All language subtitles for 1945.The.Savage.Peace.2015.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H264-NGP

**

-Two days after the end
of the Second World War,

42 defenceless men,
women and children

are lined up to be shot.

Their moment of execution

is captured in this
rare home movie.

Their only crime is that
they happen to speak German.

Their murder is part
of a little-known story

about the fate of millions
of ethnic Germans after the war.

They are the casualties
of a peace

that will prove anarchic,
vengeful and bloody.

**

**

Victory celebrations
and dancing in the streets --

the traditional images
we associate

with the end of the
Second World War.

In reality, peace was a violent
and chaotic process.

**

For the defeated Germans,
peace meant dislocation.

It meant revenge...

and rape.

**

It meant the ethnic cleansing
of over 12 million Germans

living in Eastern Europe.

And the deaths of over
half a million of them.

The nature of the war,
the scale of its violence --

aimed as much at civilians
as soldiers,

and the enormity
of the hatreds unleashed --

meant there was little chance
that the bloodletting would end

when the fighting finished.

Small wonder German soldiers
had joked,

'Enjoy the war, for the peace
will be savage.'

**

Germans called it
their 'zero hour.'

The country lay in ruins,
literally and morally.

26 million Germans
had lost their homes.

A third of all German children
had lost their fathers.

It was a land of old men,
women and children.

**

**

16-year-old Berliner
Christa Ronke

kept a diary throughout 1945.

-[ Speaking German ]

-'The war is lost.'

'I went into the city again

and was shocked to see
so many ruins

and the large number of women
trying to rebuild everything.'

**

'And then I got dysentery.

It spread in Berlin.'

**

'I must be very careful
and only drink boiled water.'

**

'Around midday, I saw three
soldiers in strange uniform --

the first Russians.'

**

'Stalin had reportedly
allowed his soldiers

to do anything for three days
as a reward for taking Berlin.'

There were rumours that
the Russians raped women.

And, well, that's how it was.

The first Russians
banged on the door.

And then the next Russian,

he dragged me straight away
onto the sofa.

And as I fought back,
he showed me the gun.

It was terrible.

It was over quickly, thank God.

And I was glad to be back alive
with my mother.

And then it went on like that.

The other women in the house
were raped, too.

-Other children witnessed rape
at close quarters.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-We were all scared.

We were all scared.

And around 5 in the morning,
the first Russians arrived.

They wanted watches.

And we sat in the cellar
for the whole day,

and then at night,

the house was burning
and we all had to get out.

And our nanny took me
by the hand

and my mother took
both my brothers

and the little suitcase
I had and nothing else.

And then our nanny was raped
by the Russians,

and she didn't let go of my hand

throughout what happened
in the cellar.

And when we came out,
it was night.

There was nothing.
It was dark.

Everything was burning.

I can't.

It was upsetting.

I don't know what I thought,
but thank God it's over.

-But it wasn't over.

Now, 10-year-old Marianne
Becker's mother was kidnapped

and subjected to a mass rape
by Russian soldiers.

**

My mother was driven to Zopot.

There was an aeroplane
hangar there,

and the women were raped there
24 hours a day

in front of the children.

And my mother kept on saying,

'We have to return to Danzig.

We have to.'

-Well over 2 million German
women and children were raped

at the end of the war.

Many of them died or killed
themselves as a result.

**

Peace brought dislocation, too.

It seemed like all of Europe
was on the march.

A tidal wave of nomad people
looking for the long road home,

all displaced by a war that was
as much about race as territory.

Unsurprisingly,
it was Eastern Europe,

whose ethnic tensions
Hitler had exploited

in his move towards war,

that witnessed the worst
peacetime violence.

**

Liberation cast Germans in the
unfamiliar role of victim.

These pictures show a group
of German soldiers

in Czechoslovakia

after they have surrendered.

Many of them have been beaten
to death by partisans.

Such brutal reprisals
seemed unimaginable

only a few weeks earlier.

Prague shortly
before liberation.

Known as a cushy posting
for Nazi officers,

it had experienced
a relatively quiet war,

like much of the rest
of the country.

[ Cheering ]

**

The smiling faces of liberation

belie the savagery
of the revenge

Czechoslovaks are about to wreak

on their country's substantial
German-speaking minority --

the 'ethnic Germans',

many of whose families have
lived here in Eastern Europe

for centuries.

[ Cheering ]

**

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-The Czechs treated
the Germans so badly.

