Moral Equivalency, German-style

Claiming victimhood, the so-called German "expellees" - Germans living in Poland, then-Czechoslovakia and Hungary at the end of World War II - have once again begun a whinefest, repeating the lie that expulsions were illegal acts perpetrated by vengeful governments upon innocent people.

They very conveniently overlook the inconvenient little fact that the authority for the expulsions from those countries was set forth in the Potsdam Agreement, negotiated between and agreed to by the Allied Powers during the July 17 - August 2, 1945, Potsdam Conference that was conducted in the German city of of the same name.

Polish-German relations turn sour again
The Polish-German relations turn sour after the meeting of the German Union of Expellees attended by the president of the EP [European Parliament, ed.], Hans-Gert Poettering. During the meeting the group’s chief Erika Steinbach said that the dislocation of expellees could not be justified by Hitler's actions. Many in Poland reacted by accusing the leader of the German Union of Expellees of attempting to revive wartime animosities.

This is not the first time that Erika Steinbach’s statements caused strong reactions in Poland. Head of the German Union of Expellees sparked outrage in this country, for example, by opening an exhibition in Berlin focused on the fate of ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after the defeat of the Nazi Germany during WWII. The majority of Poles saw casting Germans as victims of World War Two as an attempt to revise history.

I wonder if Frau Steinbach knows David Irving?

Many inhabitants of north-eastern Poland are also concerned that former German owners may reclaim the properties they abandoned after 1945. Small wonder then that when Steinbach called for remembering the sufferings of the millions of German-speakers thrown out of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II Polish experts saw her speech as a failure to take historical context into account. Sociologist professor Zdzislaw Krasnodebski explains.

"On the one hand, we try to play down the historical reasons behind what happened in the past - from the beginning of the war through the national socialism but also that it was an international decision implemented in Poland which was a country subjugated by communism".

According to estimates, between 13 and 16 million ethnic Germans were expelled after the war, mainly from western Poland and the western Czech Republic. Professor Anna Wolff-Poweska, head of the Western Institute in Poznan and one of the biggest experts in Polish-German relation says that the leader of the German Union of Expellees should not be treated as a partner for dialogue.

"Mrs. Steinbach has proven on many occasions that she is a politician who cares mainly about her own prestige. Hence she presents many spectacular and often anti-Polish but also anti-Czech statements to bring back into the spotlight the subject which may have already been forgotten. However, she is a politician who may be disregarded".

[....]

Six million Poles, six and one-half million Jews, plus untold numbers of Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, Russian POWs, Gypsies (Roma, Sinti) and others were murdered by the Nazi forefathers of Steinbach and her gaggle of whiners. And they're kvetching about being inconvenienced?

Some Poles chose to respond to Frau Steinbach in this manner.

Polish Trustees deny poster slanders German MP
The Polish Trustees on Thursday denied libelling a conservative German member of parliament by showing her posing with a Nazi officer and what appears to be a Teutonic Knight in a poster, Poland's PAP news agency reported.

The Polish Trustees is a group opposed to compensating ethnic Germans who fled or were expelled from Polish territory after the Second World War.

It was created to counter the activities of German organisations called the Union of Expellees and the Prussian Trustees.

The Polish Trustees poster depicts conservative German legislator Erika Steinbach, head the Union of Expellees, standing along side a Second World War Nazi officer and what appears to be a Teutonic Knight.

A quote attributed to Nazi German Dictator Adolf Hitler is also emblazoned on the poster.

The controversial Polish Trustees published the poster to protest celebrations planned this month by German expellees commemorating their homelands prior to the Second World War on what is now Polish territory.

Memo to the Union of Heinie Whiners

There was a war.

Your folks started it.

The Allies finished it.

You're still losers.

Deal with it.

Photo credit/Powiernictwo Polskie

UPDATE: The Spoils Of War