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Last updated
17-Aug-2004
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Guestbook
entry
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Name: |
Joachim Steinfeld |
data: |
2007-12-11 15:15:41 |
email: |
em-studio@gmx.de |
Dear Mr. de Zayas,
Thank you for your impressing speeches about the 'Vertreibung' and the historical context.
Best Regards from Berlin
Joachim Steinfeld |
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Name: |
Steve Morgan |
data: |
2007-12-05 23:51:24 |
email: |
gmundenat@yahoo.com |
| Impressed with "A Terrible Revenge". |
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Name: |
Sand |
data: |
2007-11-17 07:54:33 |
email: |
sonila.sand@dw-world.de |
Dear Mr. de Zayas,
I am a journalist, working for Deutsche Welle Radio in Bonn, Germany for the albanian and german sections. I am about to write an article about the changes that could bring the indipendence of Kosovo for other countries not only in the region, but also in the world, with more or less the same history and would like to interview you about this theme, as you have worked and published articles about international law and ringhts. I would be very happy if you would send me an email, so I can give you more details.
Thank you very much!
I hope you get this message and am looking forward to a short interview via telephone with you.
Best regards
Sonila Sand |
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Name: |
Robert Paul Duncan |
data: |
2007-10-28 23:54:31 |
email: |
bduncan@hiwaay.net |
I am currently reading your excellent book "A Terrible Revenge". You have done a tremendous service in documenting the horrific "reprisals" after the war and I have encouraged my friends to read your books. Sadly, I do not expect to see television programming on this subject on The History Channel!
My mother is German and was fortunate to survive the Russian onslaught in Berlin. She was 22 years old at the time and they attempted to rape her but she fought them off and she was not killed, like one of her girlfriends. She never admitted this to me until she was well past 80 years old. She is still living and has lots of tales to tell about growing up under Hitler, being in the Hitler Youth, and the war. My grandparents were fortunate in that the Americans soon arrived in Berlin and that is how my mother met my father! The fact that my grandfather was a tobacco dealer probably also was a big help in their survival! Unfortunately, one of my German uncles was lost during the war, missing in action in Italy.
Best regards from Huntsville, AL, where I recently met the old rocket scientists Ernst Stuhlinger and Konrad Dannenberg, both in their mid-nineties and still strong, at a lecture and celebration here on the 50th anniversary of Sputnik. There is an upcoming program on PBS's "Nova" series on this subject (debuts in November 2007). It is a lesson to us all how these men of science can celebrate the achievements of their former rivals. |
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Name: |
Jack Labusch |
data: |
2007-10-16 19:57:10 |
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Dear Prof. de Zayas:
Re: the Waters paper, mentioned below. I'm not a lawyer; I'll defer to your judgment. I scanned the paper quickly, and it just looks like bad business to me.
I've done a little small-time persuading in my time, so I know the temptation to look for and use arguments of convenience/arguments of expedience. I'd like to think people, such as Mr. Waters, might be swayed once in a while to revisit their thinking about the German experience of the 1914-1945 period. Best wishes, Jack Labusch.
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Name: |
aleksandar-sasa |
data: |
2007-10-11 15:44:12 |
email: |
sasavuk71@yahoo.com |
Professor I was impressed by yours teachings,but I am sured that you can help me because I am penalized because looking for justice in two cases working on my Court in Bosnia.If you have will to give me a council please do that I can continue...
Lawyer from CC Bosnia Alexander Vukovic |
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Name: |
Rocio Araujo |
data: |
2007-10-06 19:31:09 |
email: |
rocioarau@gmail.com |
Dear Alfred,
I finish my Master sobre proteccion de derechos humanos from Universidad de Alcala...
Thanks for your last visit as professor.
Regards,
Rocio |
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Name: |
M. Pfeiffer |
data: |
2007-09-23 06:24:34 |
email: |
-"- |
Sehr geehrter Herr Professor,
- der nachstehende (ganz aktuelle) Artikel aus der WAZ wird Sie mit Sicherheit interessieren, -wenn nicht sogar begeistern.
(Vielleicht werden Ihre ehrbaren Bücher ja künftig LEHRBÜCHER (-oder zumindest: Referenzbücher) an allen Schulen in Nordrhein-Westfalen - "und das wäre gut so".)
