Guest Book

Many thanks to all of my peers and friends who have commented here.
Please join them and leave your own comments and posts for all to see.

70 comments on “Guest Book”

  1. Thank you for bringing my attention to the many talents, awards and drive for reminding us of the history that has taken place in our lifetime. The projects that you have provided and offered are so necessary in reaching the children in our schools and elsewhere. The present history books are now becoming void of the rich history of our nation and others..
    It has been a pleasure meeting with you.. I will continue to follow your direction of endeavor.

    Reply

  2. Ann,
    It has been a pleasure to meet you. Congratulations on your many well deserved accolades. What an amazing contribution to our history and community- thank you!

    Reply

    • Thank you Meg,
      I too enjoyed meeting you and look forward to getting to know you better.
      I’m happy that you like what I’ve completed. I hope you’ll take some time to view the film about the Arch and maybe hear and see a few things that are new to you.
      Keep coming to Mimis
      Until next time,
      Ann

      Reply

  3. Please let me know if you’re looking for a writer for your site.

    You have some really great articles and I feel I would be
    a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the
    load off, I’d love to write some material for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine.

    Please blast me an e-mail if interested. Regards!

    Reply

  4. Ann, I reviewed you website and it’s very well done, historically interesting and user friendly.

    Also, we just got off the phone talking with Dennis Melton, the District Director of the Small Business Administration (SBA). He’s the one who is responsible for getting MOHIS in St. Louis the original document of the ‘Louisiana Purchase’, which was a land deal executed by the third President of the U.S., Thomas Jefferson. Without that $15M check being written to Napoleon Bonaparte’ that he needed for his war we wouldn’t have been able to buy all the land west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. That ‘greatest land deal ever’ doubled the land mass of the United States and allowed the birth of the City of St. Louis by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau in 1764. Then, taking it a step further, we wouldn’t have been able to host the Louisiana Purchase Exposition – best known as the 1904 World’s Fair – or the Games of the III Olympiad. And, let’s take one more step…we wouldn’t have the St. Louis Arch either.

    Additionally, we will be interviewing Dennis next Tuesday at 9:30 at his SBA office in the City of St. Louis while looking out of his office window at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial – named after President Thomas Jefferson – which is best known as the St. Louis Gateway Arch in the background.

    Finally, without the completion of the Arch, we wouldn’t have been ordained with the nickname ‘Gateway to the West’, nor would the Saint Louis Ambassadors have been launched on October 28, 1965.

    In other words, we wouldn’t even know each other or be working on this ‘St. Louis…the King City!’ documentary. What a story this is!?

    Rich Pisani
    a/k/a ‘Uncle Rich’ – LOL!

    Reply

  5. Have you ever thought about publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other websites?

    I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would really like to have you share
    some stories/information. I know my audience would appreciate your work.
    If you are even remotely interested, feel free to send me
    an e mail.

    Reply

  7. “Brutality that was inflicted upon millions of eastern Europeans after World War II”

    I think that there is a long history of brutality in the region dating far back than WWII.

    My Uncle told me the Russians before WWII would try t shoot the Prussian children. This was from snipers nests on the Russian trains that went through East Prussia to Poland.
    Also what about WWI?

    I have read stories where Russian soldiers advancing in East Prussia rounded up a village and forced them into a church, then burned them all alive.

    Reply

    • These stories are true and this brutality began before WWI.
      It’s amazing what we weren’t taught in school yet how important these pieces of history are to us.
      We, the world keep repeating these horrors on millions because we aren’t learning from the past.
      If we don’t start teaching the good AND bad about everything and everyone we’re going to keep doing the same things over and over again and those things come down to killing.

      Reply

  9. Very nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I have really enjoyed surfing around your blog posts.

    After all I’ll be subscribing to your rss feed and I hope you write again soon!

    Reply

    • Thank you for reading the post and taking the time to comment on it. I’d also like to thank you for subscribing to my feed. I hope you’ll find the post in the future to be just as informative.

      Reply

  12. Dear Mrs. Ann Morrison,
    my parents and grand parents fled from the Batshka in 1942 to Germany where I was born 1951. My fathers life-work was to research the history and the fate of the Donauschwaben. (http://www.dvhh.org/batschka/biographies/binder_friedrich.htm) He even was president of the german “Verband der Donauschwaben” for several years. After his death all his publications, studies, his books, magazines and newspapers about the Donauschwaben went to the Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte und Landeskunde in Tübingen – http://www.idglbw.de/
    Two years ago I went back. I bought a house in Hungary and I shall live here for the rest of my life. I want to offer a translation service to you. Of course my English is not as perfect as a native speaker’s English but if you like I would be glad to help and translate German text into English.

