Series of exoduses in the aftermath of World War II
Mass evacuation,forced displacement,expulsion,and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved inWorld War II. The Second World War caused the movement of the largest number of people in the shortest period of time in history.[1] A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms by theNuremberg tribunal after the war ended. The mass movement of people – most of them refugees – had either been caused by the hostilities, or enforced by the former Axis and the Allied powers based on ideologies of race and ethnicity, culminating in the postwar border changes enacted by international settlements. The refugee crisis created across formerly occupied territories in World War II provided the context for much of the new internationalrefugee and globalhuman rights architecture existing today.[2]
Belligerents on both sides engaged in forms of expulsion of people perceived as being associated with the enemy. The major location for the wartime displacements was East-Central and Eastern Europe, although Japanese people were expelled during and after the war by Allied powers from locations in Asia including India. TheHolocaust also involved deportations and expulsions of Jews preliminary to the subsequent genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany under the auspices ofAktion Reinhard.[2]
World War II deportations, expulsions and displacements
Following theinvasion of Poland in September 1939 which marked the beginning of World War II, the campaign of ethnic "cleansing" became the goal of military operations for the first time since the end of World War I. After the end of the war, between 13.5 and 16.5 million German-speakers lost their homes in formerly German lands and all over Eastern Europe.
1939 to 1940: Expulsions of 121,765 Poles[5] from German-occupiedPomerania. On Polish places 130,000Volksdeutsche was settled including 57,000 Germans from East Europe countries:Soviet Union,Bessarabia,Romania and theBaltic states. Deportation was a part of German "Lebensraum" policy ordered by German organisations likeHauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and "Resettlement department" of RKFDV.
1939 to 1940: The firstevacuation of Finnish Karelia was the resettlement of the population ofFinnish Karelia and other territories ceded by Finland to theSoviet Union after and during theWinter War into the remaining parts ofFinland. Some of the territories were evacuated during the war or before it, as part of the course of the war. Most of the territory was evacuated after the Soviet Union gained it as a part of theMoscow peace treaty. In total, 410,000 people were transferred.
1940 to 1941: The Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, most in four mass waves. The accepted figure was over 1.5 million.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] The most conservative figures[13][14] use recently found NKVD documents showing 309,000[15][16][17] to 381,220.[17][18] The Soviets didn't recognise ethnic minorities as Polish citizens,[16][19] some of the figures are based on those given an amnesty rather than deported[7][16] and not everyone was eligible for the amnesty[20] therefore the new figures are considered too low.[14][16][21][22] The original figures were: February 1940[23][24] over 220,000;[11][25] April around 315,000;[11][25][26] June–July between 240,000[11] to 400,000;[25] June, 1941, 200,000[27] to 300,000.[11]
1940 to 1941: Expulsions of 17,000 Polish and Jewish residents from the western districts of cityOświęcim from places located directly adjacent toAuschwitz concentration camp, and also from the villages ofBroszkowice,Babice,Brzezinka,Rajsko,Pławy,Harmęże,Bór, andBudy.[28] The Expulsion of Polish civilians was a step towards establishing the Camp Interest Zone, which was set up in order to isolate the camp from the outside world and to carry out business activity to meet the needs of theSS. German andVolksdeutsche settlers move in. This was one of the numerous forced migrations associated withthe Holocaust.
1941 to 1944:Expulsion of Poles from theZamość region[32] was performed in November 1941, and it was continued in June/July 1943, it was code namedWehrwolf Action I andII, and it was carried out in an attempt to make room for German (and to a lesser extent, to make room for Ukrainian) settlers as part of Nazi plans for the establishment of German colonies in the conquered territories. Around 110,000 people from 297 villages were expelled.[33] Around 30,000 of the victims of the expulsion were children[34] who, if they were racially "clean" (i.e. if they had physical characteristics which were deemed "Germanic") were prepared forgermanisation by German families in theThird Reich.[35][36] Most of the people who were expelled were sent to Germany and used as slave labourers or they were sent to concentration camps.[37]
1944: The displacement of the majority ethnicEstonian population from the Estonian city ofNarva bySoviet occupation authorities.
1944: The secondEvacuation of Finnish Karelia. Some 280,000Finns had returned to areas ceded in 1940 to theSoviet Union and subsequently re-conquered by Finland in 1941. During summer and autumn 1944, Finland re-ceded these areas back to the Soviet Union, and re-evacuated the Finnish population.
1944: The evacuation of almost total civilian population ofFinnish Lapland, as a joint Finnish-German effort, before Finnish and German troops commenced hostilities. The evacuees, numbering 168,000 were able to return home within a year.[44]
1944 to 1945: The ethnic cleansing ofHungarians, or themassacres in Bačka byTitoist partisans during the winter of 1944–45; about 40,000 were massacred.[45] Afterwards, between 45 and 48, internment camps were set which led directly to the death of 70,000 more, of famine, frost, plagues, tortures and executions.
