Posted on 08/11/2006 2:48:01 AM PDT by twinself
A museum exhibition in Berlin is threatening to accelerate the recent downward spiral in German-Polish relations only weeks after Warsaw reacted with outrage when a German newspaper jokingly compared the Polish president to a potato.
The Polish embassy in Berlin said yesterday it was "critical" of the exhibition, due to open last night, on the plight of tens of millions of Germans and other Europeans expelled from their home regions during the 20th century.
ADVERTISEMENT The harsh words from Warsaw arose because the installation, covering 600 sq m in a prominent central Berlin museum, is organised by Erika Steinbach, a fiery German politician who represents the interests of German post-war expellees but is despised by many Poles.
Ms Steinbach, president of Germany's League of Expellees, is leader of a campaign to establish a government-sponsored "Centre against Expulsions" in Berlin.
The opening of the temporary exhibition would be "an important step" towards the creation of the centre, she told reporters. Her league represents descendents of many of the 15m people expelled from their homes when Germany was stripped of its eastern territories - including present-day western Poland - after 1945.
Many Poles feel the German expellees aim to rewrite history by casting Germans as the victims - and not the aggressors - of the second world war. While Ms Steinbach denies this, she argues that "Germans should not be forced to be inactive [in recognising German war-time suffering] just because of the anxieties of our neighbours".
In Poland, speaking yesterday from a former German death camp, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's prime minister, said the post-war transfer of Germans was "sad, even tragic" but stressed that historical truth demanded remembering "who was the perpetrator and who was the victim".
The exhibition opening comes at an awkward time for the German government, which has tried to avoid overreacting to what many Germans see as the recent barrage of anti-German outbursts by Polish politicians, especially since President Lech Kaczynski took power last year. Citing press freedom, Berlin refused to intervene in last month's "potato" controversy, in which a German newspaper poked fun at Mr Kaczynski.
Berlin has also sought to defuse tensions over the proposed Centre against Expulsions.
Officials and analysts hope the exhibition can play a role in building bridges with Warsaw. According to early reviews, the installation - created by curators not linked directly with the expellees' movement - focuses on groups in countries as far apart as Finland, Greece and Bosnia, as well as Germany, and does not present the latter as a nation of victims.
Sabina Wölkner, Poland specialist at Berlin's DGAP foreign policy think-tank, said the exhibition might "increase the readiness, already existing in some Polish circles, to allow Germans to deal with this aspect of their past".
But the Polish embassy in Berlin argued that the basic approach of "lumping together all European expulsions is a falsification of history".
Indeed, for many Poles the events of the second world war are more than a dry debate. Jacek Potyrala, a 62-year-old concert pianist, said he had "very mixed feelings" about Ms Steinbach's focus on the suffering of German expellees.
Members of his family saw neighbours being killed by German machine guns when Nazi troops entered Warsaw. "I like Germans but I feel we should be thinking of the future, not remembering the bad things of the past."
ping!
Here you strike again!
>>downward spiral in German-Polish relations only weeks after Warsaw reacted with outrage when a German newspaper jokingly compared the Polish president to a potato.<<
There has got to be more too it - can you imagine our international relations being effected because of a negative description of President Bush in some newspaper?
"Many Poles feel the German expellees aim to rewrite history by casting Germans as the victims - and not the aggressors - of the second world war."
Is this really so hard to understand - they are both.
Hitler was voted with less then 50% of the german votes in January 1933 and was declared reichskanzler in a coalition with DNVP. Then he organized the reichstag to be burned down in February 1933 and used this event to release the emergency laws that enabled him to get rid of the democratic oposition. After some time you where simply gassed or shot if you didn't support Hitler.
He had german followers and hostages. Many followers where hostages with a severe case of stockholm syndrome. People more affected by fear tend to be most brutal and reckless, while mostly the brave had the courage to ask questions and act acordingly (von Stauffenberg etc).
Germany followed Hitler - some because they where brutal swines otheres because they where opportunists, some because they where affraid to die.
Today for us germans my point of view is, that it all comes down to what you need and want as a german with roots now sited in poland...
Do you need your piece of land back that you lost because you where german (not fair for you - but somehow fair in history) - or do you feel that these times asked their tribute and be glad you life in others. I'd plead on resting this case, sometimes there is more justice in the greater picture then you can ask for your own little self.
Let Poland be poland. They do the best with their pand I am sure and we can even go there now on holyday. Free at last.
There were some German civilians who were forcibly removed from Poland. Europeans and Old Worlders seem to have an outlook on citizenship that is not parallel to that of the United States (for example, many Americans would probably resolve Armenia and Azerbaijan's territorial dispute by giving the respective surrounded lands to the surrounding countries and altering the main border). If the Germans were born in Poland, then they had a right to that land, too, along with the ancestral Poles.
Venezuela and Mexico got into a spat when Hugo insulted Vicente. Cultures respond in various ways to insults. More than that, some freepers go overboard sometimes, too. (if you've read the police shooting rubber bullets thread).
The more I learn about this ''Centre about expulsion '' -
it was not a real issue so far in Germany - the more I think we should support it.
IMHO, like I wrote before, the only way that this conflict will be resolved for good would be that the Polnish side comes up with a concept for the center that would be bearable or even desirable for both sides. There's obviously a need to build this for some questionable people like Steinbach, but if Poland would offer to make this a joint effort, they would probably have a good opportunity to defuse whatever they see as offending. That offer would also give the Polnish side the moral advantage, as they look ready to compromise and Frau Steinbach's refusal to settle matters this way would probably cost her group a lot of favor with the German government. I don't think our officials are exactly keen on the press that the expelled continue to give Germany.
You are an independent country. You will do what you want.
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