    Yours sincerely
    Herbert Binder

    Reply

    • Oh My Goodness Mr. Binder!
      What a blessing you are!
      I would be honored to work with you. I have a never ending stack of things to be translated. People are so generous with their letters, books, postcards, photos among other documents. Unfortunately it takes me hours, even days to translate these working with a German dictionary.
      Will you please write me at annsfilms@gmail.com so we can set up a way of beginning the translation process.
      Thank you for your offer and support.
      My best,
      Ann

      Reply

  13. Extremely interesting website, thank you for the hard work and fabulous result in keeping this shameful and apparently willingly forgotten dark chapter of human history alive.
    I’ve been researching my father’s family (Lassmann/Till/Fischa/etc.) expelled from Brünn/Brno and was able to trace all of them as living in, and around, Brno for at least 300 years before being expelled, their properties seized and nationality cancelled.
    Many, many thanks!
    Peter Lessmann

    Reply

    • Thank you Mr. Lessmann,

      I would love to learn more about you fathers story. Do you have anything in writing you would like to share with me?

      I would love to read whatever you have to offer.

      My best,

      Ann

      Reply

  16. I think this is among the most significant info for me. And i’m glad reading your article. But wanna remark on few general things, The site style is wonderful, the articles is really excellent : D. Good job, cheers

    Reply

  17. Hello there! This article couldn’t be written any better! Going through this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He constantly kept talking about this. I’ll send this
    post to him. Fairly certain he’s going to have a very good read. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply

  19. Your current report offers confirmed helpful to me personally.

    It’s really educational and you are certainly quite experienced in this region.
    You have got opened my personal sight in order to varying opinion of this particular topic together with intriguing and sound articles.

    Reply

  20. Hi there! I could have sworn I’ve been to this site before but after checking through some of the post I realized it’s new
    to me. Nonetheless, I’m definitely glad I found it and I’ll be bookmarking and
    checking back often!

    Reply

    • Thank you for letting me know you’re new to this site. Please look through it and ask any questions you may have. I’m happy to have you with us learning about the ethnic German genocide.

      Reply

    • Thank you for your comment. I wonder the same about the opposite sector. How could all these years go by and no one look at both sides of the situation, especially with the largest expulsion in history. I will continue writing and I hope that you’ll continue reading.

      Reply

  28. This is really fascinating, You are an overly professional blogger.
    I’ve joined your rss feed and stay up for looking for extra of your fantastic post. Also, I have shared your site in my social networks

    Reply

    • Thank you for your positive feedback, joining my rss as well as sharing it with your networks.
      I’ve worked very hard to put out positive information that’s thought provoking and with comments like yours I feel like I’m doing it.
      Thanks again and stay in touch,
      Ann

      Reply

  29. Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wished to say
    that I have truly enjoyed surfing around your blog posts.
    After all I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again very soon!

    Reply

    • Thank you for liking the post and subscribing to my feed.
      Knowing people like you like the information I put out there
      keeps me aware of how important it for me to keep pasting.

      Reply

  30. As the daughter of German immigrants who survived WWII this has always been a topic near and dear to my heart. The stories of forced expulsion, riding on cattle cars, near starvation, being threatened at gunpoint, etc. were passed on to us in our youth so we could know the entire history, not merely the sanitized version. And I’m so pleased to see that someone has given voice to that pain and injustice. I would be happy to help promote your efforts, and as an experienced marketer I believe you would find my skills helpful. Please contact me if you’d like to collaborate!

    Reply

  31. Thanks for your answer.
    Yes I will like to have some further information.
    As I said before, I am studying International and Global History and in the third semester I could go abroad to study, but I need to propose something consistent to my university.
    I will really like to focus on what actually happened in Europa with the end of WWII. So basically I can specialize on WWII and furthermore on the period 1945-1950 and how the victorious powers managed the peace process.

