The Cost of Intolerance:
If the peoples of the earth would really seek to diminish the horrors of mass murder, they might do better to concentrate less on loving their neighbors and more on simply not hating them. Once enough of us decided to change from love/hate to tolerance, our politicians would have no choice but to obey us."
Charles M. Barber, Professor of history, Emeritus, Northeastern Illinois University.
(De, Z. A. (2006). A Terrible Revenge The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans. New York: Palgrave MacMillian)
My father and his family were victims of ethnic cleansing at the end of World War II. What was their crime? It was their ethnic identity. They were Donauschwabens living in what was then Yugoslavia and today is Serbia. The Donauschwaben were certainly targeted because even after 200 years of living in this region of Europe, they clung to their Germanic roots. They were different and very prosperous, evoking scorn and envy among many Serbian neighbors. Why do we react so strongly to individuals who are different? Why was the liquidation of this ethnic group ignored by the rest of the world? Was it because they were Germans? Certainly the majority of the people who lost their lives were woman and children, who had no role in the politics of the time and did not carry the guilt of the Nazi war crimes. As the Allies condemned the extermination of Jews and others by the Nazis, they openly supported the government and leader who spearheaded a very similar liquidation on the basis of ethnicity.
Today, as more and more former communist countries seek entry into the European Union, these governments have to admit to war crimes that they have so long denied. This is the case for Serbia who along with admitting to the atrocities that occurred at the end of World War II has proposed opportunities for restitution to victims. (See proposed law link below.) Still, within the last decade, my father, his brother and sister were discouraged from traveling into the region on the basis of safety.
http://www.apppbg.org.rs/files/20110729_Serbian_Draft_Law_on_Property_Restitution_and_Compensation.pdf
It is important to remember, as Yugoslavia dissolved into war in the early 1990s, the citizens of this area again turned to the slaughter of innocents based on ethnic identity and intolerance. The massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, Bosnia in July, 1995 are just one example of Serbian hatred and ruthlessness. Perhaps if there had been condemnation from the world for the ethnic cleansing of the Donauschwabens after World War II, these individuals would not have attempted to again solve differences with indiscriminate murder.
Song dedicated to the Donauschwaben scattered today throughout the world: