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100-571: The project was initiated by the Federation of Expellees , who dedicated a "Foundation Centre Against Expulsions" to the centre. This foundation is based in Wiesbaden , and headed by CDU politician and president of the Federation of Expellees, Erika Steinbach . The other head of the foundation was SPD politician Peter Glotz who died in 2005. The head of the foundation ZgV since 2018 is Christean Wagner,

200-564: A Memorandum to Gary W. B. Chang , Jeannette H. Castagnetti , and Members of the Judiciary for the State of Hawaii , speaking out against the continued prolonged U.S. occupation of The Hawaiian Kingdom. He has called for a peaceful solution to the dispute between India and Pakistan in accordance with pertinent UN resolutions and the right of self-determination of the Kashmiris . He has advocated

300-538: A Transylvanian Saxon refugee from Agnita , Socialist Republic of Romania , and who has since been elected as a Christian Social Union in Bavaria Member of the Bundestag . It is estimated that in the aftermath of World War II between 13 and 16 million ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from parts of Central and Eastern Europe, including the former eastern territories of Germany (parts of present-day Poland ),

400-589: A World Parliamentary Assembly . On 10 September 2014, de Zayas presented his third report on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order to the Human Rights Council. During its 27th session in September 2014, the Human Rights Council extended his mandate through 2018 pursuant to resolution A/HRC/RES/27/9. On 27 October 2014, he presented his third report to the General Assembly on

500-625: A bestseller. His second book (written with Walter Rabus), The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau , was published in Germany by Universitas/ Langen Müller  [ de ] , in 1979, and the English translation by de Zayas himself by the University of Nebraska Press in 1989. The book describes some of the work of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle , a special section of the legal department of

600-766: A centre termed "Visible Sign" ( German : Sichtbares Zeichen ). On 3 September 2008 the German federal government passed a law calling for the establishment of a center against expulsions in the Deutschlandhaus building of the Anhalter Bahnhof site in Berlin - Kreuzberg . The law passed the German parliament and was enacted on 29 December 2008. The center is to be run by a "Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation" ( German : Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung ) subordinate to

700-535: A condemnation from UN Watch for saying the November 2015 Paris attacks were caused by the United States, Western colonialism, capitalism, and " Israeli settlers " and "a response to grave injustices and ongoing abuses perpetrated by the dominant, primarily developed countries, against populations of less developed countries". On 29 September 2017, de Zayas, and another UN independent commissioner, David Kaye , issued

800-530: A democratic and equitable international order, and on 26 October 2015 to the General Assembly on the issue of investor state dispute settlement. The main observations of these reports were reported by news outlets such as Reuters , The Guardian , The Huffington Post , and The Independent . In 2015, the US based magazine of global politics, Foreign Policy , consulted with the UN Independent Expert on

900-684: A detailed analysis of the working methods of The Wehrmacht Bureau on War Crimes. The FAZ favourably reviewed the article: "Following careful study of the records, cross-checking in foreign archives and more than three hundred interviews with surviving witnesses and military judges, de Zayas arrives at the conclusion that the investigations are reliable." The International Committee of the Red Cross has republished parts of The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau in its teaching manual How does Law Protect in War , edited by Marco Sassoli and Antoine Bouvier. His third book

1000-565: A discussion of health and nutrition in Venezuela , the Venezuelan state representative screened an interview by state broadcaster Telesur with de Zayas, in which he stated there was not a humanitarian crisis in the country. Nutrition expert Susana Raffalli , advisor to PROVEA and Caritas Organization of Venezuela, said de Zayas used poor evidence to support his claim, and that by then four United Nations rapporteurs had already declared that there

1100-486: A fresh look at the evidence, poses new questions – and proposes possible answers, avoiding guessing and extrapolation. He places the evidence in historical context, avoiding the anachronisms that some historians indulge in." De Zayas was co-president, with Jacqueline Berenstein-Wavre , of the Association Suisses et Internationaux de Genève (ASIG) from 1996 to 2006. Since the 1990s, de Zayas has also focused on

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1200-442: A harsher fate than Germans. The Polish government opposes the involvement of Erika Steinbach in any issues related to Polish-German history and at the same time supports an international net of centers dedicated to remembrance of totalitarian regimes and their victims called "European Network Remembrance and Solidarity". Federation of Expellees The Federation of Expellees (German: Bund der Vertriebenen ; BdV )

