Expellees or refugees?

Refugees

Refugees are people who leave their homeland due to wars, economic or other emergencies or political constraints. This definition is normally used for people who leave their home country to live in another country.

Definition refugee:

Article 1 of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention

(…) is a person who as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion outside the country of his nationality, is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

Expellees

These are persons who had to leave their homeland because of forced evictions or deportations from areas of German nationality or of those who had German as a mother tongue.

There are two phases:

1. During the War: After the Russian troops advanced westward, the German authorities ordered the evacuation of the German population.
2. After the end of the Second World War: The German or German-speaking population is either expelled or compulsorily resettled due to international decisions.

Both groupings are not always clearly distinguishable.

The term “refugees”, which is used in colloquial language, has been used wrongly for all the people who came to our region, since the vast majority were, by resolution, expelled from their homeland. A distinction between these terms exists officialy only since 1953.