Millions Cried, No One Listened
For most of the world the Second World War ended in spring of 1945, but in Eastern Europe the killing continued. 15 million people of German decent were tortured, beaten to death, starved, worked to death, thrown out, sent away and murdered. A series of six films recounts how these inhabitants were eliminated because they were German, attempting to erase their memory forever. Interviews with survivors, testimonials from history experts, actual footage of the expulsion and reenactments bring this tragedy to live with vivid, graphic detail.
Disk 1: The Migration to Eastern Europe
Beginning in the year 1000, various groups of German people migrated to the eastern European countries. The details of these settlements are recounted and carried forward to 1943.
Disk 2: Fleeing Russia, Ukraine
After world leaders Truman, Churchill, Stalin and Attlee created the Potsdam Agreement, millions of German people were expelled from areas they’d called home for up to 300 years and 7 generations. This film focuses on the peoples fleeing from the Russian forces, with numerous stories of children separated from parents and torment.
Disk 3: Capture & Internment Camps
Chased from their homes at gunpoint, leaving with only the clothes on their backs, millions of ethnic Germans were captured and placed into internment camps. The stories of the ensuing death and torture are featured here, with wagons of bodies dumped into mass graves daily.
Disk 4: Escape, Death Camps & Orphans
As the death camps killed great numbers of prisoners, desperation increased dramatically. Last ditch plans for escape were hatched no matter the odds, millions were orphaned and placed with the Serbian and Russian governments. And the future of a people was forever changed.
Disk 5: Freedom, Refugee Camps and Work Contracts
Out of these tragedies refugee camps were born from 1944-1950. The eastern German population was forced from their homes under the guise of “equality” for others, despite having no involvement in Nazi atrocities. This film details the grotesque treatments perpetrated in order to fulfill governmental reparation agreements.
Disk 6: Finding Home
The descendants of those imprisoned and tortured after World War II continue to be affected by these horrors today. The final film of the series focuses on the following generations and how they struggle to understand the resulting psychological trauma and regain their cultural identity that was wiped out in just a few short years.
Ann's Films 
Justine Barth Zentner some of my family also come from India; Truba and Tillinger.
Sorry, Jacob Krebs died 11 November 1918 not 1981.
This is painful.
For years I sat and listened to the stories one by one of my families flight.
From Konigsberg, East Prussia to Lodz, Poland to Westphalia.
Then finally a hospital ship from Bremen to New Orleans.
What really got me was the book “Abandoned and Forgotten: An Orphan Girl’s Tale of Survival During World War II” by Evelyne Tannenhill. What people don’t know is that pretty much every girl, and woman in Prussia who was not sick, or to young was raped by the Russian soldiers.
When I asked my Prussian Uncle about this, he said it was war…
Yes Mr. Hinz it is painful and it’s not getting any better.
Thank you for writing to me and sharing a little bit about your family.
Please write down everything you’re told about this part of your families history so it wont be forgotten.
Regards,
Ann
Dear Ann, I am excited to find you. I am very interested in this issue and have traveled to Ravno Selo Serbia which was previously called Schowe. I have found survivors who were expelled from Schowe and who remember Titos death camps. I have recorded several of these survivors harrowing stories and am looking for funding to get these stories down on tape. This history and genocide has been overlooked. My name is Evelyn Ziegler. I live in boca raton Florida. There is an elderly German man, the only one still in Schowe that I want to interview. Where are you located? Could we talk on the phone about this? I will be watching all your films in the next couple of days. My cell is 5613083266 and my email is eviezieg@aol.com. I hope to hear from you. Sincerely yours, evelyn Ziegler
Superb! It kept my interest in reading and I enjoyed it.
Hi Ann,
It’s good to know someone else is paying attention to this. My mother is one of the German refugees, from West Prussia, and I’m writing her story. She was sixteen when forced from their home by the invading Russian soldiers, and it’s hard for me to believe sometimes that I’m only a generation removed from the horrible things that happened. You’re right, though, most people have never heard of it. My guess is that it was purposefully ignored by the media. Anyway, glad to hear of you and your efforts. Good luck!
Karin McLean
Thank you Karin,
I’m glad you wrote and shored the work you’re doing to preserve this part of history.
If you’d like to send a couple of paragraphs of your story to post on the site I would be honored to do so.
There are so many stories out there and every one of them need to be told.
Dear Ann,
I am in the middle of translating my niece’s German book that she wrote about her mother (my sister) into English. The title is “Madchenjahre Kriegsjahre”. My parents and older siblings had lived in Franztal Yugoslavia during the genocide and my sister Regina Spreitzer told her daughter about the atrocities that she had seen firsthand while being expelled from her homeland and forced to flee from the Partisans. The hardships were indescribable and filled with horror.
When they fled to Austria the last of us children were born, never able to return to my parents modest but beautiful home in Franztal Yugoslavia. My sister Regina has passed away but her daughter was able to finish the book and keep her memory and voice alive.
