World War II evacuation and expulsion

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Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in

Nuremberg Tribunal after the war ended. The mass movement of people – most of them refugees – had either been caused by the hostilities, or enforced by the former Axis and the Allied powers based on ideologies of race and ethnicity, culminating in the postwar border changes enacted by international settlements. The refugee crisis created across formerly occupied territories in World War II provided the context for much of the new international refugee and global human rights architecture existing today.[1]

Belligerents on both sides engaged in forms of expulsion of people perceived as being associated with the enemy. The major location for the wartime displacements was East-Central and Eastern Europe, although Japanese people were expelled during and after the war by Allied powers from locations in Asia including India. The

World War II deportations, expulsions and displacements

Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939 which marked the beginning of World War II, the campaign of ethnic "cleansing" became the goal of military operations for the first time since the end of World War I. After the end of the war, between 13.5 and 16.5 million German-speakers lost their homes in formerly German lands and all over Eastern Europe.

Origin of German colonisers settled in annexed Polish territories in action "Heim ins Reich"
Expulsion of Poles from Reichsgau Wartheland following the German invasion of 1939
Germans leaving Silesia for Allied-occupied Germany in 1945. Courtesy of the German Federal Archives (Deutsches Bundesarchiv).

Aftermath of the invasion of Poland

  • 1939 to 1945: The Nazis planned to ethnically cleanse
    in the course of Nazi occupation up to 1.6 to 2 million Poles were expelled, not counting millions of slave labourers deported from Poland to the Reich.[3]
  • 1939 to 1940: Expulsions of 680,000
    RKFDV (Stabshauptamt Reichkomissar für die Festigung deutsches Volkstums) from Eastern Europe
    .
  • 1939 to 1940: Expulsions of 121,765 Poles[4] from German-occupied Pomerania. On Polish places 130,000 Volksdeutsche was settled including 57,000 Germans from East Europe countries: Soviet Union, Bessarabia, Romania and the Baltic states. Deportation was a part of German "Lebensraum" policy ordered by German organisations like Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and "Resettlement departament" of RKFDV.
  • 1939 to 1940: The first
    Moscow peace treaty
    . In total, 410,000 people were transferred.
  • 1940 to 1941: The Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, most in four mass waves. The accepted figure was over 1.5 million.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] The most conservative figures[12][13] use recently found NKVD documents showing 309,000[14][15][16] to 381,220.[16][17] The Soviets didn't recognise ethnic minorities as Polish citizens,[15][18] some of the figures are based on those given an amnesty rather than deported[6][15] and not everyone was eligible for the amnesty[19] therefore the new figures are considered too low.[13][15][20][21] The original figures were: February 1940[22][23] over 220,000;[10][24] April around 315,000;[10][24][25] June–July between 240,000[10] to 400,000;[24] June, 1941, 200,000[26] to 300,000.[10]
  • 1940 to 1941: Expulsions of 17,000 Polish and Jewish residents from the western districts of city
    Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and also from the villages of Broszkowice, Babice, Brzezinka, Rajsko, Pławy, Harmęże, Bór, and Budy.[27] The Expulsion of Polish civilians was a step towards establishing the Camp Interest Zone, which was set up in order to isolate the camp from the outside world and to carry out business activity to meet the needs of the SS. German and Volksdeutsche settlers move in. This was one of the numerous forced migrations associated with the Holocaust
    .