    Reply

    • Hi Marco,

      I’m glad I could help yo a little bit. There are a number web sites you can go to i.e., http://www.DVHH.com, http://www.carpathian.com,
      http://www.volgagermans.com are just a few.
      Be careful when saying peace was realized. This is a very touchy subject and ritefully so amoung the people who suffered through the expulsion/genocide. Their pain and the fact that it’s not known is what brought me to make the last seven documentaries on the subject.
      I just returned from Europe after interviewing Selisian Germans. I heard about the beatings, the starvation, I was even told about the Germans having their toungues nailed to a table until death. The people who lived through the largest expulsion in history have a much different story to tell then what you learn in the school books.
      My documentaries are called The Forgotten Genocide which was my first the other six are a film series called Millions Cried…No One Listened. The film series begins in the year 1000 when the Germanic tribes started migrating to Eastern Europe and ends at present day showing how the expulsion still affects us today. These films tell the story by the people that lived it.
      Besides documentaries there are books galore, 100’s of books that stated the same as the films. I have a book list on this site as do the sites I mentioned above. Dr. Alfred de Zayas, Bruni Adler and Zoran Jajentivic are authors that I highly recommend to look at. Their books are excellent and there are many, many more I can sugest once you get through them.
      I better let you do something more fun than reading my emails.
      Good Luck,

      Ann

      Reply

      • I used the term “peace” because I feel like it is necessary to be politically correct, despite I am not a supporter of this kind of attitude.
        As you said this is a kind of “dangerous” topic: if we don’t want to be immediately silenced, it is necessary to be extremely careful with the words we are using.
        I know that germans suffered for several years after the war ended and this could be easily defined as a crime, since the war was over.
        It takes times before scholars and in general the public opinion accept to rethink about a certain historical period.
        It took almost fifty years to my country to publically admit that our people in Istria and Dalmazia, suffered from ethnic cleasing perpetrated by Tito’s partisans.

        Thank you for the help you are giving me and for these information.
        Once the exams at my university are over, I am going to study in detail the sources you have suggested me:
        I apologise if my writing is not always clear but english is not my mother tongue.

        Marco

  32. Hello,

    My name is Marco Bianchi and I am currently an MA student at the Aarhus Universitet (Denmark).
    I am studying “International and Global history” and I have always been interested in these kind of topics

    I am really glad to discover finally that there is somebody in this World interested in this history’s forgotten page.
    My best congratulations for this initiative: history needs much more people like you willing to make research about these “tabu”.

    Do you know if there is any Universities having specific courses about this topic and more in general about what happened after WWII?
    I refer to the Morgenthau Plan, to the expulsion of the Germans from Poland and what it has been described by John Sack in the book called “An eye for an eye”.

    Best Regards,

    Marco Bianchi

    Reply

    • Hello Marco,

      I received this email from James regarding your question about the courses offered on the subject. If you’d like to write him directly let me know and I can forward his contact info. to you. I hope this helps….

      Actually the expulsions are discussed at many universities, and more and more so. It depends upon the instructor. There is no specific course on the German expellees because this is too narrow a focus and potentially controversial. But they certainly discuss it in courses at research institutions like Stanford, Chicago, and Northwestern, as well as small state universities like in California.

      James Mayfield
      Ph.D. Fellow, Stanford University

      Reply

  33. Ann, I am a German born (1943 in Berlin) Canadian citizen who was informed about your your wonderfully crafted film and thought provoking website. – Congratulations! I am both impressed and awed by all that you have achieved. Any accolades you receive are well-deserved.

    As a retired teacher (33 years Toronto and area school boards, plus college teaching) I have some observations to make regarding the study and emphasis on the Nazi Holocaust within Canadian (and probably American) school systems. Thanks to the tireless efforts of largely, but not exclusively, Jewish individuals and organizations the horrors of the Holocaust ending in 1945 in Europe will be remembered and taught in perpetuity. School libraries are funded, endowed and suppiled with Holocaust materials, and support materials for teachers are readily available. Also Jewish Canadians (and Jewish Americans) have through their diligence, study and work ethic risen in massive numbers as key professionals in Law, the Judiciary, Politics, Literature and in Entertainment. It is therefore likely that the Holocaust that ended in Europe in 1945 will not be forgotten by future generations. And that notion of “never forgetting” is good and worthwhile.

    There are, however, unintended but unfortunate by-products to the total focus on the Nazi-Holocaust:

    1. It gives students the skewed impression that all such inhumanity ended when Allied troops entered the horrendous concentration camps in 1945. It skims over other holocausts, unrecognized even if euphemisms such as “ethnic cleansing” are used! – Very little attention was paid in the school systems within the last two decades as up to half a million ethnic people were persecuted and slaughtered in the former Yugoslavia and when up to a million were butchered in Rwanda. In classrooms, it was much easier to focus totally on the life, hope and suffering as outlined in the Diary of Anne Frank, although nothing could be done to save this unfortunate young girl.

