| The Expulsion of Ethnic Germans: An Overview |
Agreeing to Stalin's murderous plans to uproot both Poles and Germans, Churchill said in the House
of Commons in 1944: "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be
the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble. A
clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences." In November 1944, President
Franklin Roosevelt agreed, and chief advisors to both Roosevelt and Churchill argued for a solution
to the "German problem" as calculated and as chilling as Stalin's.
Aside from countless German civilians who fled in advance of the Red Army and were bombed,
drowned or shot at, since the British and Americans agreed at Yalta to redraw historic German
borders, they abetted, authorized and encouraged the deportation of millions of ethnic German
civilians and gave to vengeance-fueled communist governments the power for who, where and how
these citizens would be deported, a power which would inevitably be greatly abused.
Chaos, kidnapping, rape, thievery and mass murder were the order of the day. Poles, Czechs and
others, with the assistance of the Red Army, sometimes gave the populations of whole German
villages only minutes to vacate their homes. The Germans were either collected by force or ordered
to gather at a central location where selected individuals were ripped from the group and beaten,
executed, or dragged off for slave labor in a ruthless process which even tore children from their
mothers' arms. The evicted Germans were methodically stripped of their most personal and dearest
possessions before being taken to train stations where they were indecently prodded for hidden
valuables, shoved aboard cars without adequate food, water or sanitation facilities, and speedily
shipped to occupation zones in Germany where they were simply dumped. Others were forced to
walk hundreds of miles to destinations which were often in rubble, and few of them reached these
destinations with even a handbag left in their possession. Many died on the roadside from disease,
exposure or starvation. Forbidden to ever return home, all of their worldly goods were confiscated.
But many never made it to a home in Germany. Thousands were deported for forced labor in the
USSR after Secret Order 7161 of 1944 issued by USSR State Defense Committee made possible the
internment of all adult Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.
About ten per cent of the victims died just in the course of transportation to Russia as a result of
hunger, murder and cold.
Half of the so-called 'repatriated displaced persons' died in camps, one of the worst being the Kolyma
Camp. The numbers of deaths and expulsions sky-rocketed at war's end. In the USSR, over 75% of
German civilian slaves worked the mines in Ukraine and 11% worked in the Urals. By 1946, out of
the German "arrested internees", 39% died, and of 875,000 other German civilians who were
abducted and transported to the camps, over 50% perished.
Labor camps for Germans existed not only in the Soviet Union, but in almost all the regions from
which Germans were displaced, the last ones not being closed until 1950. In Poland and areas under
Polish administration, there were 1,255 camps: 6,048 out of about 8,000 people died in Lamsdorf
camp alone. In Czechoslovakia, 2,061 camps existed: in the Mährisch-Ostrau camp around 350
people were tortured to death by early July 1945. In Yugoslavia, there were gruesome death camps:
the Red Cross found 1,562 camps and prisons there. By May of 1945, practically all of the Yugoslav
Germans who did not flee in time were living and dying in camps.
The standard, unrevised estimates which have stood for sixty years say that between 1945 and 1950,
from 11,730,000 to 15,000,000 German civilians fled and/or were expelled from the eastern
territories of Germany proper and from the Eastern European countries. Other estimates were much
higher. "Population transfers", from highest to lowest, were from former eastern Germany, then
Czechoslovakia next, then Poland, Danzig, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, the Baltic states and,
lastly, the USSR. And besides the forced expulsion and murder of millions of these people, at least
another 3.1 million simply "disappeared" during the expulsion/liquidation process.
But figures do not tell the story. They are not only untrustworthy, they are inconsequential. The
consistent "debates" which take place over mere numbers and petty statistics serve only to deflect
attention from the real issue: the intentional persecution of innocent people, whether they be one
thousand or fifteen million, and a wrong which history has thus far not set right.
Even after a murderous bombing campaign eliminated a large part of their population, five times as
many Germans, both civilians and soldiers, perished in the first year after World War Two than died
during the course of the entire war. They died at the hands of others directly as a result of revenge
policies inflicted upon a thoroughly dehumanized enemy: exile, murder, forced "atonement" marches,
freezing, starvation and slave labor; 15 to 20 million homeless people, many half insane from shock
and grief, wandered amid rotting human bodies dotting the bleak roadsides and paper thin orphans
aimlessly navigating through the charred and broken remnants of mercilessly bombed cities. These
sights of post-war Germany and Austria are seldom or never shown by the mainstream media.