1300-519: A new chapter to the annals of human cruelty. His carefully documented book serves as a reminder that many different peoples have been subjected to 'ethnic cleansing'". (July 1994). Twenty years later Matthias Stickler reviewed a revised edition in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : "Es vermittelt anschaulich, gut lesbar, quellenorientiert und ohne Polemik Grundwissen zu einem nach wie vor wichtigen Thema" ("the book imparts knowledge on

1400-404: A permanent place for it, the Federation of Expellees set up the "Foundation Centre Against Expulsions" ( German : Stiftung Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen, ZgV) ) on 6 September 2000. The foundation Centre Against Expulsions defines four objectives: On 11 November 2005, the largest German political parties SPD and CDU signed a coalition. One stated goal of the coalition is the establishment of

1500-527: A politician of the Christian Democratic Union in Germany. Since late 2008, the project is forwarded by the Federal Republic of Germany, when the federal government and parliament passed a law calling for the constitution of a Foundation German Historical Museum subordinate to the federal government, which in turn shall hold a Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation which shall take on

1600-741: A registered Republican voter , although he supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 , and Tulsi Gabbard (via write-in ) in 2020 . Writing in 2018 in the Canadian magazine Humanist Perspectives , he warned about the growing radicalism of the Antifa movement in Germany , reminiscent of the Nazi SA of the 1930s: "A new wave of totalitarianism is sweeping through Germany with the collusion of the mainstream media, which ... seldom criticize Antifa" and downplay their anti-democratic violence. On several occasions de Zayas has been invited as an expert before German courts and before

1700-501: A statement saying that the Spanish government was "violating fundamental individual rights, limiting the flow of public information at such a critical moment for the Spanish democracy" during the 2017 Catalan independence referendum . According to Spanish newspaper Okdiario , Catalan President Carles Puigdemont paid de Zayas €100 000 to support the Catalan independence process. De Zayas is

1800-470: A still very relevant topic vividly, in straightforward language, based on reliable sources and without polemics)." Historian Ernest Fisher reviewed it in the United States Army magazine Army : "The author has given the history of these expulsions a dramatic immediacy through a series of eyewitness accounts ... The remarkable sequel to this recital of inhumanity is that this displaced population has, in

1900-630: A substantive preface by Karl Doehring, Director of the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg, explored the issue of who knew what when about the Holocaust . He is the first historian to have reviewed the issue in the light of published and unpublished Nuremberg documents, and in the light of interviews with Nuremberg prosecutors and defense attorneys, Holocaust survivors as well as German military judges and politicians. He argued that

2000-481: Is "often cited in support of the comparability thesis", i.e. the argument that crimes committed by Germany during the war were equivalent to crimes committed against it. A review in the scholarly journal Central European History describes it as having a "distinctively revisionist flavour". By contrast, Andreas Hillgruber wrote in the Historische Zeitschrift : " His succinct and incisive recounting of

2100-582: Is a non-profit organization formed in West Germany on 27 October 1957 to represent the interests of German nationals of all ethnicities and foreign ethnic Germans and their families (usually naturalised as German nationals after 1949) who either fled their homes in parts of Central and Eastern Europe , or were forcibly expelled following World War II . Since 2014 the president of the Federation has been Bernd Fabritius , who arrived in West Germany in 1984 as

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2200-684: Is an advocate of reviewing certain decolonization issues in the light of the UN Charter and General Assembly resolutions. In particular, he has criticized the Spanish amalgamation of the distinct Bubi people of Bioko Island with the people of another Spanish colony, Equatorial Guinea. Since his early retirement from the UN in 2003, de Zayas has been a vocal critic of the 2003 Iraq War He has criticised indefinite detention in Guantanamo , secret CIA prisons , and extreme poverty . In 2015, he sparked

2300-423: Is keenly aware of the secondary literature in the field. He takes issue with some of the conclusions of historians like Goldhagen , Gellately , Longerich and Bankier , and tends to agree with the analysis of Michael Marrus , Gordon Craig , Peter Hoffmann and Hans Mommsen . But while he carefully considers the opinions of other scholars, he does not rehash what is already in the secondary literature – he takes

2400-563: Is that many of the current Polish population in historical eastern Germany are themselves expellees (or descendants of expellees) who, totaling 1.6 million, were driven from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union and were forced to leave their homes and property behind as well. Some German-speakers had been settled in occupied Poland after 1939 by the Nazis. Treating these ex-colonists as expellees under German law, Erika Steinbach included, adds to

2500-527: Is the " Law of Return " which granted German citizenship to any ethnic German. Several additions were later made to these laws. The German Law of Return declared refugee status to be inheritable. According to the Federal Expellee Law , "the spouse and the descendants" of an expellee are to be treated as if they were expellees themselves, regardless of whether they had been personally displaced. The Federation of Expellees has steadily lobbied to preserve