They were catching them
and shooting them.

Something I saw abhorred me
so much that I said

that I would never want to live
in this country again.

**

There were isolated groups
of Germans

and they carved swastikas
into their flesh

and rubbed salt into the wounds.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-I saw German women
paving the street

because they were dismantling
the barricade,

and they had swastikas painted
on their backs,

and a former concentration camp
inmate was in charge of them.

-[ Speaking German ]

-I saw horrible things.

There were places where
the Germans sat, exhausted,

their clothes ripped off,

and they, the Czechs,
were sticking pins

into their breasts.

It was shocking.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-And I went on to the station.

And I saw a dead body
hanging by a rope

in Vodickova Street.

**

I remember how I ran up
to my cousin and said,

'I never want to live
here again.

It's terrible what's
happening out there.'

I can remember it very well.

I'll never forget it.

**

-Jiri Chmelnicek,

a civil engineer and keen
amateur photographer,

on his wedding day.

He took his 8-millimetre camera
everywhere with him.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-It's made in Germany
by Siemens,

and Dad bought it when he was
young before his wedding,

so his friend filmed his wedding
on this camera.

-Two days after VE Day,

he filmed a drama unfolding
outside his own front door.

Those wearing armbands

are Czechoslovak
Revolutionary Guards.

-[ Speaking German ]

-They started
rounding up Germans

in Hanspaulka and Dejvice
and bringing them over here.

You can see them in the film,
how they march them,

drive them up the hill
towards the Borislavka cinema.

They locked them in the cinema
and then they took them out,

about 42 people,
in front of the cinema,

onto Kladensko Street,

and then they shot them
dead there.

-A stills photographer
was also there that day.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-They shot a lot of them dead.

It was really bad because
those who organised it

wanted to have it photographed,

and came to my father
and asked him to take photos.

My father didn't know
what was going on,

and when he came back,
he was totally devastated.

Devastated and his nerves
were shot through,

and my mother had to nurse him
for the rest of the day.

-But it was happening
everywhere.

There were a lot
of cases like this.

I was there with my parents
and my grandma.

**

**

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-My grandma turned around
and hid my head in her apron

because one action
was quite extreme.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-The nasty moment
when lorries arrive

and drive over their legs,

which is really horrible.

**

-Jiri Chmelnicek films
one victim praying

in his final moments.

**

-You can see in the film

how they had to dig
their own graves.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-Not all of them were German.

There were people
who just spoke German.

I think a Swedish family
were there.

-[ Speaking German ]

-I despair that things like that
could happen here

in our country.

Put simply, there are also
good Germans,

or rather, there are more
good Germans than bad ones.

-Such murders remain unpunished.

The Czechoslovak government
issued an amnesty

for all 'just reprisals'

carried out before
28th October 1945.

No one has ever been convicted
for what happened here

in Mirosov Castle.

These stills show the treatment
of German prisoners of war

awaiting transportation
to Germany.

Czech partisans force
the soldiers to strip,

beat each other and dig
their own graves.

The German prisoners
are executed

before their bodies
are disposed of

in a mass grave
in the castle garden.

Over 200 Germans died
at this camp.

Such methods deliberately mirror
those used by the Nazis,

whose leader casts a long shadow
over all ethnic Germans.

[ Cheering ]

Germans in Brno enthusiastically
greet the arrival

of Adolf Hitler.

Unlike most Czechoslovaks,

they view his takeover
of the country as a liberation,

not an occupation.

Even young children
get caught up

in the atmosphere
of the occasion.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-I was six years old.

I pushed to the front row.

I pushed in front of the SS.

They stood in double rows.

They fenced off the entire
population with ropes

when Hitler drove past.

He came to the town hall
in an open car,

and we stood in front
of the town hall.

I saw when the car drove past.

He, a man with arm raised --
goodness, goodness.

Someone important,

but who would have guessed
that this was Hitler?

[ Cheering ]

-And the people
with all the flags,

and 'Heil' of course,

fanfares up on the roof.

For a child,
that was an adventure.

[ Crowd chanting ]

**

-3 years later,

Hugo Fritsch was so keen
to join the junior section

of the Hitler Youth

that he lied about his age.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

I was exhilarated
because I had joined,

and in the first summer,

we went to this summer camp
at a castle,

a palatial castle
that the Nazis had seized.

Until almost the end of the war,

everything seemed normal
for 12-year-old Hugo.

