Gość: sp;lit
IP: *.nas28.tukwila2.wa.us.da.qwest.net
05.01.04, 21:32
Ze biadolenie to poplatna umiejetnosc ,.. Skrzypiace kolo jest "smarowane" ,
co Zydzi wiedza od wiekow a Niemcy sa w trakcie nauki , niemniej jednak
Niemcy narod slynacy z detalicznej dokladnosci posuwa jednak sie dalej ,
bezczelnie porownuje powojenne wysiedlenia z Ziem Odzyskanych do Holokaustu i
obiecuje pomnik pamieci "wygonionych" w sasiedztwie pomnika tych
ostatnich ,... Co za bezczelnosc ,... Ooops ! Hutzpa , ma sie rozumiec .
Pije Kuba do Jakuba ,
kogo Polak zacznie skubac ?
Germans lament loss of Polish land in 1940s
=========================================================
By Richard Bernstein
The New York Times
GOSTOMIA, Poland — The situation seemed ripe for unpleasantness as Aloys
Manthey and his two older brothers drove their Mercedes SUV onto the concrete
slab courtyard of Zbigniew and Maria Siejak's farm in this quiet Polish town.
On one side were the Mantheys, led by Aloys, a 66-year-old travel agent, who
makes no secret of his belief that this 80-acre farm is theirs by right,
expropriated from them 58 years ago and never forgotten.
On the other side, the Siejaks, now retired, have lived here for more than 20
years. How would they respond to a group of rich Germans saying that they
were victims of past injustice and that in a just world they would have their
old home back?
Aloys Manthey is the leader in his locality in northwestern Germany of the
Association of Expellees, an organization claiming a million members that
represents the interests of the estimated 12 million to 13 million Germans
who were expelled from Poland and other countries when World War II ended.
Manthey contends that these expulsions amount to a sort of victimization of
Germans roughly equivalent to the German victimization of the Poles
themselves, or even the Jews.
The idea is unpopular in Poland and seems to have only modest support among a
majority of Germans, but it is an article of faith among many of those who
lost their homes all those many decades ago.
"There were two crimes, the Holocaust and the forced expulsions," Manthey
said, sitting at a table in a Polish inn the night before the visit to
Gostomia.
"As a result of the forced expulsions, 3 million Germans died, and for that
reason I think we're entitled to a memorial in Berlin, a center — maybe next
to the memorial to the Jews."
When asked to cite his source for claiming such numbers, he produced only a
brochure printed by his group.
Still, there is no doubt about his own story. After the war, this part of
what had been Germany was handed over to a reconstituted Poland, and the
Germans who lived here were forced to migrate west. Many were killed, beaten
or raped.
Manthey and his brothers — Paul, 72, and Hans, 73 — spent a few days here,
retracing the route they took in 1945 when they fled from the Soviet army,
visiting the tombstone that they erected three years ago to their father,
Paul Manthey, who was mugged and killed by Polish soldiers in late 1945.
They spoke of the time a few weeks after that when a Polish family — not
the Siejaks — turned up and told the Mantheys that their farm no longer
belonged to them.
"They just came to the farm and said, 'This is ours; you have to get out,' "
Manthey said."There's no compensation for us," Hans Manthey said gloomily.
Fears are often expressed in Poland that, once the country becomes part of
the European Union, scheduled to happen in May, there will be a host of
claims for restitution by Germans for properties seized from them after the
war, or that wealthy Germans will buy up the land, the lakes and the forests
and Poles will no longer own their country.
Such Polish nervousness, fanned by occasional bursts of nationalist rhetoric
from the German Association of Expellees, has led the Polish government to
enact restrictions on ownership of land by foreigners here.
The restrictions were explained to the Manthey brothers by county officials
in Walcz, about eight miles from Gostomia.
"That's not fair," Aloys Manthey responded. "When will this be put on an
equal footing? Poles can buy land in Germany."
The meeting ended with assurances to Manthey that exceptions were possible,
and the brothers then drove to Gostomia.
There on their former land, they were received by the Siejaks not with
hostility or suspicion but with coffee, cake, cordiality and the wish that
Manthey would indeed buy the old homestead back.
The Siejaks, who bought the old Manthey farm from the people who expropriated
it after the war, would like to move to a condominium on the Baltic Coast.
They cannot afford the winter heating bill on the farm, but they cannot find
anybody willing to buy it, and, as it turned out, Manthey was not willing to
buy it either.
"We thought it would make a wonderful hunting lodge for you," Mrs. Siejak
said.
The asking price, about $78,000 for the 80 acres, the house and the farm
buildings (these last admittedly not in good shape) was probably about what
Manthey paid for his SUV.
On other occasions, asked whether he would buy back the farm, he had
replied, "Why should I pay for something that already belongs to me?" Now,
politely, not wishing to spoil the friendly mood, he said, "I don't think
there's much to hunt here."
So, the Mantheys really may or may not actually want their farm back, except
in principle, and there seems to be a lesson about history and change in
that.
The Siejaks were also expellees, coming from a formerly Polish part of what
is now Belarus when Stalin absorbed it into the Soviet Union after World War
II. For them, it seemed natural to assume a sort of shared victimization with
the Mantheys.
"I grew up among Germans in 1945 when they were expelled," Mr. Siejak
said. "So even then I knew that someday these people would want to come back
and show their children where they came from."