2600-555: Is the single representative federation for the approximately 15 million Germans who after fleeing, being expelled, evacuated or emigrating, found refuge in the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federation claims to have 1.3 million members (including non-displaced persons), and to be a political force of some influence in Germany. This figure was disputed in January 2010 by the German news service DDP, which reported an actual membership of 550,000. According to Erika Steinbach only 100,000 of

2700-461: The Dalhousie Review notes: "De Zayas does not ignore the enormity of the crimes committed by Germans during the course of the war, nor does he deny that an anti-German feeling was natural and that punishment was justified, He does, however, question whether one set of crimes justified a second... whether revenge ... was not only extended to the guilty but to the innocent, whether expulsion itself

2800-926: The Harvard International Law Journal , the UBC Law Review , the International Review of the Red Cross , the Criminal Law Forum , the Refugee Survey Quarterly , the Netherlands International Law Review , The International Commission of Jurists Review , the Historical Journal , Politique internationale , the German Yearbook of International Law , Canadian Human Rights Yearbook and

2900-560: The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht , which investigated Allied and German war crimes . The authors argue that the Bureau carefully investigated war crimes and was largely free of Nazi ideology. De Zayas worked with the 226 extant volumes (about half of the total, the rest apparently having been burned in Langensalza , Germany, near the end of the war. ). The book was savagely attacked in the media of

3000-789: The Czech Republic , Slovakia , Slovenia , Hungary , Croatia , Serbia (mostly from the Vojvodina region), the Kaliningrad Oblast of (now) Russia, hitherto USSR (in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War) and prior to this, the northern part of East Prussia , Lithuania , Romania and other East European countries. The Charter of the German Expellees (German: Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen ) of 5 August 1950, announced their belief in requiring that "the right to

3100-632: The East European Quarterly . He has co-authored and co-edited books such as The International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms . De Zayas has published chapters in books Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe co-edited by Steven Várdy and Hunt Tooley. In International Humanitarian Law: Origins , edited by John Carey, de Zayas wrote the chapter "Ethnic Cleansing, Applicable Norms, Emerging Jurisprudence, Implementable Remedies". His chapter in Spanish "El crimen contra la paz"

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3200-643: The Oder-Neisse line as the eastern German border with Poland under his policy of Ostpolitik . In reality, accepting the internationally recognized boundary made it more possible for eastern Germans to visit their lost homelands. In 1989–1990 the West German government realized they had an opportunity to reunify the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet created German Democratic Republic. But they believed that if this were to be achieved, it had to be done quickly. One of

3300-550: The Rome Statute . The report was received positively by the Venezuelan government. More than eighty Venezuelan organizations questioned de Zayas' conclusions that there was not a humanitarian crisis in the country. In a public statement, the organizations said that before finishing his mission in Venezuela and without having processed the information provided by the organizations, de Zayas formed an opinion prematurely and assumed

3400-698: The Soviet Union and its satellites . In a review of the book in the Cambridge Law Journal , Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Christopher Greenwood considered the book to be "excellent" and that "the authors deserve the gratitude of all those interested in the laws of war but unable to read German for bringing out an English edition." He goes on to add that "Throughout

3500-727: The United Nations Human Rights Council . De Zayas was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in Chicago, Illinois (US). He earned his juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School , then a doctorate of philosophy in modern history from the University of Göttingen (Germany). He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tübingen in Germany and research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg , Germany. He worked with

3600-464: The rights of indigenous peoples . In 1994, he co-authored with Prof. Cherif Bassiouni , The Protection of Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice , published by Transnational Publishers. De Zayas, in collaboration with Justice Jakob Möller, authored the book United Nations Human Rights Committee Case Law 1977-2008 (2009), published by N. P. Engel Verlag. The first Chairman of

3700-629: The "economic war" and "economic sanctions placed by the U.S., Canada and the European Union". De Zayas' report, published in August 2018, found internal overdependence on oil, poor governance and corruption had damaged the Venezuelan economy, but that "economic warfare" was a major factor in the crisis. He recommended economic sanctions be investigated by the International Criminal Court as possible crimes against humanity under Article 7 of

3800-478: The 50 years since the war, managed to find a new home in a reunited Germany where nearly 20 percent of the population is made up of first- or second-generation descendants of these exiled millions." De Zayas' book Nemesis at Potsdam likewise received a positive review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung by historian Patrick Sutter. His 2011 book Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis ( Genocide as State Secret ) with

