A victimhood narrative of expulsion outlasted perpetrator recognition by decades.

Evidence

It would be difi cult to prove Menzel’s claim that, by 1970, many expellees recognized that they had been perpetrators as well as victims. The sheer longevity of the expellee culture of victimhood can be proven by the fact that Hans Graf von Lehndorff’s “East Prussian Diary,” a sympathetic survival account of expulsion, had sold 235,000 copies by the mid-1960s and entered its twenty-i rst edition by 2006. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 1483

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks to the reader’s question about whether professed egalitarian/remorseful conviction diverges from actual measured belief and enduring frames. — connects to: Perpetrator-group victimhood recognition requires a two-generation time lag — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 2070