Instructed Silence, Constructed Memory: The SED and the Return of German Prisoners of War as ‘War Criminals’ from the Soviet Union to East Germany, 1950–1956

Abstract

After 1950, at least 23,000 German POWs remained in Soviet captivity as ‘war criminals’, and they were pardoned and released in several amnesties from 1950 to 1956. This article examines the political and propagandistic reactions of the ruling SED to the return of those prisoners. It analyses how the SED's attempts to reintegrate ‘war criminals’ into a socialist society related to the official politics of the past (Vergangenheitspolitik) and the construction of a memory of the Nazi past in East Germany. The SED's key strategy in dealing with these returnees – avoiding the question of individual and collective responsibility – is put into the context of the party's central ideological objective, namely to dissociate the socialist GDR from the legacy of Nazi Germany. On the basis of newly accessible documents from the archives of the former Ministry for State Security, the article also describes the intensive involvement of the Stasi in repatriation and reintegration matters at all levels of society.

Soviet prisoner of war camps in the territory of the Georgian SSR (1945-1954)

“…In November 1949, 893 foreign citizens were released, including: 7 Romanians, 875 Hungarians, 874 internees (340 women and 17 children), and 11 Austrians (Lavinskaya, 2017, p. 117). Christina Morina indicates the number of 700.000 of two million German prisoners of war who returned from Soviet camps and of 23.000 who remained there as 'war criminals' (Morina, 2004). According to Andreas Hilger, "Presumably, the majority of survivors were repatriated by 1946/1947, but some left USSR as late as 1949" (Hilger, 2017, p. 39).…”