, and saying while there that it's important to remember who the perpetrators of World War II were, and who were the victims. The exhibit deals briefly with the holocaust, but notes that it's not the focus. Irene Runge is director of Berlin's Jewish Cultural Association. She says German expellees have the right to their history.
Dr. IRENE RUNGE (Director, Berlin's Jewish Cultural Association): So I don't think it's fair not to give them a chance at all to remember their own path. On the other side, of course, I'm not too interested in hearing too much about it.
HARRIS: She says people will always explain painful history to themselves in a way they can handle it.
Emily Harris, NPR News, Berlin.
(Soundbite of music)
BRAND: Stay with us. There's more on DAY TO DAY from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