-[ Speaking German ]

-I can remember
it was as late as 1945

when I was still running around
with the Czech boys.

Everyone had a toy gun
that they fired in the air.

Well, we ran through the streets
and played war.

**

With the declaration of peace,

ethnic German civilians,
now overwhelmingly old men,

women and children like Hugo,

are targeted.

-[ Speaking German ]

-They had this huge
loud speaker announcement

that the Czech Republic
was declared

and that the people
will take revenge

in particular on collaborators
and on the German people here.

Right on the market place,

all the signs written in German
had been torn down,

broken, destroyed.

It was death, death, death
to the Germans.

Death to the Collaborators.

On these low trees,

all these life-sized dolls
were hung

with a noose around their necks.

They had sashes on them.

So just like a sash for the
winner of a beauty competition,

they had a Collaborator
sash on them.

I mean, it was
very scary for us.

**

**

-Victims of the Gestapo
are exhumed

from the grounds
of Kounic College.

**

During the war, it had been
a Nazi prison.

Now, ethnic Germans
were incarcerated here.

**

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-I heard one of the guards
say to the other --

even though he didn't say
it very loudly --

'Only kill a third of them.

We do need some people
for work.'

-One day, 16-year-old
Emil Pupik,

a former member
of the Hitler Youth

interned in Kounic College,

was ordered to help
build a gallows.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We had to collect the gallows
from the cellar first,

and then they showed us
where it should be.

Three gallows, that is.

When we had finished that,

they said now,
we have to try it out.

Therefore, we'll hang someone

so we can see if it
has been well-made.

And they selected
someone for hanging.

Another of them came up
and said, 'Why just one?

We have three gallows,
so we should hang three.'

And so I was the second one
chosen to be hanged,

and then there was third.

The rope we already had
round our necks.

My wish was to die
as quickly as possible.

They were still busy
with the third man.

Thank God.

And we already had our hands
tied behind our backs

and the rope around our necks.

And a Czech guy came
running up and shouted,

'Clear everything away!

Clear everything away!

There's an inspection
from Prague.'

And quickly enough,
they cut the rope.

And we were chased
into the house.

-The site of the 3 gallows
at Kounic College.

In May and June, at least
300 Germans were killed here.

**

Public executions,

like that of the notorious
Sudeten Nazi, Karl Frank,

hanged for mass murder,

pulled in the crowds.

The visceral manner of his death
reinforced a policy

of 'National Cleansing'
of all Germans,

and deterred opposition.

**

The Czechoslovak 'pole-hanging'
method, with its short drop,

causes death by strangulation.

The prisoner goes limp

as the blood flow
to the brain is reduced...

although it takes at least
ten minutes to die.

**

This amateur footage
shows one

of at least a thousand
public executions

carried out by self-styled
'People's Tribunals'

in the weeks after the war.

Trials could take as little
as five minutes,

and executions were carried out
within two hours of sentencing.

Age was no barrier
to persecution.

Kounic College housed prisoners
as young as six years old.

-[ Speaking German ]

-They were about six years old,
the little ones,

and the eldest was about 11.

And they had to jump up like
soldiers all at the same time.

And then sit down again,
like stand up,

sit again.

And some of them,
particularly the little ones,

they couldn't do it.

So they called one boy over
and hit him with a belt.

Then he cried.

It was awful.

-[ Sobbing quietly ]

-What had the children --

How could someone be
so sadistic?

It was terrible.

Children.

They can't defend themselves.

What have they ever --

They couldn't have
done anything.

Such little children.

**

-But disease, not violence,
was the biggest killer.

14-year-old Hugo Fritsch
and his family were interned

in a former SS training camp...

with little food, no doctor
and no medicine.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Grandmother died first.

Then my brother died, Gerhard.

And then my mother died rather
quickly, quickly, quickly.

And I went to see my father
almost every day,

and then he died suddenly.

His heart stopped working,

so Father died suddenly.

We had all these deaths
from January to February.

It wasn't even two months
during which they all died.

For me, the darkest memory
is always my mother's burial

because I was a mother's boy.

For me, that was the worst.

Because even until today,
I can't --

I can't because
I still have the images.

I did push them aside,

but they came back
in my later years.

And how.

That is bad.

You see, I spent my entire life
making sure I started a family

because I didn't have
one of my own anymore.

**

-Most Czechoslovaks were more
concerned with the heroes of war

than the orphans of peace.