    At the very same time thousands of people faced a similar fate on a daily basis and something could have been done but wasn’t! The World again turned a blind eye even with satellite news capacity. – At the time, teachers with excellent teaching aids and reference material on the Nazi Holocaust made, at best, passing references to the then daily atrocities in Rwanda and in Yugoslavia. (Talk about repeating History!)

    2. As a corollary to the above point, many students get the unfortunate impression that there is something genetically German that predisposes people of that country, that language and that culture to the barbarism and the inhumanity as evidenced in the Nazi Holocaust. (You make that point, Ann, where ethnic Germans in say Romania, as you say had nothing to do with bringing Hitler to power.)

    This misconception is understandable if students are not taught that massive persecutions, genocides and holocausts are, unfortunately much more universal than they have been taught to believe. It is not exclusively a “German thing” , or a one-time event in the history of Mankind! – Not many students have ever heard about Stalin’s 20 million Russians starved, about Turkish-Armenian atrocities or about the 1970’s misdeeds of the Khmer Rouge, just to mention a few.

    Yes, Ann, not many students (or adults) have heard about the heart-rending fate of ethnic Germans which your film(s) and research so brilliantly expose and bring to public, Your public, however, will never exceed 5% or if you are lucky 10% of the general population, especially in a country like the USA, which is so focussed on cultural belly-button gazing and with little comprehension by most people of events beyond their borders. When thinking about troubling historical events or questions many adults would rather watch a late night rerun of “Hogan’s Heroes” with its understandable ethnic stereotypes.

    Along your line of inquiry and thinking, I would refer readers to the (1982?) book by Toronto journalist James Bacque called “Other Losses”, where he makes a strong case for Allied Commander General Eisenhower, allowing up to one million German POW’s to die (lack of food, shelter and care) in post-war Allied POW camps in Germany (1945 to 1947). – It is a good read and suggests the luckiest Germans were those in British POW camps. (It seems Eisenhower had to live down the German roots of his family name by showing how tough he could be on the losing German Prisoners of War.)

    At any rate, I digress but would love to read any reaction to my lenghty comments. Let me know if I can help. I have done a lot of proof-reading and am competent in German-English and English-German translations.

    Speaking of proof-reading, your 12 lines of comments on your “Home” page (09 October 2012) must have been written in a hurry. – If you correct the 4 spelling errors and 2 stylistic errors this will improve the professional image of your home page greatly.

    Keep up the good work, and please do not count the errors in my lengthy response!

    Thank you,

    Alan

    Alan Joachim Nanders
    (Kitchener, Ontario, Canada)

    e-mail: alan.nanders@utoronto.ca

    10 October 2012

    Reply

    • Good day Mr. Nanders,

      I will make the corrections on the home page and I thank you for pointing them out.
      I try very hard to make sure errors are not missed, but unfortunately fall short way too often.

      Your comments are welcomed and appreciated. I agree with what you stated and feel the points you made should be known by all. It is true that the German people from the Eastern areas of Europe are unknown and they have had to fight to get their story heard. I will not stop filming them if they offer to speak of their past in hopes that the numbers of interviews will get to the point of being impossible to ignore.

      So many genocides have happened and we must acknowledge all of them. There is no genocide worse than the other or more important than another. None of them should have happened and we should keep them from happening again.

      I’m working very hard to get this information into schools and on TV. It’s not easy, but It’s looking more and more possible. The younger generations are starting to ask questions so the audience is becoming larger. This will help the TV stations understand that they’ll have people wanting to watch and learn about these other hitorical moments our ancesters have survived.

      Reply

  37. Fascinating blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it
    from somewhere? A design like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog
    jump out. Please let me know where you got your theme. With thanks

    Reply

    • Hello Christina,
      I’m glad you like the blog design. I wish I could take credit, but it already existed. The theme is called Eligant Grudge from WordPress (I’m not sure about the spelling).
      I like your blog as well and I know what you mean by tweeks. I’m constantly trying to improve my site and the ideas seem to be slowing down.
      Good luck to you and thank you for your comment,
      Ann

      Reply

  39. Hello Ann,

    Thank you for your important work of recording History from the survivors of that History.I often wondered how people in Germany survived during the horrors of the 30 Years War 1618-1648.Many of the readers of this Guest Book will remember the children’s song from that war. It is:

    Maikäfer flieg,der Vater ist im Krieg,die Mutter ist in Pommernland,
    Pommernland ist abgebrannt, Maikäfer flieg.

