Die Welt

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced a plan to erect a commemorative monument in Berlin to ethnic Germans expelled from their historic homelands in eastern Europe. She made the announcement at a ceremony in Berlin to mark the 50th anniversary of the League of German Expellees.

Chancellor Merkel also assured her listeners that this would be done in dialogue with Germany’s eastern neighbours, who have sharply criticised the establishment seven years ago of the "Zentrum Gegen Vertreibungen", a memorial foundation which campaigns against mass expulsions of populations.

The tragic fate of the German expellees was "part of our German identity and of our cultural memory" she emphasised. This must be done with conscious regard to the barbaric crimes which were committed in the name of Germany. "We do not confuse cause and effect in remembering the expulsions and the impact it had on the victims".

The President of the League of German Expellees Erika Steinbach had previously stated that the establishment of a documentation centre in Berlin was, after 60 years, long overdue, and had criticised the fact that the visible monument announced by the Government was not yet in prospect. But she knew that work on the project was being pushed forward. This would help create "a true and complete German and European historical perspective"

Chancellor Merkel paid tribute in her speech to the efforts to integrate the expellees. The League of German Expellees, she continued, had issued in 1950 a unique Charter at Stuttgart in that they renounced revenge and the use of force. Herself born in East Germany the Chancellor noted the contrast to the Federal Republic, in that no welfare and cultural associations for expellees had been allowed in the former East Germany, and the history of the flight and expulsion of the Germans had simply been ignored.

In her review of history Frau Steinbach also paid tribute to the contribution of the League of German Expellees to peace and understanding. She also confirmed that the League was willing to conduct research into its own history, in view of repeated accusations that a disproportionate number of its leadership during the post-war period had been tainted with Nazi associations.

Fifteen million Germans were expelled from their homelands in eastern Europe. Eight million settled in West Germany, and four million in what was to become the German Democratic Republic. The League of German Expellees acts as a body to represent the interests of the interests of expellees, evacuees and those who were resettled later to the west.

Dieter Graumann, the Vice President of the Central Council of German Jews, called on the League of German Expellees to break with its "unsavoury tradition" of "drawing moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the expulsion of the Germans and of treating them as comparable". In an interview with Netzeitung he also expressed the hope that the League would formally drop all claims on Germany’s eastern neighbours. Ulla Jelpke of the Left accused the League of downplaying fascism and presenting perpetrators as victims. "We’ve had enough of fifty years of revanchism" she said.

In a morning broadcast on the ZDV television channel Frau Steinbach confirmed her willingness "to work constructively for a Europe in which peoples live together in peace" in which borders in Europe would naturally be recognised. Referring to the "Zentrum Gegen Vertreibungen" which is the subject of controversy in Poland, she stated her belief that "our Polish neighbours would do us a great favour by dealing openly with this subject and by entering into dialogue with us".

Bundestag Member Hartmut Koschyk told an Osnabruck newspaper that the change of government in Warsaw would make it easier to discuss the matter with Polish representatives.