A victory parade in Prague of
the Czechoslovak 1st Army Corps.

They are battle-hardened troops

who had fought against the
Germans under Soviet leadership.

**

Some of them are involved
in the peace-time murder

of German civilians.

**

This rural hop-growing community
in Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland,

where Germans had lived
for centuries,

was the setting for
the second-largest atrocity

in post-war Europe.

**

16-year-old Peter Klepsch,
who had opposed the Nazis

and ended the war in prison,

was one of 5,000 ethnic
Germans, men and boys,

ordered to the
town square in Zatec.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We were already
under the impression

that the Czechs had gone
completely crazy.

There were spontaneous
executions,

people pulled out and shot.

I still remember a friend
of mine, he said,

'I was a German officer.

I want to be treated
differently.

There is still
the Geneva convention,'

or something like that.

He was shot on the spot,

and other people I knew,
they were whipped in public.

**

-The Germans were interned
at the army barracks

in Postoloprty.

On the third day, five boys,
aged between 12 to 15,

were caught absconding
to steal fruit.

Policeman Bohuslav Marek
wanted the boys flogged,

but a Czech army captain
ordered them to line up

against the barracks wall.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Oh, it was so horrible.

They begged for their lives

and screamed for their mothers.

And then they were just
bumped off like cattle.

They stood there facing
the muzzle of the rifles.

And if you didn't die
immediately,

they fired again.

To me, it was very distressing.

One boy was shot in the throat,

then his blood spurted out
with the last beat of his heart,

a stream of blood came out.

They were buried in the barracks
yard by me, among others.

And for me, that was actually
the worst thing.

**

-Many of the dead were buried
in a mass grave

at this pheasant farm.

Altogether, 2,000 Sudeten
Germans were murdered

in just five days in June.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Well, I certainly
saw it as genocide.

They just let out
their inner bastard

on these defenceless people.

That was clear.

-It took decades to get this
small memorial to the killings

erected in the teeth
of local Czech opposition.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-I can say that
what happened here in '45

is no different at all
to the Third Reich.

The morals of these people
who did this,

they were the same.

**

-Local Germans
are forced to confront

the horrors of
the Third Reich --

a lamp shade made of human skin,

human organs in jars...

and half a severed head.

**

Notions of collective guilt and
punishment for such atrocities

meant that few were prepared
to contemplate

the idea of Germans as victims,

especially in countries
that had borne

the brunt of Nazi atrocities.

**

Warsaw, like much of Poland,
lies in ruins after the war.

Amidst such bleak reminders
of the price of Nazi occupation,

the Poles now targeted
the almost six million Germans

living inside the country.

**

Secret footage of a Nazi
concentration camp in Poland --

shot, at great personal risk,
during the war.

In 1945, the Poles
used such camps

to incarcerate Germans
often under similar conditions.

**

The gates of Zgoda.

Once a satellite camp
of Auschwitz,

it was reopened by the Poles
as a 'punishment camp',

and you could be punished
simply for being German.

**

The 26-year-old Jewish
commander of the camp

was Colonel Solomon Morel
of the Polish Secret Police.

-[ Speaking German ]

-He introduced himself to us
on the first night.

'My name is Solomon Morel,

and I am the commandant
of this camp.

I was with the partisans.

My parents were gassed
in Auschwitz by you Germans.'

**

-14-year-old Dorota Boraczek,
from a wealthy Polish family,

was incarcerated
with German prisoners.

-[ Speaking Polish ]

-I thought we were going
to be shot there and then

because Morel received us
saying,

'Come here, you
Hitlerite whores.

You will remember this forever,

and once you have
experienced Zgoda,

you will think of Auschwitz
as a kindergarten

in comparison.'

-Morel personally fostered
a culture of sadism.

-[ Speaking German ]

-The pyramid method
was when four were thrown

next to each other.

And four then diagonally
on top of them,

and then another four
until they were quite high.

And then not always,
but every so often,

the militia climbed on top

and they danced
on the prisoners.

No one came away
from this unharmed,

and people died.

-[ Speaking Polish ]

-I wanted to force my mother
to commit suicide.

Men took their lives
by hanging,

and women by walking
into the electric fence.

-Prisoners were deliberately
denied food and medical care

in order to bring
about their deaths.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-Is it ok if I cry?

-[ Speaking Polish ]

-This time of hunger
was horrific.

They waited at the gate
for fresh corpses,

and there were cases --
it was not habitual --

but people ate dead bodies, yes.