Roosevelt and Churchill had eagerly agreed to Stalin's genocidal policies, and in the aftermath of war
it was the innocent who paid the price. Within Eastern German regions which were hacked up and
turned over to the communists, "liberation" led to enslavement for decades. Subjected to brutal
policies calculated to break their will, thousands upon thousands of innocent people were murdered,
oppressed or tortured. "Crimes" such as singing an old regional folk song could be punishable by
prison, and the brutality used to obliterate "nationalism" extended to executions, prison or life in the
far away gulag. Many people simply disappeared. Those who didn't comply with the degrading
re-education process inflicted by their new communist masters were enemies of the state.
The Allied Control Council had worked out procedures in advance for taking into the occupied
territory 6,650,000 "racial Germans" who were among those they expected to be expelled from
Poland, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia under their plans. The US zone's share was to be
1,750,000 from the Sudetenland and 500,000 from Hungary. They were scheduled to come at a rate
of a quarter million a month in December, January, and February of 1945 and even larger numbers
in the spring. But they came at greater rates, and the Allies were in no way prepared or eager to deal
with the situation humanely.
Since 25 percent of former German farmland had been given to Poland, food was scarce in Germany
after the war, and there was already a disastrous famine in the many urban areas where refugees
were dumped. The Allies were not letting food through yet. Health and medical services could not
possibly handle the additional millions of starving, homeless and ill German refugees. Half of the
children under a year old died during the first months in cities like Berlin. By the summer of 1945,
20,000 weak, confused, hungry and homeless people were dying every day, their bodies piling up on
roadsides, by train tracks and in empty fields. When winter arrived, the Allies relented and finally
allowed some private international relief agencies to provide food and clothing, but it was far too late
for many. At the peak of the expulsions in July of 1946, 14,400 people a day were still being dumped
over the devastated and famished frontier into an equally devastated and famished Germany which
had been reduced to a smaller size than it was in the 11th century.
Those Germans unable to leave their old homelands were herded up and executed or beaten, raped
and robbed of what few possessions they had left by a variety of predators. Germans were forbidden
to have money and soon found themselves starving and subjected to bitter reprisals all the while. In
communist-occupied Koburg, 3/4 of the people were dead by starvation by the spring of 1947, and
over in Allied-occupied Kleve, more than twice as many civilians died in a British Camp than during
the whole war, most from hunger and starvation. The children died like flies of diseases such as
Diphtheria which ran rampant. The greatest deaths were reported in the Neumark area in Eastern
Brandenburg. Out of a 644,834 pre-war population, by 1945 there were 257,000 dead. Out of sheer
desperation, people all over Germany shot themselves, hanged themselves, drowned themselves,
poisoned themselves and even killed their entire families and themselves.
of Commons in 1944: "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be
the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble. A
clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences." In November 1944, President
Franklin Roosevelt agreed, and chief advisors to both Roosevelt and Churchill argued for a solution
to the "German problem" as calculated and as chilling as Stalin's.
Aside from countless German civilians who fled in advance of the Red Army and were bombed,
drowned or shot at, since the British and Americans agreed at Yalta to redraw historic German
borders, they abetted, authorized and encouraged the deportation of millions of ethnic German
civilians and gave to vengeance-fueled communist governments the power for who, where and how
these citizens would be deported, a power which would inevitably be greatly abused.
Chaos, kidnapping, rape, thievery and mass murder were the order of the day. Poles, Czechs and
others, with the assistance of the Red Army, sometimes gave the populations of whole German
villages only minutes to vacate their homes. The Germans were either collected by force or ordered
to gather at a central location where selected individuals were ripped from the group and beaten,
executed, or dragged off for slave labor in a ruthless process which even tore children from their
mothers' arms. The evicted Germans were methodically stripped of their most personal and dearest
possessions before being taken to train stations where they were indecently prodded for hidden
valuables, shoved aboard cars without adequate food, water or sanitation facilities, and speedily
shipped to occupation zones in Germany where they were simply dumped. Others were forced to
walk hundreds of miles to destinations which were often in rubble, and few of them reached these
destinations with even a handbag left in their possession. Many died on the roadside from disease,
exposure or starvation. Forbidden to ever return home, all of their worldly goods were confiscated.
But many never made it to a home in Germany. Thousands were deported for forced labor in the
USSR after Secret Order 7161 of 1944 issued by USSR State Defense Committee made possible the
internment of all adult Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.
