Paul Fromm of cafe@canadafirst.net wrote the following article about Ann Morrison, the producer of The Forgotten Genocide documentary, which will be screened at Mt. Angel September 18th 2010. - Rosina TORONTO. June 25, 2010. American film maker Ann Morrison was in Toronto, June 24-25, filming interviews for an ambitious seven-film series to tell the story of the 16-million Germans ethnically cleansed from their traditional homelands (the Sudetenland, East Prussia, Memeland, Silesia, parts of the Ukraine, parts of Russia, northern Yugoslavia, southern Hungary and western Romania) from 1944 to 1950. Three million of the expellees were murdered; hundreds of thousands were gang raped, a matter of policy by communist Russian soldiers. Mrs. Morrison points out that she's not of German descent but actually grew up in a Polish family and community. Her film making began as a school project at St. Louis Community College. A communications assignment asked her to do an interview with someone in the community with an interesting life story. Chance led her to a Danube Schwabian (Donauschwaben) woman. Mrs. Morrison had never heard of these people who had settled in northern Yugoslavia, southern Hungary and western Romania in the middle of the 18 century after the Turkish invaders had been driven out. Austrian Empress Maria Theresa recruited German farmers to settle and develop the devastated and near empty land. Over the next two centuries, the Danube Schwabians became prosperous farmers and tradesmen. Tito's communists began a mass ethnic cleansing in 1945, killing or expelling nearly half a million ethnic Germans. One woman's story hooked Ann Morrison. Now, she was on an mission. One interview led to another, she told the monthly meeting of the Alternative Forum Friday night.. About 20 per cent of the surviving Danube Schwabians live in the U.S. Midwest, she said. She soon had interviews with 14 survivors and two historians. These interviews were woven together to produce her first film The Forgotten Genocide, which was first screened in St. Louis in February, 2010." It has since been seen in 26 states and 9 foreign countries," she explained. The film's premier screening occurred at the "Forgotten Genocide" conference hosted at St. Louis College in February. Now, Ann Morrison is expanding her focus from the Danube Schwabians to the larger issue of the 16 million German expellees. She visited Toronto to conduct interviews with eight expellees from the Toronto area and a prominent historian. More interviews will follow in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticutt later this year. "College students are not shocked that this ethnic cleansing happened," she said of reaction to her film, " but that they had not been told about it. This was the largest expulsion in human history. Yet, I've been to college history departments and they've never heard of it," she explained. 'I developed a booklist of 285 titles on the expulsions. It's now grown to 678 titles. My college, St. Louis Community College (Meramec) now has one of the largest libraries on the hidden genocide." Ann Morrison hopes to have this film finished by March, 2011. Telling the story of the expellees, she says, "is all consuming. It will probably be my life's work for the next 10-15 years," she told her packed Toronto audience.