Corpses, they waited
for fresh ones.

I saw it.

-Almost a third of the 6,000
Germans sent to Zgoda died here.

-[ Speaking Polish ]

-A funeral went like this --

the prisoners dug a hole
in the ground

and threw these bodies into it.

They spread the lime
and sand on top of it,

and then they were told to dance
on the bodies and piss on them.

-Three quarters
of a million Germans

were imprisoned in a massive
range of often secret camps

stretching across
eastern Europe.

Some 60,000 Germans died in
camps like Poland's Zgoda.

-Yes, hell.

I went through hell.

And I should love such a nation?

**

-[ Speaking Polish ]

-When I look at these criminals,

I feel like chopping them
to pieces

and feeding them
to ravenous dogs.

I hate them so much.

**

[ Cheering ]

**

-The country's sports stadiums

were a traditional
setting for revenge.

[ Cheering ]

**

They were used as prisons,
torture chambers

and places of execution.

On the morning of 9 June, 1945,

8,000 German men and boys

were summoned to their
local stadium in Chomutov.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-We were all herded together
and had to take our tops off.

They were looking for tattoos
or SS markings.

There was a tattoo
on the upper arm

with the blood group sign.

And those who had it,
between 15 and 20, 22 of them...

these men were hauled out
and beaten to death.

Yeah, to death.

Killed right in front
of everyone.

It was also Czech civilians
who beat the SS soldiers

with iron bars and wooden clubs.

And if they collapsed
and didn't move,

a bucket of salt water
was thrown over them.

And when they had
revived a little,

they were then beaten again
until they were dead.

So there was a pile
of dead people,

some lying on top of each other,

that we had to march past.

And we were given
the command 'Eyes Left',

so that we had to look at them
as we marched past.

**

-Hitler's image, now an object
of open desecration,

was used to humiliate
the Germans in the stadium.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-It was at the beginning
of this whole orgy.

There was someone said
to be a party member

from a mountain village.

There was a big Hitler poster --

that is a very big Hitler poster
that he carried in front of him,

and he was made to shout
over and over again,

'We thank our Furhrer,
we thank our Fuhrer,'

until he came up to the Czechs

and was beaten
until he collapsed.

[ Cheering ]

Then the whole column had to run
around holding the picture up

and shouting,

'We thank our Fuhrer.'

That was the thing to say at
gatherings in the Nazi period.

**

-Horst Theml now experienced
another favourite Nazi device

adopted by Czechoslovaks --

the forced death march.

**

-[ Speaking in German ]

-It was a forced march,

a forced march that
was demanded of everyone.

If you couldn't keep up
and lagged behind

and couldn't go on,

you were shot.

Or to be precise, you were first
beaten up and then shot.

75 men lost their lives.

**

**

-Those Germans not arrested

were forced to wear
white armbands

and were subject
to anti-German decrees,

some of them still on
the statute book today.

Then they were
expelled en masse.

Entire communities were
rounded up at a moment's notice.

**

Here, the table
hasn't been cleared.

Up to three and a half
million people

were stripped of their
citizenship,

homes and property,
and denied compensation.

**

Britain, America
and the Soviet Union

ordered the expulsions
as part of a plan

to reshape the ethnic
composition of Eastern Europe

and to punish Germany, which now
lost a quarter of its territory.

At Potsdam,

the Allies spoke of 'orderly and
humane' population transfers,

but they turned a blind eye
to the catastrophic consequences

of a policy they had
connived at.

**

Soon, the roads and railways
of Eastern Europe

were filled with Germans
on the move.

**

Overcrowded trains of the sort
previously used

to take the Jews to their fate

were filled with the dead
and dying,

the sick and starving.

**

This 11-year-old
German girl expellee

weighed only 31 pounds
on her arrival.

This girl's lower limbs
are swollen from hunger edema.

Over 12 million Germans were
expelled from Eastern Europe,

the largest known example
of ethnic cleansing in history.

Over a quarter of a million
died in the process.

The writer George Orwell
called it 'an enourmous crime'.

The River Oder marked the new
German-Polish border.

**

The six million Germans
living east of the Oder

were forcibly expelled

as Eastern Germany
became Western Poland.

**

[ Group singing ]

**

**

**

**

-We lost everything.

We meet once a month

and we bring something
about East Prussia.

That is our homeland,
and we won't forget it.