About ten per cent of the victims died just in the course of transportation to Russia as a result of
hunger, murder and cold.
Half of the so-called 'repatriated displaced persons' died in camps, one of the worst being the Kolyma
Camp. The numbers of deaths and expulsions sky-rocketed at war's end. In the USSR, over 75% of
German civilian slaves worked the mines in Ukraine and 11% worked in the Urals. By 1946, out of
the German "arrested internees", 39% died, and of 875,000 other German civilians who were
abducted and transported to the camps, over 50% perished.
Labor camps for Germans existed not only in the Soviet Union, but in almost all the regions from
which Germans were displaced, the last ones not being closed until 1950. In Poland and areas under
Polish administration, there were 1,255 camps: 6,048 out of about 8,000 people died in Lamsdorf
camp alone. In Czechoslovakia, 2,061 camps existed: in the Mährisch-Ostrau camp around 350
people were tortured to death by early July 1945. In Yugoslavia, there were gruesome death camps:
the Red Cross found 1,562 camps and prisons there. By May of 1945, practically all of the Yugoslav
Germans who did not flee in time were living and dying in camps.
The standard, unrevised estimates which have stood for sixty years say that between 1945 and 1950,
from 11,730,000 to 15,000,000 German civilians fled and/or were expelled from the eastern
territories of Germany proper and from the Eastern European countries. Other estimates were much
higher. "Population transfers", from highest to lowest, were from former eastern Germany, then
Czechoslovakia next, then Poland, Danzig, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, the Baltic states and,
lastly, the USSR. And besides the forced expulsion and murder of millions of these people, at least
another 3.1 million simply "disappeared" during the expulsion/liquidation process.
But figures do not tell the story. They are not only untrustworthy, they are inconsequential. The
consistent "debates" which take place over mere numbers and petty statistics serve only to deflect
attention from the real issue: the intentional persecution of innocent people, whether they be one
thousand or fifteen million, and a wrong which history has thus far not set right.
Even after a murderous bombing campaign eliminated a large part of their population, five times as
many Germans, both civilians and soldiers, perished in the first year after World War Two than died
during the course of the entire war. They died at the hands of others directly as a result of revenge
policies inflicted upon a thoroughly dehumanized enemy: exile, murder, forced "atonement" marches,
freezing, starvation and slave labor; 15 to 20 million homeless people, many half insane from shock
and grief, wandered amid rotting human bodies dotting the bleak roadsides and paper thin orphans
aimlessly navigating through the charred and broken remnants of mercilessly bombed cities. These
sights of post-war Germany and Austria are seldom or never shown by the mainstream media.
Roosevelt and Churchill had eagerly agreed to Stalin's genocidal policies, and in the aftermath of war
it was the innocent who paid the price. Within Eastern German regions which were hacked up and
turned over to the communists, "liberation" led to enslavement for decades. Subjected to brutal
policies calculated to break their will, thousands upon thousands of innocent people were murdered,
oppressed or tortured. "Crimes" such as singing an old regional folk song could be punishable by
prison, and the brutality used to obliterate "nationalism" extended to executions, prison or life in the
far away gulag. Many people simply disappeared. Those who didn't comply with the degrading
re-education process inflicted by their new communist masters were enemies of the state.
The Allied Control Council had worked out procedures in advance for taking into the occupied
territory 6,650,000 "racial Germans" who were among those they expected to be expelled from
Poland, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia under their plans. The US zone's share was to be
1,750,000 from the Sudetenland and 500,000 from Hungary. They were scheduled to come at a rate
of a quarter million a month in December, January, and February of 1945 and even larger numbers
in the spring. But they came at greater rates, and the Allies were in no way prepared or eager to deal
with the situation humanely.
Since 25 percent of former German farmland had been given to Poland, food was scarce in Germany
after the war, and there was already a disastrous famine in the many urban areas where refugees
were dumped. The Allies were not letting food through yet. Health and medical services could not
possibly handle the additional millions of starving, homeless and ill German refugees. Half of the
children under a year old died during the first months in cities like Berlin. By the summer of 1945,
20,000 weak, confused, hungry and homeless people were dying every day, their bodies piling up on
roadsides, by train tracks and in empty fields. When winter arrived, the Allies relented and finally
allowed some private international relief agencies to provide food and clothing, but it was far too late
for many. At the peak of the expulsions in July of 1946, 14,400 people a day were still being dumped
over the devastated and famished frontier into an equally devastated and famished Germany which
had been reduced to a smaller size than it was in the 11th century.
