Quote:
Originally Posted by Voland
I am not that easy to offend, don´t worry 
And I have no problem with old people celebrating traditions that will be gone with them.
But a group of former expellees and their descendants is missing in the discussion. Those that have never seen themselves represented by the Landmannschaften ( like my grandma). Those that directly after 1990 tried to build bridges to their former home countries without silly claims of compensation or return, initiated sister city and town agreements, student exchanges, cultural tours and by that helped enormously to reduce mistrust and paved the way to what you so eagerly and completely correct describe : All those countries united in the EU. I am happy to say that my grandma has found a huge field of activity in that in her later years and was able to return many times to her parents house, with whose modern owners my family is still friends. I was just recently able to visit it with my girlfriend and we were sipping hungarian wine in the dining room that my grandmother had to flee in a winters night in 1945 , also leaving the furniture that we were using behind.
The house is in the Hultschiner Ländchen ( Hlucin) by the way, on the Czech/ Slowakian, and not far from the polish border.
Hlu?ín Region - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Yes, you´re absolutely right.
While the sudetendeutsche lived in a foreign country, Bemen was always considered Austrian.
A jovial people, very validly described in Schweijk.
As they were considered Austrian or Reichsdeutsch, they were consistantly "Übersehen" in the hand-outs after the war.
They did not complain, they did not agitate, it´s simply against their nature.
I have some in my neighborhood, but I cannot remember a single one of them losing a word about the war or anything that happened after.
Yet most of them, at least the older ones, frequently "go home" to put flowers on a grave (Ich muss der Mutter Blumen bringen) and chat with old neighbors.
Quite different from the Sudeten crew.