The BBC has a posted a relatively innocuous article about the forced expulsion of the German population of Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Forced deportation of Germans throughout Eastern Europe at the end of the war numbered more than nine million people.
I live in a city where many of the buildings uncomplainingly wear bullet wounds that serve as a reminder of past traumas. Humans tend to be vocal about their own wounds and are often unable to understand the pain of others'. Forced emigration may seem insignificant when compared to the more graphic horrors of the the Second World War, but the wounds are no less real. And the desire for recognition and compensation for past suffering are as well.
Reparations are a delicate issue for the survivors and their assignees as well as for the Czech people and their government. It seems to me that Americans regularly express their inability to comprehend European sentiments about the horrors of war. It is not simply the injuries caused by war that many Europeans have come to abhor; it is also the way the wounds heal afterwards that give so many here pause.
Posted by Alan at 08.02.04 12:40