Expelled From Among the Living (German Expellees)

Newsletter 2010/02/24 - Expelled From Among the Living

BERLIN/MUNICH (Own report) - A study on the history of the German League of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen - BdV) financed by the German government is relativizing the Nazi-activities of former "expellee" functionaries, according to the conservative German daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The newspaper writes that some of the arguments used in this study, examining the Nazi-past of high level representatives of organizations of the relocated, could "put Heinrich Himmler's basic national socialist conviction into question." The study was made by the Institute of Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte - IfZ) and is being kept under lock and key. The institute is relativizing the study's importance and has declared that it is merely a "feasibility study". The study's author is in contact with "Germandom"-organizations in countries to the east of Germany. The historian Manfred Kittel had procured the assignment to prepare the study, writes the FAZ. Manfred Kittel is director of the "Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation," which is organizing a permanent exhibition in Berlin on the theme of "flight and expulsion". His scientific work came under heavy criticism already in the 1990s.

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http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56324