Of the more than 2 million Soviet DPs [Displaced Persons] in western Germany, almost 1.4 million had been handed over to the Soviet forces by July 1945, and 98 per cent by the end of the year. However, things were not always straightforward for DPs from the USSR: a substantial number of them – men who had fought with Nazi Germany as soldiers under Vlasov or in Cossack units, and members of nationalities (Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians), many of whom in 1941 had welcomed the Germans as liberators from Soviet tyranny – rightly feared what might be in store for them should they be sent back to Stalin’s empire.
Those who found themselves in the parts of Germany conquered by the Red Army in 1945 had no possibility of avoiding repatriation to the USSR; those in the Western zones may have hoped for a different fate but, in fact, generally fared little better. The Western powers repatriated Soviet DPs whether they wanted to return to the USSR or not, a policy which provoked resistance among some Soviet DPs in western camps, where people scheduled to be repatriated sometimes fled and sometimes greeted Soviet repatriation officers with rocks.
In one particularly awful incident, at Dachau in January 1946, an attempt by American soldiers to force DPs onto trains bound for the Soviet Occupation Zone met with fierce opposition. When the GIs finally managed to storm the DP barracks after using tear gas, they found that some of those inside had hanged themselves from the rafters rather than be returned to the Soviet Union while others pleaded with the soldiers to shoot them.
Author’s Note:
Of the 399 inmates of the two barracks in question, 31 attempted suicide and 11 succeeded.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Societies of the Uprooted.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 258. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Nicholad Bethell, The Last Secret. Forcible Repatriation to Russia 1944-1947 (London and Sydney, 1976), pp. 96, 80-146, 172-221.
Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers, p. 380-381.
For the Dachau story, which was reported in the American soldiers’ newspaper Stars and Stripes on 23 January 1946, see Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum Heimatlosen Ausländer, pp. 133-134.
Further Reading:
Андрéй Андрéевич Влáсов (Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov)
Иосиф Сталин / იოსებ სტალინი (Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin)
If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my Patreon!
No comments, yet...