Alles Gute für Sie! (- Ihr steter Einsatz trägt Früchte! -)
Ihr
M. Pfeiffer, Köln
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Vertreibung als Pflichtthema an Schulen
Schulministerin Barbara Sommer ließ das Thema im Kernlernplan Geschichte festschreiben
Düsseldorf. Die Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen im Zweiten Weltkrieg ist ab sofort Pflichtthema im Schulunterricht in NRW.
"Junge Menschen müssen ihre Geschichte kennen", begründet Landesschulministerin Barbara Sommer (CDU) gegenüber der WAZ die verbindliche Festschreibung im Kernlernplan Geschichte für die Klassen fünf bis zehn. "Viele der 15 Millionen Menschen, die aus den früheren deutschen Ostgebieten fliehen mussten, haben sich in Nordrhein-Westfalen angesiedelt", sagt Sommer. Flucht und Vertreibung im Zweiten Weltkrieg habe "unermessliches Leid über viele Menschen gebracht und unser Bundesland zutiefst geprägt".
Bisher war die Behandlung des Themas den Lehrern freigestellt. Spätestens im kommenden Jahr wird "Flucht und Vertreibung" an allen Schulformen zur Pflicht. Die Schulbuchverlage seien bereits informiert. Nach Angaben eines Ministeriumssprechers gehe es der Landesregierung nicht um "Deutschtümelei", sondern um die Aufarbeitung eines düsteren Kapitels eigener Geschichte, das im globalen Zusammenhang vermittelt werden soll. Der Blick soll sich dabei auch auf Schicksale anderer Völker richten, da, so Sommer, "nicht nur Deutsche Opfer von Vertreibung geworden sind".
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Name: |
Bill Hoffman |
data: |
2007-09-14 14:08:47 |
email: |
wilhoff@aol.com |
Dear Alfredo -- It's been a very long time since we've seen you. We are now empty nesters, and would enjoy a visit from you in DC. (I left the government for Davis Polk in 2004, and am enjoying providing OFAC advice from the other side of the table!)
All best wishes,
Bill (& Marie) |
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Name: |
Sean Fitz |
data: |
2007-09-06 14:41:13 |
email: |
fitzcallan@unwired.com.au |
Dear Mr de Zayas, Dear Sirs,
I must write my words of protest and revulsion at what this Mr Waters is suggesting regarding any kind of legal acceptance of ethnic cleansing. Any form of deliberated ethnic cleansing & murder when based on ethnicity is to be condemned in all shape and form. If I may write about what modern society cares about and does not care about and why, then it is my humble opinion that the yearly Jewish holocaust reminders are agenda based and promoted as thus by the western media, and while this is accepted as legitimate protocol of suffering by western society it certainly does not give victimhood ownership to any one single select group of people.
That a majority of people in the English speaking world do not openly talk about what happened to the entire population of cultural eastern Germany and the Sudetenland between 1944 and up to 1948 is a fact of lack of public education about it rather than an unwillingness for people to care. This genocidal history as part of WW2 receives virtually zero coverage in most English speaking public history media.
From my own personal observation this is yet another dark chapter of WW2 that the Allies have allowed to be swept under the carpet as part of their own agenda when writing the so called official history. Victimhood is not selective ownership and remains as universal suffering of peoples all part of the greater humanity across the globe.
To even attempt to legalize any form of deliberated ethnic cleansing based on historical atrocities and genocide is not a sign of any healthy mind.
What happened to the German civilian population at the end and after WW2 remains an illegal act under International law, and must be properly addressed and acknowledged by the perpetrators and powers that be.
Sean |
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Name: |
Steve Lister |
data: |
2007-08-30 17:17:17 |
email: |
sandlister@tinyworld.co.uk |
The claim that the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia in 1945 sets a precedent for “legal” ethnic cleansing under international law is bizarre, to say the least. The expulsions were condoned by the victorious allies, but that hardly gives them a legal basis. Nor does it make them right or acceptable. The expulsions were never authorised by the United Nations, which is the only way they could have achieved any international legality. They remain an unreported, uninvestigated, unpunished crime against humanity.