3900-536: The BdV officially denied involvement in this, no steps were taken to address the concerns raised. In February 2009, the Polish newspaper Polska alleged that over one third of the Federation top officials were former Nazi activists, and based this on a 2006 article published by the German magazine Der Spiegel . The German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , later revealed that Der Spiegel had written this not in respect to

4000-619: The Charter presents the history of German people as starting from the expulsions, while ignoring events like the Holocaust . Professor Micha Brumlik pointed out that one third of signatories were former devoted Nazis and many actively helped in realisation of Hitler's goals. Ralph Giordano wrote in Hamburger Abendblatt "the Charter doesn't contain a word about Hitler , Auschwitz and Buchenwald . Not to mention any sign of apologies for

4100-472: The Christian Democratic Union, had shown more rhetorical support for the territorial claims made on behalf of German refugees and expellees. Although the Social Democrats showed strong support for the expellees, especially under Kurt Schumacher and Erich Ollenhauer , Social Democrats in more recent decades have generally been less supportive – and it was under Willy Brandt that West Germany recognized

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4200-534: The Czech Republic. These governments argue that the expulsion of Germans and related border changes were not enacted by the Polish or Czech governments, but rather were ordered by the Potsdam Conference . Furthermore, the nationalization of private property by Poland's former communist government did not apply only to Germans but was enforced on all people, regardless of ethnic background. A further complication

4300-569: The Federation Rudi Pawelka is however a chairman of the supervisory board of the Prussian Trust . A European organisation for expellees has been formed: EUFV. Headquarters is Trieste, Italy. The expellees are organized in 21 regional associations (Landsmannschaften) , according to the areas of origin of its members, 16 state organizations (Landesverbände) according to their current residence, and 5 associate member organizations. It

4400-504: The Federation of Expellees, but instead about a previous organization that was dissolved in 1957. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 31 May 1947) is a Cuban-born American lawyer and writer, active in the field of human rights and international law . From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2018, he served as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order , appointed by

4500-460: The First Cabinet of Ludwig Erhard . He stepped down from cabinet and other positions in 1964 amid controversy about his war-time background. Krüger was succeeded as president by Wenzel Jaksch in 1964 who held the position until his untimely death in 1966. When in government, both CDU and SPD have tended to favor improved relations with Central and Eastern Europe, even when this conflicts with

4600-445: The French-German Historian Alfred Grosser strongly criticized the Dörner review as political and "completely one-sided", accusing the reviewer of ideological bias and unhistorical approach. Grosser cited the reviewer's own words on "strategy": "The question of contemporary perception of the Holocaust is of strategic importance. Because if it had actually been the case that the genocide could have remained secret, this would severely limit

4700-479: The Human Rights Committee, Andreas Mavrommatis, wrote a preface for the handbook. In a review published in the UN Special magazine, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan wrote: "It is staggering how much the Human Rights Committee has influenced the human rights jurisprudence of the world, as is striking from reading this exceedingly important book.... From the outset of its work in 1977 there have been two Secretariat pioneers in developing

4800-482: The International Rainer Maria Rilke Society of Sierre, Switzerland , de Zayas published the first English-language translation of Rilke's " Larenopfer ", 90 poems dedicated to Rilke's homeland of Bohemia and his home city of Prague Zayas has lectured on Rilke in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Canada. On 2 May 2011, he delivered a lecture at the Salon du Livre de Genève (Geneva bookfair) on "Rilke, poète de la Heimat" A member of International PEN since 1989, he

4900-1003: The Nazi expansion and extermination policy and their aftermaths. (2) This purpose shall be fulfilled especially by the following measures: The scientific advisory board includes or included Jörg Baberowski , Arnulf Baring , Peter Becher , Lothar Gall , Bernhard Graf , Helga Hirsch , Walter Homolka , Eckart Klein , Hilmar Kopper , Rudolf Kucera , Otto Graf Lambsdorff , Horst Möller , Christoph Pan , Rüdiger Safranski , Christoph Stölzl , Christian Tomuschat , Krisztián Ungváry , Georg Wildmann , Michael Wolffsohn , Alfred-Maurice de Zayas and Zoran Ziletic . The United Nations' first High Commissioner for Human Rights Dr. José Ayala Lasso , German chancellor Angela Merkel , Nobel literature laureate and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész , Joachim Gauck , Milan Horáček , former Austrian crown prince Otto von Habsburg , and historians such as Guido Knopp , Hungarian novelist György Konrád , and Christian Tomuschat , have also voiced their support for

