Expellee Politics

Abstract

Arrival in Germany did not end the refugees’ and expellees’ ordeal. For those who were pushed across the borders in the ‘wild’ expulsions of the immediate post-war months, the best that could be said was that the absolute worst was over, there being no further threat to life and limb. A German doctor who worked in a collection camp felt that the ‘people had gone through too many terrible things, so they were happy to escape from the Czech hell… They had nothing more to lose, but had already lost everything and could only gain. Regardless of what life might bring in the future, it could not be worse than what they had lived through here.’¹ However degrading the experience of being housed in hastily built and overcrowded camps was, ‘at least instead of hunger and fear there was now hope and even the entitlement to food rations’.² The bulk of the expellees were able to wait in their homes until it was their turn to be ‘transferred’ in trains provided by the Czechoslovak rail system to the American or Soviet occupation zones. As their eviction took place under comparatively less traumatic conditions (they could use decent washing facilities on arrival, were given physical examinations, were deloused, received medical care if needed and were provided with food), the shock of ‘forced assimilation’ did not immediately follow ‘forced resettlement’.³