While my sister and her family stayed in Austria my father took the nine of us remaining children to America and we have lived here since 1956.
I am having a bit of a challenge translating her book and could use some professional help since I no longer speak nor read German well. I wonder if perhaps there is someone who could help me finish the translation. I’ve tried google translate but the English is gibberish at times and I am now stuck. I don’t want to lose the essence of the history nor the voice of my sister. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Lori Gray
Hello,
Thank you for writing me and requesting my help.
I have forwarded your email onto a vast number of people in hopes of finding someone who is able to help you with the translation.
Anyone offering their help will contact me and I will forward their contact information onto you.
Let’s hope we receive many responses : )
Ann
Thank you Ann…I am one of those people who had no idea what had happened during WW2 except of course what was common knowledge about the genocide of the Jews. What I can decipher from my niece’s book so far has opened my eyes to a more insidious history that has never been publicized nor taught in the schools that I ever attended…..even college. Accolades to you for bringing this to the public and if there is anything that I can help to make this happen faster please feel free to call on me for any little part that I can play.
Thank you again for your helping hand.
I look forward to hearing from all translating helpers that want to help me with my own personal labor of love.
Cheers,
Lori Gray
Thanks for doing this. My father’s family and other families that I know lived through this terrible time. I am presently working on a novel on this subject and research has been very challenging. I was pleased to come across your site!
Thank You Rose,
I’m Trying Very Hard To Let People Know The Truth About What Happen. If We All Work Together We Will Make This Happen,
Good Luck And Please Let Me Know When Yippee Ready To Tell Everyone About Your Book.
All My Best,
Ann
Hi Ann,
I sent the petition to everyone in my gmail contact list as well as to 15 people on FB (which was the limit for the day). I will log onto FB tomorrow to send it to 15 more. This is VERY important to me. My entire family was hugely impacted by the ethnic cleansing in Molidorf, etc. Yet, it is astounding how few people here in the US even know that the genocide happened at all. When I mention to people that my mother and several other relatives were in concentration camps, people say, “Why? Your family isn’t Jewish.”
Thank you for doing this important work.
Heidi
Thank you Heidi,
You’re doing exactly what I hoped everyone would do. If every person who signed the petition did the same thing we’d go over the requested number of signatures in a matter of days. Please keep going as I will and thank you for all you’ve done.
Hello Ann,
I became interested in the topic of the expelled Germans when my girlfriend told me she feels a longing for East Prussia (which doesn’t exist anymore), where her grandpa left when she was a child.
My observation is that here in Germany, people who present the expulsion of Germans as a major tragedy are routinely accused of attempting to relativize the German responsibility for the holocaust, whether or not they actually do that. Over here, there is a right-wingish sort of stigma attached to this whole issue, and sometimes an appalling respectlessness towards the fate of the expelled people.
I am really curious, how (if at all) is this topic perceived in the US? How did your friends and academic peers react to your interest in this topic? Do they think “the Germans” deserved to be expelled/killed and had collectively lost all human rights? Do they find it misplaced to talk about the expulsions at all after the holocaust? Did you get accusations of being a nazi apologist? Or were most reactions more open, more like “oh, I didn’t even know about that…”?
Best wishes,
Andreas
Wow, good question.
I’m going to do my beat to answer,. Please understand this is what I’ve run into so its best to say its my opinion, not fact.
The U.S. does not look at it the same way Europe does. The reality is they don’t look at it at all, at least not until recently.
The people who are most interested are the high school and college age group. They want to know about it because they’re angry at never having heard of this before. It’s a part of history that still affects them yet they never knew the connection. The middle aged people are more apt to denied it because they didn’t hear it in school so it must not be true. The elderly are still angry because they know they never knew the whole truth of what happened after the war and they feel like they should have been told.
As for the people saying that its a reflection on being a Nazi sympathizers, well I don’t know of any country that doesn’t have a few of those. The Jewish people don’t like it very much, but that’s to be expected. I life skiing four groups of people that have gone through a genocide and each one thinks they’ve had it worse than the others.
I see it as being better received here than over there in general.
I hope that answered your question. No matter what people think ill continue doing my work as long as that are people who want to know about it.
All my best,
Hi Ann,
thanks a lot for your answer. It really seems that the atmosphere of discussion is a bit more relaxed in the US. Over here, you would probably be accused of a one-sided German victim perspective by quite a few people for not providing enough examples of ethnic Germans collaborating with nazis to give the impression that they deserved what they got.
Personally, I appreciate your work very much, and I do feel a bit ashamed that this sort of video is not made here in Germany. All the best,
Andreas
thank you
Justine
I’m sorry, Mr. Lux
Dear Ann,
ich bin Sudetendeutsche, 1932 geboren. Meine Familie wurde gleich nach Kriegsende im Mai 1945 ausgewiesen. Unter vielen Strapazen kamen wir nach Thaya/Österreich, wo wir aber nicht bleiben konnten.
