Tragedy of Silesia

TRAGODIE SCHLESIENS 1945-46 IN DOKUMENTEN (Cluistus Unterwegs' Publishing Co., Munchen, 1952-53).
Resiewed by C. E. Robin
uNTIL the Russian invasion of Eastern Germany in 1945, Silesia had been substantially a German land for centuries, belonging in turn to Austria and Prussia; and when the boundaries of Poland were settled in 1919, no claim to Silesia was made by the leaders of Poland. E11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111i However a plebiscite was organised, and in spite of a majority for Germany, two-fifths of Silesia were given to Poland in 1925. The remaining portion of Silesia was, under the Archbishop of Breslau, an integral part of German Catholicism until the fortunes of war brought it into the line of Russian advance early in 1945. The work recently published by "Christus Unterwegs" tells for the first time as a whole the story of the ensuing tragedy. Its first stage is the story of the invasion and Russian occupation in the earls' months of 1945. Then came the transfer. to Polish control : the Russian and Polish Governments had decided, prior to any peace treaty, to present the world with the fait arrnmpli of a Silesia Polish up to the Rivers Oder and Neisse; the Polish occupation militia plundered the inhabitants of whatever the Russians had left them and forced them to penury by refusing to recognise German currency. And then came the expulsions of Germans to the West : beginning before the Potsdam Agreement, such expulsions were carried on with greater ruthlessness afterwards, although the Potsdam Agreement did not envisage the expulsion of Germans from areas not already recognised as permanently part of Poland. THE main portion of the book con sists of 196 personal accounts of the occupation and the trek to the West. These are in many cases offered by priests; whatever criticisms might be made of one such report, the succession of 196 from all parts of Silesia affords a body of evidence of facts which cannot he denied. In any case the final result is certain : there are more than 1,600,000 Silesians in West Germany : whatever these have managed to do by way of resettling themselves, they do not cease to regard Silesia as their home. Silesia was not a district which showed any special enthusiasm for National Socialism, and an attempt to estimate the degree of responsibility for historical events in a Europe dominated by brutality and cynicism is useless. As the Pope (Pius XII in a letter to the German Bishops dated March 1, 1948) states, the expulsion of German populations from their homes is without parallel in the past story of Europe. It will be for history to pass judgment upon it. and it is to be expected that its judgment will not be anything but severe. The work now published will be one of the essential records of this criminal act, and its publication reminds us that the question of Germany's Eastern frontiers may perhaps be regarded as closed by the politicians, but is not regarded as closed by the people who have been deprived of their homes.