Forgotten voices : the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II /

Merten, a retired banker and son of an anti-Nazi immigrant, offers a comprehensive narrative of German expulsion from Eastern Europe after WW II. Forgotten Voices correctly ascertains that the crimes committed against the German refugees after the war were precipitated by the crimes committed by the Germans during the war. It is problematic, however, that Merten does not follow up such cursory statements with a closer analysis of German memory culture after the war that uncritically and regrettably counted as equal victims of Nazism all who perished in the Holocaust: the German soldiers who died at the eastern front, the denizens of the German cities killed by the Allied bombers, and the refugees from Eastern Europe. To this reviewer (himself a son of a refugee from Eastern Europe) and to the historians who wrote such titles as Divided Memory (Jeffrey Herf; CH, Mar'98, 35-4108), Life and Death in the Third Reich (Peter Fritzsche; CH, Feb'09, 46-3479), and Guilt, Suffering, and Memory (Gilad Margalit; CH, Oct'10, 48-1092), among others, it is imperative to clarify, as Merten never sufficiently does, that the murderers and their relatives and countrymen can never be remembered on the same moral plane as their victims. Summing Up: Optional. Specialists only. H. P. Langerbein University of Texas at Brownsville