Wir wurden nach Deutschland abgeschoben.
1972 heiratete ich einen Sudetendeutschen, der Mitglied der Deutschen Sozialdemokratischen Partei war und deshalb 1938 v o r Hitler ins Ausland emigrieren musste. Schwedische Freunde schickten notwendige Visen – deshalb kam er und die Seinen nach Schweden.
Ich danke Ihnen für Ihre Bemühungen unser Vertriebenenschicksal in der Welt bekanntzumachen.
Mit freundlichen Grüssen
Ursula Ker
Thank you for sharing your story Mrs. Ker,
There are so many situation in whcich people suffered. The more people come forward to tell their story the better understood it will become.
Hi Ann
I lived through it. And my forefathers lived peacefully in our village for 800 years under Hungarian , Czechoslovakian and Slovakian rule.
Let me introduce myself. I was born in the Zips in present Slovakia and I am a schoolfriend of Julius Loisch. I understand that he is in contact with you. We both attended the Gymnasium in Käsmark and were also together in the KLV camps in Austria and Niederalteich in Germany.
For my kids, I summarized the history of our village Gross Lomnitz (Velka Lomnica) based on the book: Geschichte der Gemeinde Großlomnitz by Dr. Julius Greb. My main subjects are short stories written by me about our family and by persons from our village about the 24 hours partisan occupation of our village, evacuation stories, life in Germany and eventually coming to America. If this would be of interest to you, I could send you a CD.
Number two: My wife and her family came from Nikinze by Ruma in previous Yugoslavia.We have some documentation about their life during WWII. Included is, I would call, the life story of her Granduncle Dr. Stefan Kraft from India Yugoslavia, who represented the German minority in the KIngdom of Yugoslavia and after the war also represented them in West Germany. It was written by by Joseph Wilhelm, Schulrat a.D. in German.. If you or associates are interested I could make a CD and send it to you/them.
I admire you for the work that you are doing so that later generations learn of the” Last Germans of the East”. We are dying out and so is our personal history.
Sincerely
Bert Lux
Dear Ann,
I wonder if you can put me in touch with Bert Lux? My father’s family was also from India, Croatia which is now Indjija, Serbia and information is so hard to get. My parents fled to Austria in 1944, just before the country was overrun by the partisans. I know very little about my Barth and Schwarz extended family except that many of our surnames are on the Donnauschwaben totenbuch. How they are related are a mystery since my Dad said very little about it and has now passed away. My grandfather Nicholas Barth died in 1944 and my grandmother Maria Schwarz died in an Austrian DP camp in 1950. I was born in St Veit on der glan, Austria and my siblings in Klagenfurt, Austria. The family worked for a contessa when there was work to be had but we were in and out of the camp called Weidmansdorf, Lager B.depending on work and safety. A family friend, Gustav Kraft came to America later and stayed with us for several months until he could get established. I wonder if somehow he was related to Mr. Lux’s wife? And I would like to ask her if she may have known my father Jakob Barth or Aunt Katerina Barth Foro.
Thank you for your wonderful documentaries. I didn’t understand how horrific those events were. Our parents and grandparents tried to spare us, but it is important for our children and grandchildren to know so they can prevent atrocities like this in the future, although it seems that humans are still inhumane judging by the events of the Middle east, Africa, and india, the continent, to name but a few. Please continue the work, you have made a big difference for me and my search for the truth.
Justine Barth Zentner
Hello Justin,
Thank you for sharing your family history.
I will contact Mr. Liz and explain your history and how you may connect.
I’m sure you’ll be hearinh from him.
Until next time,
Ann
Bert Lux,
My grandfather was Johann Loisch from Gross Schlagendorf. I just happened on this site and had to respond immediately.
My grandmother, Elizabeth Krebsz, is from Gross Lomnitz.
Hello Jacqueline,
I’m happy that you found the web site and learned a little bit more about what really happened during and after WWII.
If you have any questions about where your grandparents came from or perhaps hear from others about those areas this is the place to ask.
The visitors we have all have stories of their own as well as questions so ask away.
Thank you for writing,
Ann
Ms. Dennis
My name is William Krebs, my grandfather was Jacob Krebsz (he dropped the Z shortly after coming to America} He was born and raised on a farm in or near Gross Lomnitz. he left there around 1890, was a tailor, went to Paris, London and in1900 to the United States. Moved to Pittsburgh in 1903. He died on 11 November 1981 of the Influenza. He had two brothers survive to adulthood, Muttas and Samuel. Samuel went to the US but returned to Slovakia, and my father had been in touch with his son and grandson. We believe that Muttas eventually moved to Transylvania. Anyway, I saw you posting and realized there is a remote chance your grandmother was related to us in some respect.