    Your efforts will keep what we lived through accessible for future generations.

    Your work is especially important since the education in the Federal Republik deals with that aspect of our History differently,namely as liberation.An example of that treatment is the view of the destruction of Dresden February 1945.The number of victims who were counted in February 1945 as having been in excess of 250 000.The Federal Republican Government’s numbers are now given as 25 000.The destruction of the city is “verniedlicht”,belittled.For education in other countries that phase of history probably does not even exist.

    I have to share with you how I became aware of your work.Your name was mentioned by Dr.Kearn Schemm as one of the attendants at the press release in Washington on the 31 Oct.2011 of Major Merrit P. Druckers Address.Since that was the first time that I saw your name I was puzzled and googled for information to answer my question.I mention this to show that your efforts are made known by word of mouth.If Dr. Schemm had not mentioned you one person less,I, would not have been aware of you and your work.

    Thank you again,

    M.Gottlieb O, Mittelstädt.
    Canada.

    Reply

    • Good morning from St. Louis,
      Please excuse my tardiness in responding your guest book comment.
      I’m very pleased that you like what I’m doing and you think it will make a difference. There’s quite a story here and I think the world should know about it. With help like Mr. Schemm and yourself people will learn about this in a factual way.
      My regards,
      Ann

      Reply

  40. Press inquiry

    Hi Ann,

    I am an editor of an Austrian news blog and would like to ask you if you would be willing to grant us a written interview about you and your project.

    Can you please contact me at the e-mail address below? Thanks.

    Reply

  41. I believe I have already written to you about the expulsion of my relatives from Einsiedel in eastern Slovakia so I won’t repeat it here. I am very happy to see you making a great effort to make the injustice of the Vertreibung known. Julius Loisch and I get together periodically and discuss this topic……but we need a wider audience.

    Thank you so much for your efforts.

    Fred Minnich
    Michigantown, Indiana

    Reply

  42. Dear Ann, I´m refugee from East Prussia (Ostpreußen) since 1945. I´have wrote my story of refugee just at life. If you are interested I could send you the whole script. I read your script in the Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung No. 52 of december, 31. Greatiöngs from Germany! Harry

    Reply

  44. Vielen Dank für Ihre gute Arbeit!
    Weiter so!

    Bezirksverband der Schlesiervereine in Oberbayern

    stv. Vorsitzender
    R. Maywald
    11-07-27

    Reply

  45. Dear Ann, great job, keep up the good work.
    See you in Mansfield.
    Best wishes,
    Adam and Eva and Fam. Martini

    Reply

  46. The expulsion of 15 million ethnic Germans from previous Eastern parts
    of Germany and 800 year old settlements in East Europe with atrocities
    committed against them by the Allies is heavily discussed in Europe but
    largely unknown in the USA. Ann Morrison learned about it from immigrants
    from Europe. Now, Ann informs the public in her own way. After 65 years,
    “The Forgotten Genocide”- “Millions Cried…No One Listened” is the
    first documented eye witness report in the USA.

    Reply

  47. Hello, my friend: it’s great to see your inviting and so informative new page. It’s about time people found out what had really happened. Even our own young people were kept in the dark; and closing our Library at St. Stephen’s [L.A.] did not help the situation. We even lost our fine “Heimat Haus”. No wonder so many of our Donauschwaben were so disappointed. But no one dared to ask any direct questions. And our fake “owners” at the Alpine Village were ruling for forty (40) years, because they were well “protected”.

    The crucial question is, dear Ann, WHO sold us out? Thanks to your efforts, dear Ann, many people finally started waking up. My own family was at home in Indjija [near Belgrade], and found refuge in Graz [1944], before they emigrated to California. The Halters arrived in Los Angeles in November of 1951. I came “to visit” them, in 1963, and I’m still here. Lots of luck in your endeavors, and I wish the whole world would finally wake up, in order to take these long overdue corrective actions.

    Karlheinz A. Halter, Pres.
    Austro-California Club
    P.O. Box 308
    HARBOR CITY
    California 90710
    U.S.A.

    Reply

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