Those Germans unable to leave their old homelands were herded up and executed or beaten, raped
and robbed of what few possessions they had left by a variety of predators. Germans were forbidden
to have money and soon found themselves starving and subjected to bitter reprisals all the while. In
communist-occupied Koburg, 3/4 of the people were dead by starvation by the spring of 1947, and
over in Allied-occupied Kleve, more than twice as many civilians died in a British Camp than during
the whole war, most from hunger and starvation. The children died like flies of diseases such as
Diphtheria which ran rampant. The greatest deaths were reported in the Neumark area in Eastern
Brandenburg. Out of a 644,834 pre-war population, by 1945 there were 257,000 dead. Out of sheer
desperation, people all over Germany shot themselves, hanged themselves, drowned themselves,
poisoned themselves and even killed their entire families and themselves.
"Since the end of the war about 3,000,000 people, mostly women and children and overaged men,
have been killed in eastern Germany and south-eastern Europe; about 15,000,000 people have been
deported or had to flee from their homesteads and are on the road. About 25 per cent of these
people, over 3,000,000 have died. About 4,000,000 men and women have been deported to eastern
Europe and Russia as slaves. It seems that the elimination of the German population of eastern
Europe - at least 15,000,000 people - was planned in accordance with decisions made at Yalta."
Senator Homer Capehart in a speech before U.S. Senate, Feb. 5, 1946.
The story of the expulsion of Eastern European Germans, which ended close to 1,000 years of
German presence in areas now considered to be parts of Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and
other Eastern European states, has not been fairly regarded as the epochal event that it was: the most
horrendous ethnic cleansing in the history of the world and one which changed the ethnic face of
Europe. The expulsions resulted in the largest exchange of population in European history and were
the result of three undeniably predominant factors: Greed, politics and revenge.
A generation is dying or already dead, a generation of human beings who hold in their hearts and
minds the memory of being violently torn from a cherished homeland and subjected to barbarities
few of us can even imagine. They bore witness to catastrophic and untold hardships which we are
forbidden from referring to as genocide. Soon, their voices will be silent. Alone, the expulsion of
millions of Prussian Germans between 1944 and 1947 was accomplished in an immensely sinister
manner, yet it is an event that has been ignored, minimized or rationalized by the mainstream media.
Most countries which once had a substantial ethnic German presence no longer do. Entire ethnic
German cities and regions vanished in the aftermath of World War Two. When Stalin promised a
"modest reduction in the German Population" to Churchill and Roosevelt, his homicidal plans were
greeted with a wink and a nod, and that goal was accomplished with lethal zeal. Although, as in the
case with mortality figures from Allied bombing, the number of victims is relentlessly downsized,
these violent expulsions displaced and murdered millions of innocents in any case.
have been killed in eastern Germany and south-eastern Europe; about 15,000,000 people have been
deported or had to flee from their homesteads and are on the road. About 25 per cent of these
people, over 3,000,000 have died. About 4,000,000 men and women have been deported to eastern
Europe and Russia as slaves. It seems that the elimination of the German population of eastern
Europe - at least 15,000,000 people - was planned in accordance with decisions made at Yalta."
Senator Homer Capehart in a speech before U.S. Senate, Feb. 5, 1946.
The story of the expulsion of Eastern European Germans, which ended close to 1,000 years of
German presence in areas now considered to be parts of Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and
other Eastern European states, has not been fairly regarded as the epochal event that it was: the most
horrendous ethnic cleansing in the history of the world and one which changed the ethnic face of
Europe. The expulsions resulted in the largest exchange of population in European history and were
the result of three undeniably predominant factors: Greed, politics and revenge.
A generation is dying or already dead, a generation of human beings who hold in their hearts and
minds the memory of being violently torn from a cherished homeland and subjected to barbarities
few of us can even imagine. They bore witness to catastrophic and untold hardships which we are
forbidden from referring to as genocide. Soon, their voices will be silent. Alone, the expulsion of
millions of Prussian Germans between 1944 and 1947 was accomplished in an immensely sinister
manner, yet it is an event that has been ignored, minimized or rationalized by the mainstream media.
Most countries which once had a substantial ethnic German presence no longer do. Entire ethnic
German cities and regions vanished in the aftermath of World War Two. When Stalin promised a
"modest reduction in the German Population" to Churchill and Roosevelt, his homicidal plans were
greeted with a wink and a nod, and that goal was accomplished with lethal zeal. Although, as in the
case with mortality figures from Allied bombing, the number of victims is relentlessly downsized,
these violent expulsions displaced and murdered millions of innocents in any case.
| Refugees in the Eastern Cities after the War: One City's Story |
The refugee problem was of a momentous proportion and what took place in Leipzig is typical of
many eastern cities. Thousands of wandering refugees at war's end faced hunger, illness, confusion,
injury and emotional trauma. Families having lost their homes and farms were split up and scattered
into unfamiliar areas, children were torn from their mother's arms and fathers and sons were missing
or dead. Refugees with friends or relatives to rely upon were lucky if they had the capacity to make
the journey and if their contacts were still alive and in surviving houses themselves. Others faced
long stays in crowded, harsh refugee camps. The plight of the desperate refugees began first with a
severe shortage of housing. From the year 1943, thousands of Leipzig houses had been damaged or
destroyed by Allied bombing.
Of 221,178 dwellings, 28,178 were completely destroyed and 93,000 were damaged, thus 20 per
cent of the native Leipzig inhabitants had become homeless themselves and had to be
accommodated in the dwellings of others or in emergency shelters and camps. Sizable buildings still
standing, such as the university, were seized, and the evacuation of a large number of dwellings was
demanded, but it was not enough. The old Leipzig mansions were also seized, but proved impractical
for conversion. There was not only a housing crisis, but an absence of urgently needed clothing,
food, furnishings as well as a lack of furnaces, fuel and cooking stoves.
The first refugee camps in Leipzig developed in January, 1945 when Central Germany was affected
for the first time by the escape waves of people fleeing East Prussia. Later, exiled Silesian and
Sudeten Germans flocked to cities for help. They were put up in private homes, zoos, high schools,
auditoriums and restaurants. Americans were greeted in Leipzig on April 18, 1945 with white flags.
Nobody realized at the time that they had been "sold out" to the Red Army. The Allies immediately
issued regulations that, among other things, imposed curfews and closing hours and forbade the
publication of newspapers and the use of cameras, which were confiscated. Under the Americans,
bread rations for the population was only 200 grams for young people, 170 grams for adults and 100
grams for children
The refugees, created by Allied bombing and Allied policies set at Yalta, were starving. As the
Americans prepared to leave July 2, 1945 and the end of their occupation, Leipzigers were stunned
when a message that Russian troops were in the advance arrived. Indeed, they were in the city the
next day. Because of the two zones of occupation, traditional supply lines to Leipzig had been cut
off and the infrastructure was destroyed per day.
Conditions worsened in the entire Soviet zone of occupation until a uniform food map system was
inserted much later, which consisted of categories. The assignment of the food maps was graduated
mainly by work status, so non-laboring housewives and pensioners had a diet containing neither fat
nor meat. Among the refugees, there were many old people and women who, because they had to
supply small children, were exempted from the forced work details and therefore had very little to
eat. A “dwelling law” put forth by the temporary Allied occupation forces had decreed that "victims
of fascism" and immigrant workers were to be given first preference to housing and the needy
second preference, while the refugees did not even rank among the groups privileged by the law!
Average floor space was calculated for eight square meters per person, with children under fourteen
years old ranked as "half a human" by the Americans, who were given strict orders to destroy or
otherwise render inedible their own leftover surplus so as to ensure it could not be eaten by German
civilians, a policy in US zones throughout all of Germany.
Within the Soviet zone of occupation, some refugees were sent over the borders, resulting in strong
objection from adjacent provinces who were battling their own refugee crisis. Usually the
neighboring authorities sent the refugees back to Saxony, some numerous times, ostensibly to
prevent the spread of epidemic disease. This resulted in even more trauma for the exhausted
refugees. When the surrounding frontier was closed, certain cities such as Leipzig were subjected to
the in-pouring of thousands of frightened and weary human beings who had accumulated in the area.
Where would they live? How would they eat? This was a terrible problem all across devastated
German lands.
A decree was issued on August 2, 1945 prohibiting the further influx of refugees, and on August 7th,
the Leipzig welfare office suggested that any future refugees should receive accommodation of only
one night in the Leipzig transit camp. The Red Cross tried to supply these people with at least with
one warm meal and bread and jam for their forthcoming travels. Some refugees walked aimlessly for
months in hunger, pain and confusion. Typhus broke out and there was a malaria epidemic in the
damp Leipzig camps from 1945-49 where some refugees languished in old, swampy prison camps.