5000-432: The Rechtsausschuss (legal committee) of the German Bundestag, invited by the CDU/CSU. He joined the board of trustees of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)'s "Desiderius Erasmus Foundation" think tank in 2018. In 2019, he spoke before the Menschenrechtsausschuss (Human Rights Committee) of the Bundestag , in March on the issue of humanitarian aid and in September on the issue of impunity. On this occasion De Zayas

5100-434: The Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya . The Guardian published his op-ed on adverse human rights impacts of free trade and investment agreements. In the following year, the UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order submitted his report on the adverse impact of World Bank policies on human rights and the realisation of a democratic and equitable international order to

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5200-444: The UN Human Rights Council at its 21st session in September 2012, calling for uniform application of international law. On 10 September 2013, he presented his second report to the Human Rights Council A/HRC/24/38, and, in October 2013 his second report to the GA . A/68/284, to the UN General Assembly exploring initiatives and enforcement mechanisms to further advance a democratic and equitable international order, in particular through

5300-399: The UN Human Rights Council. On 21 July 2017, de Zayas presented his last report to the UN General Assembly on the human rights impact of IMF policies and practice. The report was sent to the UN Human Rights Council on 25 January 2018. On 15 March 2018, he formulated his 23 principles of international order. In 2017, a 1982 photo of de Zayas in blackface which he had posted on his website

5400-460: The United Nations from 1981 to 2003 as a senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chief of Petitions. Since 1996, de Zayas has been married to Carolina Jolanda Edelenbos, a Dutch national and UN official, with whom he had a son, Stefan (deceased). De Zayas' work focuses inter alia on the judicial protection of peoples and minorities. He has written and lectured extensively on human rights, including

5500-410: The WUSt functionaries as subject of his novel A Man without Breath , published 2013 by Penguin; in the "Author's note" (p. 463) Kerr writes: "The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau continued to exist until 1945. Anyone who wishes to know more about its work should consult the excellent book of the same name by Alfred de Zayas." In the Historical Journal (Cambridge), vol. 35, 1992, de Zayas published

5600-545: The actual documentation in Berlin. The project has been subject to criticism, especially in Poland. The Federation of Expellees ( German : Bund der Vertriebenen, BdV) is the German non-governmental head organization of various organized groups of German refugees and expellees. The federation is committed to document the post- World War II flight and expulsion of Germans as well as other forced displacements, and maintains an exhibition for this purpose shown in changing locations of Germany. To expand this exhibition and to find

5700-413: The application of the right to self-determination in the Indonesian region of West Papua. During his mandate, he addressed multiple contemporary world issues, welcoming the Arms Trade Treaty and urging States to regulate not only trade but also production of arms. In 2015, following a press release, de Zayas urged trade negotiators to address the Doha Round commitments to promote equal and fair trade at

5800-502: The book originated in a 1981 'prime-time television broadcast in Germany' which dealt with the expulsions, and in which he took part." The book was described as "problematic" by historians Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer . Historians Dan Diner and Joel Golb write that the tendency of "allow[ing] the Germans to perceive themselves also as victims" is "manifest in the work of the best-selling author Alfred-Maurice de Zayas". Nottingham Trent University Bill Niven writes that de Zayas

5900-580: The book the authors emphasize that all the cases they examined have to be seen against the background of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the German armed forces and SS." In the Fletcher Forum , Alfred Rubin stated that "De Zayas is undoubtedly one of the world's leading legal scholars addressing forced population transfers ... [his] work provides massive confirmation of the truism that atrocities are committed in war by all sides, that many go unpunished, and some are part of national policy....the possibility that truth might be misused in argument by

6000-420: The case law of the Committee when it considers petitions from individuals claiming violations of their rights: Jakob Möller (Iceland) and Alfred de Zayas (USA). Möller was the first Chief of the Petitions branch of what is today the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and de Zayas was his colleague, who eventually succeeded him as Chief." De Zayas has written scholarly articles that were published in

6100-415: The centre. In a petition initiated by Hans Henning Hahn, Eva Hahn, Alexandra Kurth, Samuel Salzborn and Tobias Weger in 2003, signed by several hundred people, primarily German, Czech, and Polish historians, opponents of the proposed form of Centre expressed concerns the centre would "establish and popularize a one-sided image of the past, without historical context", and see the dangers of "de-contexualizing

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6200-467: The controversy. However, the vast majority of expelled Germans were descended from families who had lived in Eastern Europe for many centuries, while the majority of German colonists in Nazi-occupied Poland were Baltic and other East European Germans themselves displaced by the Nazi-Soviet population transfers . During the Cold War , the Federation was accused by the GDR and Poland of continuing Nazi ideology . A recent study confirmed that 13 members of