It’s interesting to note that, beginning in the late 1990’s, a series of international tribunals were held at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity. These dealt with incidents during the various civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, together with other cases in Africa. The crimes alleged against defendants included mass murder, mass rape and ethnic cleansing. International law therefore recognises ethnic cleansing as a crime against humanity. The defences put forward were many and various, and some of them were quite ingenious. None of the defendants, however, claimed that they were following a precedent set in 1945 in the Sudetenland. If Mr Waters’s claim was correct, it’s probable that some of these defendants would have seized this “defence of precedence” as a drowning man will clutch at a straw.
They did not do so, which invalidates Mr Waters’s assertion. Perhaps he has a conscience where ethnic cleansing is concerned, and needs to establish a “legal” basis for it. His own nation, the United States of America, was founded on a policy of ethnic cleansing – against Native-Americans.
Steve Lister.
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Name: |
Peter Josika |
data: |
2007-08-30 09:20:19 |
email: |
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Dear Alfred & Gustav
This so called analysis by Timothy Walters is just another blatant attempt to bend currently valid international law and the basic Western concept of equal human rights in order to defend one of the biggest crimes ever committed in history, the forceful post-War expulsion and expropriation of millions of Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Poles and others. The overwhelming majority of these people have never committed any wrongdoing nor have they been found guilty in a Court of law. This paper is not a neutral assessment, but simply another attempt to defend the current status quo whereby millions of people are excluded from basic human rights that others naturally enjoy.
Alfred de Zayas is one of only a few people who consistently remind the international community of the ongoing injustice associated with the current legal situation in regard to the post-War expulsions. I admire and thank Mr de Zayas for his professionalism and passion despite the stiff opposition from various institutions and governments. However, his work will not be in vain. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks you Alfred!
Peter |
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Name: |
Aleksandar Veljic |
data: |
2007-08-29 22:25:59 |
email: |
sasha1@bajka.org |
The memory of Raoul Wallenberg should not die, as well as his courageous acts.
Aleksandar Veljic
www.aleksandarveljic.com |
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Name: |
alfred de zayas |
data: |
2007-08-27 05:11:13 |
email: |
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Dear Gustav Söderlin,
thank you for the link to the rather abstruse article by Mr. Waters. Surprising that such a piece, so fundamentally flawed in approach, methodology, analysis and conclusions can be presented for a degree at an American university.
International Law is by definition international in application
It cannot be applied only for one side and not for the other. The very essence of law is that it must be applied equally, without discrimination. Otherwise it is not law, but only the exercise of arbitrary power.
Law, of course, is not mathematics, and norms are not identical with their enforcement. If they were, the Sudetendeutsch and the other Vertriebene would have had their rehabilitation decades ago.
The non-enforcement of the international legal rights of the Sudetendeutsch does not illustrate an absence of norms, but rather a violation of norms in total impunity
What the international legal structures lack is a mechanism of enforcement that would ensure implementation of international law in all circumstances -- even against the victors in any given war
For instance, the International Criminal Court aims at establishing a neutral supra-national mechanism that would punish the soldiers of any country for grave violations of international humanitarian law. Since the US does not want to submit to international law, it refuses to ratify the Rome Statute of 1998. Ultimately it is a question of power and political will
Timothy Waters appears to adhere to the axiom that "might is right". This is not very original thinking, nor is there a Sudeten corollary to international law -- unless we postulate a new version of Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal".
If we accept the Vertreibung als legal, this would be comparable to saying that slavery was/is legal because all the great powers -- Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, practiced it for centuries.
It would be tantamount to saying that the Holocaust could have been "legal" -- if only Hitler had won the war! Hardly a proposition that any of us would endorse.
No -- as the Institut du Droit International made clear at its 1952 Sienna meeting, events like the expulsion of the Germans 1945-48 constitute a major challenge to international law and international order -- they are incompatible with the principles of international law applied elsewhere, including the Nuremberg Trials -- and are allowed to prevail only because the perpetrators hold paramount political and economic power.
The Vertreibung was not compatible with international law, nor did it create a precedent (see Yugoslavia). It does illustrate, however, the absence of an international judicial mechanism competent to condemn it and capable to ensure a remedy to the victims.
This takes us back to Juvenal's
qui custodiet ipsos custodes
who shall keep the keepers ?
