My Slovak grandparents got out before WWI. We should all be thankful as Americans that we don't have to choose between such horrific evils.

In answer to Steve: The fact is that you have no choice between such evils, because you are facing a mob that is totally uncontrolled. But what makes me even sadder, is the fact that after the horror we experienced under the Hitler regime, these victorious liberators arriving from the East trumped and escalated the transgressions against mankind a hundredfold. A German was considered unprotected by any law and you could do to him anything you wished. Let me tell you that "shooting people" was the mildest form of getting transported out of this world against all those other bestialities committed which I do not want to touch here, because they are too horrible. They are graphically explained in the witness reports which were promptly buried in the Bonn archives for 50 years. There was no differentiation made if you were a Nazi supporter or not. It was enough for you to speak the German language. We did not have dark skin, like some Americans here, and who were also discriminated against, so they gave us a white arm band to wear. If you read the events at Prague of May 1945, where from each lamppost along the street a body dangled wearing a uniform, you will understand the total incredibility of it all. Even the whipping of naked German women through the streets was “mild” in comparison what “else” has happened there. Luckily, we lived not at Prague, but in the Egerland, more to the West, and the presence of US troops protected us from such immediate onslaught. Nevertheless people were kicked out of their homes in the middle of the night with nothing to wear but their bedclothes and sat in front of the door of their locked front door with everything you needed, held dear or knew, firmly locked behind. Considering the bodily and material harm done to nearly 16 Million Germans who were displaced and pressed into a bombed out Germany, we also noticed that an amazing time of immediate rebuilding had started with so many more hands available. There was a lot of rubble with usable building material in it, there was no food, but in the fires we built to keep warm, a potato found a way into the ashes from time to time. Everyone knew that there was no other way to go but “up”… we were so low, that it was not possible to sink any lower. Personal cleanliness was difficult, but suddenly more important than when we had bathtubs, and while wearing rags, singing songs, reciting poetry and talking about art, or even artfully stacking up the bricks we had cleaned, it all became a motivator to bring in a “new time.” Not one of us would steal from the other, ever! As one and all we HURT an incredible hurt, which you cannot imagine. You cannot imagine the unbridled venom hurled at us who grieved in shame, feeling impotent and full of agonizing injustice. Was there anyone in the world who cared for us? We were at rock bottom; there was not one step lower than this. If you read the witness reports, you will understand what it has cost the Expellees to declare their Charta to the world and to refrain from any kind of retaliation of so much injustice for the sake of peace. And unless we can learn from this, unless we stop looking at others as inferiors or as hateful objects, our humankind will not have learned a single thing from their past. As long the ugly head of greed, self aggrandizement, racial, national or religious opinion is raised setting one man against the other there is no hope for humankind. But if we have learned something from these times, if we reach out to others who do not think as we do, if we motivate our opponents to pull on the same strings to preserve our commonly needful earth environment, then the bonds of all differences will fall like shackles from our limbs. BECAUSE going to war solves NOTHING! Not in the past, not now, and not ever! The words of our Charta by the Expellees after WW2 should be read by all! Aida Link to witness reports – read No. 62 http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/whitebook/desg00.html Words of Charta: http://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de/derbdv/charta-en.php3 On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 6:56 AM, Steve Felten <[email protected]>wrote: > My Slovak grandparents got out before WWI. We should all be thankful as > Americans that we don't have to choose between such horrific evils. > > German-Bohemian Heritage Society web site http://www.rootsweb.com/~gbhs/ > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >