This book reveals untold living history of thirty ethnic German survivors who finally broke their silence and talked about their heart-breaking experiences of forced deportation, expulsion, and flight during WWII and its aftermath. They were deported from their homes in Romania and Yugoslavia; expelled from their homes in Czechoslovakia; and had to flee from their homes in Poland and all the Eastern provinces of Germany, These ethnic German survivors tell of their weeks-long treacherous over-crowded cattle-train transports, back-breaking work in forced labor camps, starvation and homelessness during bitter cold winters, witnessing mass rapes and beatings to death. They are among the fifteen million Germans who were expelled from their homes in East-Central Europe during the largest forced mass migration of the twentieth century. These now aged survivors, who experienced humanities darkest side but have no malice toward their perpetrators, exemplify the unbreakable and indelible human spirit.
About the Author
Dr. Erika Vora is Professor Emeritus of Intercultural Communication at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. Her previous book, “The Will to Live: A German Family’s Flight from Soviet Rule” depicts the traumatic flight of her own family trying to escape the approaching Russian Red Army during World War II. Professor Vora has been a Fulbright Scholar to Taiwan, Republic of China and Director of numerous international study programs in Germany. She has been a visiting scholar and intercultural communication consultant to universities and companies around the world. She is well published in the areas of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence movement to free India, managing interracial conflict in the United States, and listening across religious and cultural divides.