Timothy Waters would have done well to read the published records of the Sienna meeting of the Institut du Droit International 1952
the final report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfers
Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh (now a judged at the International Court of Justice)
UN document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/23
the speeches of the first UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Dr. Jose Ayala Lasso to the German expellees -- including the Sudetenlanders -- in Frankfurt in 1995 and in Berlin 2005
and my article "International Law and Mass Population Transfers", Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 16, 1975.
Mr. Waters' paper will convince no one.
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Name: |
Gustav Söderlind |
data: |
2007-08-26 19:01:33 |
email: |
gustav.soderlind@gmail.com |
Dear Dr. de Zayas,
I stumbled upon this thesis:
Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law.
http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4600&context=expresso
Waters concludes that the international acceptance of the 1945-46 Sudetenland expulsions have created a very interesting but so far ignored precedence in international law. Would you agree with Waters analysis?
Regards,
Gustav Söderlind |
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Name: |
Jeffrey Kurtzman |
data: |
2007-08-23 07:12:45 |
email: |
jgkurtzm@wustl.edu |
Dear Mr. Zayas,
I am Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA and the General Editor of the Opera Omnia of Alessandro Grandi, to be published by the American Institute of Musicology in the long-standing series Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae.
At the International Musicological Society meeting in Zurich in July I spoke with my good friend Dinko Fabris, who gave me your name and suggested I contact you. According to Dinko, you own a copy of Alessandro Grandi's Cantate et Arei a Voce Sola of 1620. The only other copy, at the Music Library in Breslau (Wroclaw) was destroyed during the seige of Breslau in the Second World War.
Grandi's Cantate et Arie, heretofore considered lost for good, is in my estimation the second most important loss of the entire 17th century in Italian music, second only to the loss of Monteverdi's opera Arianna. I am writing to see if you would be willing to let me come visit you in Seville to see the Grandi print and if you would allow its publication in the Opera Omnia. Without it, of course, the Opera Omnia would not only be incomplete, but would be missing Grandi's single most important publication.
Sincerely yours,
Jeffrey Kurtzman
Professor of Music
Washington Univesity in St. Louis |
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Name: |
Trinity Hartman |
data: |
2007-08-16 05:28:23 |
email: |
trinity-ann.hartman@dw-world.de |
| Dr. de Zayas, I'm writing an article today on Tag der Heimat from the point of view of how the grandchildren of expellees sees this issue. I'm also looking for an expert I could interview. Would you be available? If so, send me your contact information or call 49 228 429 2168. Thank you. Sincerely, Trinity. |
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Name: |
Andreas Peters |
data: |
2007-08-14 16:39:18 |
email: |
Andreas.Joachim.Peters@cern.ch |
Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. de Zayas,
sicherlich erinnern Sie sich noch an meinen Vater Hans-Joachim Peters fuer dessen Buch 'In Hellen und in dunklen Tagen' Sie vor vielen Jahren ein Vorwort geschrieben hatten. Ich erinnere mich, dass Sie sehr musikinteressiert waren und Sie uns vor Jahren mit einer CD Andrew LLoyd Webers Requiem naeher gebracht hatten. Ich leite seit 10 Jahren einen international erfolgreichen Gospelchor in Wiesbaden und wir geben am 18.8 um 19:00 Uhr in der Lutherischen Kirche Genf ein Konzert (Place Bourg-du-Four) 'Gospel Goes Acoustic', zu dem ich Sie recht herzlich einladen wollte.
Viele Gruesse, Andreas-Joachim Peters.
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Name: |
Lance Frickensmith |
data: |
2007-08-14 11:23:21 |
email: |
warbooks@msn.com |
Dear Dr. de Zayas,
An erronious revisionist view has been posted on Wikipedia regarding the Nemmersdorf Massacre, with even your research regarding it being negated, which you may want to see corrected.
In the article, it is now strongly insinuated that the massacre was greatly embellished by Goebbels, and is mostly Nazi propaganda.
Oddly, although your research into it, and your account of it, is the best documented, none of your books are listed under "References" for the article.
However, in the listings for your books, in at least the case of A TERRIBLE REVENGE, aspersions are cast upon your research.
While nearly anybody with even the weakest sources can submit changes to these listings, I would think that a person of your stature on the subject would be "the last word", if you contacted Wikipedia and made that word heard.
Thank you for your important groundbreaking research.
Regards,
Lance Frickensmith
Monticello, Illinois
217 762 8482 |
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