6300-472: The devil is not a reason to suppress truth. I have no personal doubt that this book is a useful attempt to preserve an important truth. By writing it, the author – whose own humanitarian sympathies are beyond question, as is Levie's scholarly detachment --has done a service to scholarship." Dieter Fleck, in Archiv des Voelkerrechts , underlined that "this well-written book is based on thorough research of original sources." The British novelist Philip Kerr took

6400-485: The events are summarized in ten historical and six international law theses, that precisely because of their lucidity and balance deserve a permanent place in the historiography of the expulsions." Gotthold Rhode wrote in the FAZ : "de Zayas lets the victims themselves tell their story, providing reports that were hitherto unknown... the book has the character of a new 'Documentation on the Expulsions' and contains descriptions of cruelties and suffering that four decades after

6500-498: The events boggle the mind." Henry Stanhome in the London Times wrote: "De Zayas's moving plea is that one's home should be a human right. As frontiers once more shift in Eastern Europe and families flee in Bosnia, he could hardly have chosen a better moment to deliver it." (18 November 1993) Publishers Weekly : "This relatively unknown holocaust claimed more than two million lives...De Zayas... has uncovered testimony in German and American archives detailing these atrocities, adding

6600-407: The expulsions of these ethnic Germans. The book had a preface by Dwight Eisenhower 's political advisor, Robert Daniel Murphy , a participant at the Potsdam conference . British historian Tony Howarth reviewed it in the Times Educational Supplement as "a lucid, scholarly and compassionate study". Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz wrote in the American Journal of International Law that it

6700-411: The fact that discussion of The Expulsion is no longer considered taboo." According to a doctoral thesis on the historiography of the expulsion, "de Zayas was one of the earliest 'respectable' academics to take up the cause of the expellees... De Zayas does not mention the Holocaust, the Jews, or any other minority ethnic groups that suffered under the Nazis except in passing." However, Professor Doerr in

6800-462: The fact that in other research, scholars have found convincing evidence that knowledge of murders was partial but present. Overall, he found the book to be "a hard-to-read, confusing, poorly argued book that lags far behind the differentiated state of research represented primarily by [Peter] Longerich ". The review by Bernward Dörner in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it as an "attempt to deny contemporary perceptions of genocide", while

6900-485: The first council of the Federation had Nazi pasts. The Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported that during BdV meetings in 2003, publications expressing anti-Polish sentiment and accusing Poles of ethnic cleansing towards ethnic Germans were available for sale, as were recordings of Waffen SS marches on compact discs , including songs glorifying the Invasion of Poland . Also, far right organizations openly distributed their materials at BdV meetings. While

7000-438: The first scholarly work on German expellees to appear in English, breaking what had long been a taboo topic." The German Federal Minister Heinrich Windelen wrote in the foreword to de Zayas's book Anmerkungen zur Vertreibung : "It is thanks to De Zayas that the debate on The Expulsion has been reopened [...] In the subsequent period, a number of authors have drawn on the work of De Zayas. Thus, he has contributed significantly to

7100-401: The genocides against the Armenians , Greeks of Pontus and Assyro-Chaldeans under the Ottoman Empire before, during, and after the First World War . He advocates the creation of a Constitutional Convention for Cyprus and published a proposal for this together with Malcolm Shaw and Andreas Auer. He has argued for the recognition of "the human right to peace". In 2018 de Zayas sent

7200-522: The government's point of view, which blames the "economic warfare" and "blockade" for the food and medical supplies shortages. The organizations said that in two years, among twenty two experts from twelve international organizations, de Zayas' report was the only one to say there was no humanitarian crisis in the country. Alí Daniels, director of the NGO Acceso a la Justicia (Access to Justice), said that Venezuelan and Ecuadorian organizations said that, since

7300-468: The governmental "Foundation German Historical Museum" ( German : Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum ). The purpose of this foundation is stated in §16 of the above-mentioned law as follows: (1) The purpose of the non-autonomous foundation is to ensure in the spirit of reconciliation the remembrance of flight and expulsion in the 20th century in the historical context of the Second World War and

7400-488: The historical analysis of Nemesis at Potsdam and A Terrible Revenge . He observes: "De Zayas' senior position with the UN Human Rights Commission, his position as a United States citizen (not a German) and his indisputable humanitarian credentials meant that de Zayas' work was taken seriously in Germany and America." In 1975, de Zayas published a study in the Harvard International Law Journal , questioning

