Elderly expellees sublimated their unfulfillable return into a promised afterlife

Evidence

Seeking a heavenly Heimat could also mean reassurance that Heaven would be just like the Heimat of memory , that in death expellees would i nd justice when at last they came home to Silesia. This was particularly true for the elderly: The reality that had befallen them was simply too terrible, the loss too great to go on living in the present. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 918

Categorization

• XREF: Faith-based deferral of the lost-reality wish mirrors the reader’s interest in how groups channel a now-impossible conviction into a transcendent register rather than abandoning it. — connects to: Expellees commemorated their lost Heimat while abandoning any intention to return — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 513

Broader Connections

• Expellees commemorated their lost Heimat while abandoning any intention to return #expands (0.85) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 513