World War II

Defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan

Establishment of refugee organisations

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was set up in 1943, to provide humanitarian relief to the huge numbers of potential and existing refugees in areas facing Allied liberation. UNRRA provided billions of US dollars of rehabilitation aid, and helped about 8 million refugees. It ceased operations in Europe in 1947, and in Asia in 1949, upon which it ceased to exist. It was replaced in 1947 by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which in turn evolved into United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Neil Durkin, Amnesty International (9 December 1998). "Our century's greatest achievement". On the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. BBC News. Archived from the original on November 11, 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2015 – via Internet Archive.
  2. ^ Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski, Poland Under Nazi Occupation, (Warsaw, Polonia Publishing House, 1961) pp. 7–33, 164–178. Archived 2012-04-13 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era". Archived from the original on 2005-11-28. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  4. ^
  5. ^ Davies (1986), p. 451.
  6. ^ a b Polian (2004), p. 119.
  7. ^ Hope (2005), p. 29.
  8. ^ "Holocaust Victims: Five Million Forgotten – Non Jewish Victims of the Shoah".
  9. ^ Malcher (1993), pp. 8–9.
  10. ^ a b c d e Piesakowski (1990), pp. 50–51.
  11. ^ Mikolajczyk (1948).
  12. ^ a b Piotrowski (2004).
  13. ^ Gross (2002), p. xiv.
  14. ^ a b c d Cienciala (2007), p. 139.
  15. ^ a b Polian (2004), p. 118.
  16. ^ "Lecture 17 - Poland Under Occupation" (PDF). Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  17. ^ Applebaum (2004), p. 407.
  18. ^ Krupa (2004).
  19. ^ Rees (2008), p. 64.
  20. ^ Jolluck (2002), pp. 10–11.
  21. ^ Hope (2005), p. 23.
  22. ^ Ferguson (2006), p. 419.
  23. ^ a b c Malcher (1993), p. 9.
  24. ^ Hope (2005), p. 25.
  25. ^ Hope (2005), p. 27.
  26. ^ Article about expulsions from Oświęcim in Polish Archived 2008-10-03 at the Wayback Machine
  27. .
  28. ^ Costea, Maria (2009). "Aplicarea tratatului româno-bulgar de la Craiova (1940)". Anuarul Institutului de Cercetări Socio-Umane "Gheorghe Șincai" al Academiei Române (in Romanian) (12): 267–275.
  29. ^ Țîrcomnicu, Emil (2014). "Historical aspects regarding the Megleno-Romanian groups in Greece, the FY Republic of Macedonia, Turkey and Romania" (PDF). Memoria Ethnologica. 14 (52–53): 12–29.
  30. ^ Lukas, Richard C (2001). "Chapter IV. Germanization". Hippocrene Books, New York. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  31. ^ "Stolen Children: Interview with Gitta Sereny". Jewish virtual library. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  32. ^ Sybil Milton (1997). "Non-Jewish Children in the Camps". Multimedia Learning Center Online (Annual 5, Chapter 2). The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Archived from the original on 2017-09-25. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  33. ^ a b c Krizman.
  34. ^ a b Nikolić et al. (2002), p. 182.
  35. House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
    .
  36. ^ Ustasa, Croatian nationalist, fascist, terrorist movement created in 1930.
  37. ^ "World War II – 60 Years After: For Victims Of Stalin's Deportations, War Lives On". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty.
  38. ^ Raoul Pupo, Il lungo esodo. Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l'esilio, Rizzoli, Milano 2005.
  39. ^ Lapin sodan ja evakoitumisen muistojuhlassa Pudasjärvellä 3.10.2004. Hannes Manninen. Retrieved 2009-9-7-(in Finnish)
  40. ^ Tibor Cseres: Serbian vendetta in Bacska
  41. .
  42. , retrieved 2008-03-29, p. 161: "EDES gangs massacred 200–300 of the Cham population, who during the occupation totalled about 19,000 and forced all the rest to flee to Albania"
  43. (PDF) on 2015-06-26.
  44. .
  45. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War Archived 2009-10-01 at the Wayback Machine, European University Institute, Florense. EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/1, edited by Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, p. 4.
  46. ^ "Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Jugoslawien". Archived from the original on 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
  47. ^ Horvat, Andrew (1986-02-02). "Exiled Sakhalin Koreans Yearn to Go Home Again". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2020-07-22. Lee, Jin-woo (2005-02-18). "3,100 Koreans in Sakhalin Yearn to Return Home". The Korea Times. Archived from the original on 2005-03-15. Excluding 100,000 Koreans who were subsequently sent to the mainland of Japan, about 43,000 forced laborers had to remain on the island with no nationality for up to three decades ... So far, some 1,600 returnees have been able to return to South Korea for permanent settlement since 1992.
  48. ^ "Taiwan history: Chronology of important events". Archived from the original on 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
  49. ^ Jozo Tomasevich War and revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: occupation and collaboration, Stanford University Press, 2001 p. 165

External links

Further reading