7500-472: The homeland is recognized and carried out as one of the fundamental rights of mankind given by God", while renouncing revenge and retaliation in the face of the "unending suffering" ( unendliche Leid ) of the previous decade, and supporting the unified effort to rebuild Germany and Europe. The charter has been criticised for avoiding mentioning Nazi atrocities of Second World War and Germans who were forced to emigrate due to Nazi repressions. Critics argue that

7600-553: The idea of the centre claiming that it would equate German suffering with that of the Jews and Poles and will suggest a moral equivalence between the victims of war and their oppressors. Marek Edelman , the last living leader of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising , criticized the project as nationalistic, arrogant and serving to realize political ambitions of the backers of the project. According to Edelman other nations subject to German expulsions didn't establish any comparable monuments, even as they faced

7700-547: The inheritability clause. The Federation of Expellees was formed on 27 October 1957 in West Germany. Before its founding, the Bund der Heimatvertriebenen (League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights), formed in 1950, represented the interests of displaced German expellees. Intriguingly, in its first few years, the league was more successful in West Germany than in East Germany . Previous West German governments, especially those led by

7800-469: The interests of the displaced people. The issue of the eastern border and the return of the Heimatvertriebene to their ancestral homes are matters which the current German government, German constitutional arrangements and German treaty obligations have virtually closed. The refugees' claims were unanimously rejected by the affected countries and became a source of mistrust between Germany, Poland and

7900-595: The jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Armenian genocide , the Holocaust, the US-run detention centers at Guantanamo Bay , ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia , the expulsion of Eastern European Germans after the Second World War , the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974, the rights of minorities , the right to freedom of opinion and expression , and

8000-654: The legality of the expulsion of possibly as many as 15 million Germans from their homes after World War II, invoking the Atlantic Charter , the Hague Conventions , and the Nuremberg Principles . The article was followed by his first book Nemesis at Potsdam ( Routledge und Kegan Paul , 1977) which focused on what, if any, responsibility the British and U.S. governments had for decisions which purportedly led to

8100-599: The members contribute financially. The federation helps its members to integrate into German society. Many of the members assist the societies of their place of birth. From 1959 to 1964, the first president of the Federation was Hans Krüger , a former Nazi judge and activist. After the war Krüger was a West German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was a member of parliament from 1957 to 1965, served as Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims for 4 months in 1963–64 in

8200-655: The mission was not prepared according to independence standards of the United Nations, it could not reach valid or acceptable conclusions for the UN Human Rights Council . Daniels argued that this lack of balance was demonstrated in Zayas' report, where twelve pages are dedicated to Venezuela and only two and a half to Ecuador. During the 167th session of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights , during

8300-664: The occupied territory of the Hawaiian Islands must be administered by the application of laws by the occupied state (in this case, the Hawaiian Kingdom) not the domestic laws of the occupier (the United States)." In late 2017 de Zayas visited Venezuela . In a February 2018 interview with Telesur , de Zayas, said "I’ve compared the statistics of Venezuela with those of other countries and there’s no humanitarian crisis". He said that Venezuela's economic problems were caused by

8400-459: The past" and "ethnification of social conflicts". German-Jewish writer Ralph Giordano withdrew his initial support for the same reason, but defended Steinbach against the latest personal accusations from Poland, which he called defamation. Former German Foreign minister Joschka Fischer said "This can't be a museum of German war victims. Germans can't point fingers at others". Critics in Poland oppose

8500-576: The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke into English, French, and Spanish, and has translated works by Joseph von Eichendorff Zayas has published many anti-war poems, including "Beatitudes" in Sam Hamill's "Poets Against the War", "Apocalypse" and "Dinosaurs", published in Esoteric Magazine, "Panem et circensis" published in Esoteric Magazine. "Manichaean games", published in Ex Tempore. As a member of

8600-504: The policy of exterminating the Jews was "geheime Reichssache" (secret Reich business), and treated pursuant to Hitler's Order Nr. 1 (Führerbefehl Nr. 1) as a "state secret". Accordingly, although there were diffuse rumors about killings, no one except a very limited number of persons knew exactly what was going on, neither the industrialization of the killing nor the number of victims. German historian Martin Moll wrote that de Zayas' book ignored

8700-548: The potential complications was the claim to the historical eastern territories of Germany; unless this was renounced, some foreign governments might not agree to German reunification . The West German government under the CDU accepted the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany (Two Plus Four Agreement), which officially re-established the sovereignty of both German states. A condition of this agreement

8800-434: The right to self-determination (A/69/272) In the press release issued the following day, he stated: "The realization of the right of self-determination is essential to maintaining local, regional and international peace and must be seen as an important conflict-prevention strategy." On 10 September 2015, he presented his fourth report to the council on the adverse human rights impacts of free trade and investment agreements on