The forlorn refugees were afflicted with scourges such as lice, ringworm, bedbugs and transmittable
diseases, while the formerly rich and the once poor struggled together for survival. The whole social
order had broken down with nothing of substance to replace it and lift the sagging spirits and weary
bodies. Stress, grief, illness and pain took a devastating toll, especially in the very young and aged.
One of the linguistic rulings of the Communist regime turned the refugees into "re-settlers," and after
the establishment of a central administration for "re-settlers" at the end of September, 1945, efforts
were undertaken to end the chaotic situation in Saxony and to settle thousands of refugees in a more
orderly manner. To enforce this, a halt was called to refugee movements from October 1, 1945.
At the same time, the naturalization of all refugees in Saxony was arranged. For the city of Leipzig
this meant naturalization of almost 28,000 additional people during a time of incredible hardship for
everyone. Worse was to come. The “arranged evacuation” of the remaining Germans who were
forced out of their homes in Poland and Czechoslovakia began in summer, 1946, and turned a crisis
into a calamity. Saxony alone was assigned 400,000 more refugees. Since most refugees came in the
last months of the year, winter was already upon them and many wanted to remain in the camps
where, despite disadvantages, at least there was heat and meagre food.
Churchill's final solution to the German problem was proving deadly. After 1947, another 25,000
people gained admission to Leipzig, and then another 38,000. Leipzig's standard of 8.8 square
meters of floor space had to be lowered. The catastrophic housing conditions caused already
traumatized people to become ill and disabled. Strangers shared housing, and often five or more
persons had to live in one or two rooms without a kitchen and with a continuing shortage of food,
heat, sanitation and private sleeping places. Most refugees had no money. Despite the emergency
housing dilemma, in July, 1947 the Soviet military administration demanded the evacuation of
approximately one thousand dwellings north of the city to be handed for use by Soviet commercial
enterprises.
Only in 1948 was a slow improvement in the living conditions of the refugees finally discerned. Until
the stop of all refugee movements in Leipzig, 71,324 “re-settlers” had gone through the Leipzig
camp. In 1950, more than half of the Leipzigers were still not in their own home, but in officially
assigned dwellings, and 78,000 out of 93,707 refugees still lived in the city. The situation did not
begin to remedy itself until the early 1960s. Information from the State Ministry, Saxony
many eastern cities. Thousands of wandering refugees at war's end faced hunger, illness, confusion,
injury and emotional trauma. Families having lost their homes and farms were split up and scattered
into unfamiliar areas, children were torn from their mother's arms and fathers and sons were missing
or dead. Refugees with friends or relatives to rely upon were lucky if they had the capacity to make
the journey and if their contacts were still alive and in surviving houses themselves. Others faced
long stays in crowded, harsh refugee camps. The plight of the desperate refugees began first with a
severe shortage of housing. From the year 1943, thousands of Leipzig houses had been damaged or
destroyed by Allied bombing.
Of 221,178 dwellings, 28,178 were completely destroyed and 93,000 were damaged, thus 20 per
cent of the native Leipzig inhabitants had become homeless themselves and had to be
accommodated in the dwellings of others or in emergency shelters and camps. Sizable buildings still
standing, such as the university, were seized, and the evacuation of a large number of dwellings was
demanded, but it was not enough. The old Leipzig mansions were also seized, but proved impractical
for conversion. There was not only a housing crisis, but an absence of urgently needed clothing,
food, furnishings as well as a lack of furnaces, fuel and cooking stoves.
The first refugee camps in Leipzig developed in January, 1945 when Central Germany was affected
for the first time by the escape waves of people fleeing East Prussia. Later, exiled Silesian and
Sudeten Germans flocked to cities for help. They were put up in private homes, zoos, high schools,
auditoriums and restaurants. Americans were greeted in Leipzig on April 18, 1945 with white flags.
Nobody realized at the time that they had been "sold out" to the Red Army. The Allies immediately
issued regulations that, among other things, imposed curfews and closing hours and forbade the
publication of newspapers and the use of cameras, which were confiscated. Under the Americans,
bread rations for the population was only 200 grams for young people, 170 grams for adults and 100
grams for children
The refugees, created by Allied bombing and Allied policies set at Yalta, were starving. As the
Americans prepared to leave July 2, 1945 and the end of their occupation, Leipzigers were stunned
when a message that Russian troops were in the advance arrived. Indeed, they were in the city the
next day. Because of the two zones of occupation, traditional supply lines to Leipzig had been cut
off and the infrastructure was destroyed per day.
