This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/3EC.2ACE/647.1 Message Board Post: Good question. I hope most of my distant cousins got out of the "Polish Corridor" before the bloodshed started in WW II. This Corridor was part of Germany until the Versailles Treaty gave it to Poland. The history of land borders shifted goes back further in time though. The people of German descent in the Polish Corridor where in a precarious position. My ancestors lived in this area, including Zempleburg and Vandsburg (now Wiecborc) in the north (in Flatow/Zlotow Province) to Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz) to the south -- all more or less around the Netze River basin. They came to Wisconsin in the mid- to late-1800's. My Internet research reveals that thousands of people of German descent died at the hands of the Polish government. Their only crime was that they had German ethnicity. Bloody Sunday in Bromberg in 1939 was particularly horrifying. You can find a lot of information on the Internet but, beware, some of it is graphic and some of it is of questionable accuracy. The fact that there was a massacre of Germans in Poland is not in dispute. The number of casualties is debated, and some neo-Nazi web sites use this incident to argue that the Polish government started WW II and not the Germans. WW II started on Sept. 3, 1939, two days after Hitler sent troops into Poland. The Bloody Sunday slaughter of Germans in Bromberg occurred on the same day. People debate which came first -- Hitler's attack or the attack on Germans in Poland. Either way, both governments were murderous. What disturbs me the most is that I see victims with surnames I recognize in Marquette Co. Germans hid in the homes of Polish friends as they tried to to escape the genocide attempt, but many weren't able to get away. Until I did this research, I didn't realize that the Polish government was conducting a form of genocide that was not unlike was the Germans did. Thank goodness my ancestors came to America when they did.