German unilateral guilt narratives ignored Poles’ own comparable displacement and suffering
Evidence
A 1951 census catalogued 4.5 million Poles in the former German territories, 2.5 million of whom came from central Poland and the remainder chiel y from Poland’s lost eastern territories (the kresy ). 20 After their own suffering through German crimes and compelled resettlement, thousands of Poles were as ready as the Red Army soldiers to burn and plunder Silesia and abuse its inhabitants. The president of Wroc ł aw himself estimated that 60 percent of Poles who had arrived in 1945 were most interested in looting. 21 But much as they may have felt embittered against Germans, most of the Polish settlers who entered the region thereafter (not least the repatriates from the East) came in search of land and belongings after losing most of what they had, and many who stayed did so because they had nowhere else to go. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 669
Categorization
- XREF: Counterbalances the expellee moral frame — serves reader’s interest in the manufactured vs. real bases for grievance. — connects to: Minority persecution by Poles drove Germans toward Nazi radicalism. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 331; Expellees transposed acknowledged Nazi crimes onto their Polish persecutors to deny German guilt — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 698; Comparing the Holocaust to postwar German expulsions broke all possibility of dialogue — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 606 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Comparing the Holocaust to postwar German expulsions broke all possibility of dialogue
#exemplifies(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 606 - Chroniclers of in-group atrocities shift attention to their own group’s suffering
#corroborates(0.85) - A constructed shared victimhood unified diverse displaced German groups.
#corroborates(0.80) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 184