Talk:Michael Wieck

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Michael Wieck[edit]

The people of East Prussia (Koenigsberg) were forcibly deported, not "allowed to emigrate" as stated. My father was born in Koenigsberg March 11, 1928 and went through much of the same after the war. All people of German decent were deported from lands that were to be taken from Germany in what has become known as the largest mass deportation in modern history. See Wikipedia (Flight and expulsion of Germans) (German deportation)

Regards, Hans Robert Kwauka bkwau111@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.173.220.18 (talk) 19:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Hans Kwauka,

Generally I agree with you about Soviet treatment of East Prussians (and other Germans) at the end of WWII and thereafter. Most of the expulsions were brutal. However, according to what I've read (including the multivolume Theodor Schieder documentation), by the time the comparatively few Germans remaining in Kӧnigsberg-cum-Kaliningrad were transferred to what remained of Germany in 1948-49, they were eager to get away from that ravaged city. For such people (including Wieck), it was a deliverance. Consequently, I've removed the word "emigrated" (with its scare quotes) and replaced it with a simple, neutral go.

I commend to your attention Benjamin Liebermann's excellent Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe (2006). Comprehensive and balanced, it includes a fairly extensive section on the expulsions of the Germans, which the author notes constitute "the largest ethnic cleansing in European history" (p. 239).

(As noted in the article, Wieck's book also is available in English.) Sca (talk) 17:13, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]