8900-761: The rights of many minorities and indigenous peoples to autonomy and self-determination in United Nations fora and before parliamentarians in the European Parliament, including the Armenians of Nagorno Karabagh , the Sahrawi population of Western Sahara , the Tamils of Sri Lanka , the Bubis of Equatorial Guinea , the Catalans of Spain, and the Igbos and Ogonis of Nigeria . de Zayas

9000-546: The shared responsibility of the German population in the genocide." In other words, as the title of Grosser's article implies ("the return of collective guilt"), it is a question of instrumentalizing guilt for political purposes, and Zayas was not playing the game. The journal of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, Genocide Prevention Now , observed in its review: "As the footnotes abundantly manifest, de Zayas

9100-499: The suffering of the murdered people", "avoids mentioning the reasons for expulsions" and called the document "example of German art of crowding out the truth (...) The fact that the charter completely ignores the reasons for the expulsions deprives it of any value". Between 1953, when the Federal Expellee Law was passed, and 1991, the West German government passed several laws dealing with German expellees. The most notable of these

9200-523: The unified territory , that had not acceded. In 2000 the Federation of Expellees also initiated the formation of the Center Against Expulsions (German: Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen ). Chairwoman of this Center is Erika Steinbach, who headed it together with former SPD politician Prof. Dr. Peter Glotz (died 2005). Recently Erika Steinbach, the chair of the Federation of Expellees, has rejected any compensation claims. The vice president of

9300-606: Was A Terrible Revenge, The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944–1950 , published in Germany in 1986, and in the United States in 1993 by Palgrave Macmillan under the title The German Expellees . According to PhD candidate Robert Bard, this book "was, as [de Zayas] says, written 'to generate interest in this hitherto ignored tragedy [the German ethnic expulsions] and lead to a new respect for these forgotten victims and to more compassion and understanding for our neighbours.' De Zayas in his introduction states that

9400-436: Was "a persuasive commentary on the suffering which becomes inevitable when humanitarianism is subordinated to nationalism". The New Statesman reviewer stated: "in his well researched, closely reasoned work, de Zayas leaves little doubt that there have been few historical parallels to this record of modern mass atrocity". In the same year, an enlarged German edition was published by the legal publisher C.H. Beck , becoming

9500-449: Was a "grave" situation in the country. Raffali said that de Zayas was only one out of forty rapporteurs, and that during his visit to the country and after meeting with civil society organizations, de Zayas only took pictures of the counter of the charcuterie in front of his hotel. Apart from his scholarly work in the fields of history and law, de Zayas has published poetry in English, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch , has translated

9600-485: Was a crime ...While critical of western leadership, de Zayas leaves no doubt about the agents of the crime-- the Soviet leaders. ...Praised must be de Zayas's reopening of this largely neglected aspect of modern German history." The 1999 University of Hertfordshire doctoral dissertation of Robert Bard, Historical Memory of the expulsion of ethnic Germans in Europe 1944–1947 , cites de Zayas 58 times and comments approvingly on

9700-540: Was described as "racist and offensive" by UN Watch . On 25 February 2018, The UN Independent Expert issued a memorandum that states: "I have come to understand that the lawful political status of the Hawaiian Islands is that of a sovereign nation-state in continuity; but a nation state that is under a strange form of occupation by the United States resulting from an illegal military occupation and fraudulent annexation. As such, international laws (The Hague and Geneva Conventions) require that governance and legal matters within

9800-510: Was invited as an expert by the AfD to speak on multilateralism in the 21st century, a lecture which he gave in the aula maxima of the University of Tuebingen in May 2019. De Zayas was appointed as "Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order" by the U.N. Human Rights Council at its 19th Session, which concluded on 23 March 2012. He presented his first report to

9900-419: Was published in the book La Declaración de Luarca sobre el Derecho Humano a la Paz , edited by Carmen Rosa Rueda Castañón and Carlos Villán Durán. De Zayas' work into the expulsion of Germans from areas of eastern Germany and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II is extensive. De Zayas was reportedly the first American historian to address this topic. Deutsche Welle reported in 2007: "He wrote

10000-531: Was that Germany accept the post-World War II frontiers. Upon reunification in 1990, the constitution was amended to state that Germany's territory had reached its full extent. Article 146 was amended so that Article 23 of the current constitution could be used for reunification. Once the five "reestablished federal states" in the east had been united with the west, the Basic Law was amended again to show that there were no other parts of Germany, which existed outside of

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