Conditions worsened in the entire Soviet zone of occupation until a uniform food map system was
inserted much later, which consisted of categories. The assignment of the food maps was graduated
mainly by work status, so non-laboring housewives and pensioners had a diet containing neither fat
nor meat. Among the refugees, there were many old people and women who, because they had to
supply small children, were exempted from the forced work details and therefore had very little to
eat. A “dwelling law” put forth by the temporary Allied occupation forces had decreed that "victims
of fascism" and immigrant workers were to be given first preference to housing and the needy
second preference, while the refugees did not even rank among the groups privileged by the law!
Average floor space was calculated for eight square meters per person, with children under fourteen
years old ranked as "half a human" by the Americans, who were given strict orders to destroy or
otherwise render inedible their own leftover surplus so as to ensure it could not be eaten by German
civilians, a policy in US zones throughout all of Germany.
Within the Soviet zone of occupation, some refugees were sent over the borders, resulting in strong
objection from adjacent provinces who were battling their own refugee crisis. Usually the
neighboring authorities sent the refugees back to Saxony, some numerous times, ostensibly to
prevent the spread of epidemic disease. This resulted in even more trauma for the exhausted
refugees. When the surrounding frontier was closed, certain cities such as Leipzig were subjected to
the in-pouring of thousands of frightened and weary human beings who had accumulated in the area.
Where would they live? How would they eat? This was a terrible problem all across devastated
German lands.
A decree was issued on August 2, 1945 prohibiting the further influx of refugees, and on August 7th,
the Leipzig welfare office suggested that any future refugees should receive accommodation of only
one night in the Leipzig transit camp. The Red Cross tried to supply these people with at least with
one warm meal and bread and jam for their forthcoming travels. Some refugees walked aimlessly for
months in hunger, pain and confusion. Typhus broke out and there was a malaria epidemic in the
damp Leipzig camps from 1945-49 where some refugees languished in old, swampy prison camps.
The forlorn refugees were afflicted with scourges such as lice, ringworm, bedbugs and transmittable
diseases, while the formerly rich and the once poor struggled together for survival. The whole social
order had broken down with nothing of substance to replace it and lift the sagging spirits and weary
bodies. Stress, grief, illness and pain took a devastating toll, especially in the very young and aged.
One of the linguistic rulings of the Communist regime turned the refugees into "re-settlers," and after
the establishment of a central administration for "re-settlers" at the end of September, 1945, efforts
were undertaken to end the chaotic situation in Saxony and to settle thousands of refugees in a more
orderly manner. To enforce this, a halt was called to refugee movements from October 1, 1945.
At the same time, the naturalization of all refugees in Saxony was arranged. For the city of Leipzig
this meant naturalization of almost 28,000 additional people during a time of incredible hardship for
everyone. Worse was to come. The “arranged evacuation” of the remaining Germans who were
forced out of their homes in Poland and Czechoslovakia began in summer, 1946, and turned a crisis
into a calamity. Saxony alone was assigned 400,000 more refugees. Since most refugees came in the
last months of the year, winter was already upon them and many wanted to remain in the camps
where, despite disadvantages, at least there was heat and meagre food.
Churchill's final solution to the German problem was proving deadly. After 1947, another 25,000
people gained admission to Leipzig, and then another 38,000. Leipzig's standard of 8.8 square
meters of floor space had to be lowered. The catastrophic housing conditions caused already
traumatized people to become ill and disabled. Strangers shared housing, and often five or more
persons had to live in one or two rooms without a kitchen and with a continuing shortage of food,
heat, sanitation and private sleeping places. Most refugees had no money. Despite the emergency
housing dilemma, in July, 1947 the Soviet military administration demanded the evacuation of
approximately one thousand dwellings north of the city to be handed for use by Soviet commercial
enterprises.
Only in 1948 was a slow improvement in the living conditions of the refugees finally discerned. Until
the stop of all refugee movements in Leipzig, 71,324 “re-settlers” had gone through the Leipzig
camp. In 1950, more than half of the Leipzigers were still not in their own home, but in officially
assigned dwellings, and 78,000 out of 93,707 refugees still lived in the city. The situation did not
begin to remedy itself until the early 1960s. Information from the State Ministry, Saxony