We think about the dark forests,
the elks, the farmers ploughing

and the flocks
of birds that fly,

or the many storks that
there are in East Prussia.

**

-Towards the end of the war,

as the Russians approached her
home town of Goldap,

9-year-old Marianne Becker fled
with her family to Danzig.

There, she faced months
of starvation.

-Winter 1945, it was
a very cold winter.

I always collected water
for the family and for us.

One of my deepest memories

is that we always had to clamber
over corpses and a dead horse.

We were all scared,
we were all sacred.

We didn't know
what would happen to us.

We barely had anything to eat.

And then my little brother
got sick.

He got diphtheria.

We didn't have a doctor,
nothing at all.

You could only give him
a hot potato,

and he died aged five.

He was buried in the front
garden in a chequered blanket

that my mother had saved
from our house.

-In the autumn of 1947,

Marianne was finally expelled

from what Poland now called
its 'Recovered Territories'.

-And then we travelled from
Rastenburg in the cattle wagon,

10 days, 43 people,
very many dead people.

**

And it was a difficult time,

We were deloused, vaccinated
and all the rest.

But we survived it.

-This film is an official search

for the parents
of Germany's lost children.

This 2-year-old doesn't know
her own name.

25,000 children
lost their parents,

along with their homeland.

Joachim Dietz was found
in a cardboard box

in the Brunnenstrasse in Berlin.

5-year-old Wolfgang Krehmer
was found in a forest

with his 4-year-old brother.

His wrists had been slit.

**

When the Russians advanced
into East Prussia,

10-year-old Sieglinde Kenzler
and her family fled westwards

through the icy landscape.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-And in the snowy fields lay
what looked to me like dolls,

but in reality, they were
children who'd died

but couldn't be buried
because it just wasn't possible.

**

-Sieglinde and her siblings
were then imprisoned

by the Russians
in a crowded cell

without their mother.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-Everyone stood,
no one could sit,

and we had a washing
basket with us,

not a very big one,

and inside lay our
one-year-old brother.

**

We placed the basket down

and the people there,
older people,

they sat on the basket.

Naturally, we called out, but
it was not a nice experience.

Without our mum, we shouted out,
'Our baby is in there,'

and I still don't know
if he was squashed or starved,

but in any case, he died.

And then, I still remember --

We asked the question,

'Do we have to stay
in the room and die?'

-In fact, the next to die
was Sieglinde's mother

in a Russian internment camp.

Her four children
had to dig the grave

and bury her body themselves.

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-We said we'll take everything
we have, the sheets, her coats,

we'll swaddle her all up
and bury her

in the cemetery at Wehlau.

First, we went to the cemetery
on our own and dug a hole.

**

So then, we laid her out,

and my brother Uli
and my sister Irmgard,

we had picked some flowers
on the way,

just daisies and buttercups,
what we could find.

And then my brother said,

'You hold on there and we'll
lower her down, okay?'

That was it.

**

And then we said,
'That's our mum.'

**

That's how it was.

**

-Faced with certain starvation
in East Prussia,

Sieglinde and her siblings were
among 5,000 lost German children

who made their way
to the forests of Lithuania.

**

Here, they had to fend for
themselves like wild animals.

**

**

-[ Speaking German ]

-We were called 'Wolfchildren',

the children of East Prussia,
Wolfchildren.

We compared ourselves
to a pack of wolves.

We always stayed together.

**

There were farmers
who cursed us,

threw water over us
or set their dogs on us.

'You Hitler swine' was another
insult we received.

We didn't know how to brush
our teeth, wash properly.

We had no change of clothes.

We went barefoot.

We said our prayers
in the evening,

and then we always heard
the howling of wolves.

[ Wolf howls ]

Hopefully, we'll stay alive,

and then we slept
in the open air.

-Eventually, Sieglinde lost
contact with her siblings.

Eight years later, some twelve
years after the end of the war,

she was finally reunited
with them in East Germany.

-Let's just say I had to end
my childhood very early.

-Today, expellees,
like those in this film

and their descendants

form a quarter
of the German population.

Yet their story, which
helped define postwar Germany,

remains largely unknown
outside the country.

**

Peace always has a dark side,

and what happened after
liberation throws the spotlight

on the moral compass
of the victors.

When ethnic Germans became
objects of violence

after the war,

many saw, but few
were interested.

**

The largest ethnic cleansing
in history,

sanctioned by
the victorious Allies,

remains an atrocity
hidden in plain sight.

**

**

**