"Fled, expelled, uprooted - childhoods in Mecklenburg 1945 to 1952

Traveling exhibition of the Mecklenburg Foundation and the State Center for Political Education M-V
"Between 1945 and 1949, over four million Germans arrived in the Soviet occupation zone who were forced to leave their homes in south-eastern and eastern Europe as a result of the Second World War. Around one million people remained in Mecklenburg and the part of Pomerania west of the Oder.
More than a third of them were children.
What awaited them after the hardships and traumatizing experiences of flight, expulsion and forced resettlement? ... Many contemporary witnesses have reported on their fate,.... On the basis of such reports and more recent literature, the exhibition provides insights into childhoods that were characterized by hunger and loss, deprivation and hard work. In Mecklenburg in particular, which was designated by the Allies as the main receiving state for displaced persons, the memory of this is still present in many families. However, many life stories that are almost unbelievable today had to be kept secret under socialist conditions. .... Children on the run - this is a chapter that neither began nor ended with the German children from eastern and south-eastern Europe after the Second World War." (Brit Bellmann)