News from the destroyed Heimat began expellees’ coping with loss

Evidence

Shocked at news of destruction and foreignness in the dear places they had left behind, Silesians in the West i rst came to realize that, horrible though their current existence might be, a return “home” would be far worse. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 709

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the expellee-decline mechanism the reader is tracing across this literature; parallels cognitive-dissonance accounts of how believers shed a conviction once evidence against the promised object accumulates. — connects to: Expellees compulsively sought painful information about the transformed home — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 183; Silesian expellees came to terms with their homeland loss over time. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 0; Privation in exile intensified idealized retrospection on the lost Heimat. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 778 (+1 more)