1944 to 1948:Flight and expulsion of Germans after World War II. Between 13.5 and 16.5 million German-speakers fled, wereevacuated or later expelled from Central and Eastern Europe,[48][49] making this event the largest single instance of ethnic cleansing inrecorded history. estimates of the number of those who died during the process are being debated by historians and they range from 500,000 to 3,000,000.[50]
November and December 1944: more than 200,000Danube Swabians inYugoslavia were expelled from their homes and interned in starvation andNazi concentration camps for the old, young and disabled. Some 30,000 workers were expelled to Russia as slave laborers for war reparations.[51]
After Japan surrendered, the Soviet Union occupied northernKorea and southernSakhalin. These had been Japanese territories before the war and had millions of Japanese residents, who were now to be expelled. Roughly two-thirds of theKorean residents of Sakhalin were also expelled to Japan, but the others remained stranded in Sakhalin.[52]
Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 as a consequence of theFirst Sino-Japanese War and by the beginning of World War II many Japanese civilians had settled there. Between the Japanese surrender of Taiwan in 1945 and 25 April 1946, the occupyingRepublic of China forces expelled 90% of the Japanese living in Taiwan.[53]
More than 30,000Serb colonists were expelled from Bulgarian-occupiedMacedonia and south-easternSerbia[54]
TheUnited Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was set up in 1943, to provide humanitarian relief to the huge numbers of potential and existing refugees in areas facing Allied liberation. UNRRA provided billions of US dollars of rehabilitation aid, and helped about 8 million refugees. It ceased operations in Europe in 1947, and in Asia in 1949, upon which it ceased to exist. It was replaced in 1947 by theInternational Refugee Organization (IRO), which in turn evolved intoUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950.
^ab"Zwangsumsiedlung, Flucht und Vertreibung 1939–1959 : Atlas zur Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas", Witold Sienkiewicz, Grzegorz Hryciuk, Bonn 2009,ISBN978-83-7427-391-6
^Lynn H. Nicholas,Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web pp. 334–335ISBN0-679-77663-X
^Sybil Milton (1997)."Non-Jewish Children in the Camps".Multimedia Learning Center Online (Annual 5, Chapter 2). The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Archived fromthe original on 2017-09-25. Retrieved2023-09-23.
^Close, David H. (1995),The Origins of the Greek Civil War, Longman, p. 248,ISBN978-0582064720, retrieved2008-03-29,p. 161: "EDES gangs massacred 200–300 of the Cham population, who during the occupation totalled about 19,000 and forced all the rest to flee to Albania"
^Horvat, Andrew (1986-02-02)."Exiled Sakhalin Koreans Yearn to Go Home Again".Los Angeles Times. Retrieved2020-07-22.Lee, Jin-woo (2005-02-18)."3,100 Koreans in Sakhalin Yearn to Return Home".The Korea Times. Archived fromthe original on 2005-03-15.Excluding 100,000 Koreans who were subsequently sent to the mainland of Japan, about 43,000 forced laborers had to remain on the island with no nationality for up to three decades ... So far, some 1,600 returnees have been able to return to South Korea for permanent settlement since 1992.
Cienciala, M. (2007).Katyn A Crime Without Punishment, Yale University,ISBN978-0-300-10851-4.
Davies, N. (1986).God's Playground A History of Poland Volume II, Clarendon,ISBN0-19-821944-X.
Douglas, R.M.: Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Yale University Press, 2012.ISBN978-0300166606.
Feferman Kiril, "A Soviet Humanitarian Action?: Centre, Periphery and the Evacuation of Refugees to the North Caucasus, 1941-1942." In Europe-Asia Studies 61, 5 (July 2009), 813–831.
Ferguson, N. (2006).The War of the World, Allen Lane,ISBN0-7139-9708-7.
Gross, J. T. (2002).Revolution from Abroad, Princeton,ISBN0-691-09603-1.
Hope, M. (2005).Polish Deportees in the Soviet Union, Veritas,ISBN0-948202-76-9.
Jolluck, K. (2002).Exile & Identity, University of Pittsburgh,ISBN0-8229-4185-6.
Krizman, Serge. Maps of Yugoslavia at War, Washington 1943.
Krupa, M. (2004).Shallow Graves in Siberia, Birlinn,ISBN1-84341-012-5.
Mikolajczyk, S. (1948).The Pattern of Soviet Domination, Sampsons, low, Marston & Co.
Naimark, Norman: Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth - Century Europe. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001.
Nikolić, Kosta; Žutić, Nikola; Pavlović, Momčilo; Špadijer, Zorica (2002): Историја за трећи разред гимназије природно-математичког смера и четврти разред гимназије општег и друштвено-језичког смера, Belgrade,ISBN86-17-09287-4.
Piesakowski, T. (1990).The Fate of Poles in the USSR 1939~1989, Gryf,ISBN0-901342-24-6.
Piotrowski, T. (2004).The Polish Deportees of World War II, McFarland,ISBN978-0-7864-3258-5.
Prauser, Steffen and Rees, Arfon: The Expulsion of the "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War. Florence, Italy, Europe, University Institute, 2004.
