The Forgotten Genocide Conference 2011
St. Louis, MO   April 28-29, 2011

 

 

Speakers and Agenda

Day 1 – Thursday, April 28, 2011

Master of Ceremonies: Mr. Ed Tullius

Bio: Ed Tullius is the current president of the non-profit Danuschwabien Foundation, and is the vice-president of the Cincinnati Donauschwaben Verein. He has retired from 30 years of public service. He has worked part-time for 15 years as a ski instructor and continues to enjoy outdoors activities and world travel.

 

9:00-9:50am – Dr. Albert Jabs

Bio: Dr. Jabs began during the cataclysmic events of WW II surrounding his family’s farm along the Poland Vistula River (Gross Dembe-near Plock). The issues of war, peace, expulsion, deportation, racism, dying, guilt, blame, and hatred were germinated at this time and have influenced an academic career as a professor in America and abroad. He has put much energy into civil rights and Lutheran missions as well as written thousands of publications, and has taught primarily in the context of minority institutions both in the American South and Lithuania.

Speaking on:  Genocide has been part of the human story back to the Genesis account of Cain killing Abel and amounts of deadly rebellion against the creator’s plan. The deadly virus of ethnic cleansing and genocide has been part of the human project from the Assyrian Empire of Three Thousand years ago and up to present day where the lingering shadows of genocide lurks in such places as Darfur, the Congo, and Burma. The responsibility of our generation is to surface all genocides as worthy subjects of study, hidden or not. I will speak on the goal of moving from conflict to reconciliation through moral and historical courage.

 

10:00-10:50am – Dr. Dirk Voss

Bio: Dr. Voss is a professor at the St. Louis Community College – Meramec and teaches American and World history. He graduated with a Ph. D. in history from the University of Oklahoma in 2000 and taught at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, Canterbury Christ Church University in England, and Ca Mau Community College in Vietnam. He specializes in transatlantic history of the 19th and 20th century. His most recent published article is on the influence of the stationing of American nuclear weapons on German pop music in the 1980s.

Speaking on:  West German Perceptions of the Flight and Expulsion of Germans, 1949 to 2010.

Dr. Voss’ presentation is a survey of the West German literature on the flight and expulsion from 1949 to 2010. His presentation illustrates how the topic of the expulsion deeply divided West German society and politics. Conservative politicians and journalists compared the sufferings of the German refugees with the victims of the Holocaust in the 1950s. Left-wing media and scholars avoided and ignored the topic throughout the 1960s until the end of the unification of the two Germanys. In recent years, the topic of the expulsion, allied war crimes, has been revived by both conservatives and the Left to create a collective memory of the most traumatic event in German history while stressing reconciliation with Eastern European nations.

 

11:00-11:50am – Dr. John Messmer

Bio:  Dr. Messmer is a professor of political science in the Department of History and Political Science at St. Louis Community College – Meramec. Dr. Messmer’s teaching and research interests include American political institutions and behavior, political reform, Constitutional issues, and international relations. He received his PhD from the University of Missouri in 2001 and has been teaching at Meramec since 2002. Dr. Messmer is a lifelong St. Louisian and the son of two Danubeschwabian refugees who immigrated to the United States in 1955.

Speaking on: Nationalism and Nationality

Within the context of “The Forgotten Genocide” project, this presentation will focus upon definitions of nationality. As the son of German (Danauschwaben) immigrants, what are my thoughts as a “German-American?” What’s right or wrong about being a “hyphenated” American? We’ll also discuss and try to understand the pride and despair people possess in their own culture and nation. Are there consequences that we don’t fully appreciate?

 

12:00-1:00pm – Lunch / Ms. Marlene Fricker: Choreographer and show coordinator

Bio: Marlene has been a member of the United German Hungarian Club of Phila & Vicinity and active in their Cultural Group since 1965 participating in every cultural aspect of the organization. She has a BFA in Dance from Adelphi University. For 20 years she was the primary instructor and administrator of Marlene Blank School of Dance. Marlene currently works as a Supervisor at Abington Memorial Hospital. She is furthering her education at Gwynedd Mercy College in the field of Allied Health. She is the mother and step mother of six and grandmother of a 2 year old. Marlene has worked together with members of the United German Hungarians and the Philadelphia and Trenton Donauschwaben Clubs on three Cultural Exhibits of primarily Danubeswabian artifacts. She was also instrumental in taking a group of 25 members of her club to visit the Donauschwaebisches Zentralmuseum in Ulm in 2008.

 

1:00-1:50pm – Mr. Eberhard Fuhr

Bio: Mr. Fuhr was arrested in his Cincinnati high school at the age 17 and interned for almost five years as a Dangerous Alien Enemy in WW 2. He retired with a career in sales/sale-management with Shell Oil and of Pioneer Plastics Corp.

He is a graduate of Ohio University and earned an MBA at The University of Wisconsin. He is a widower with three children and 8 grandchildren and resides in a suburb of Chicago.

Speaking on: The actions of the United States during WW 2 beginning with the registration of all aliens in peacetime 1940– and internment of legal resident immigrants as Dangerous Alien Enemies. This includes the incarceration of their families, the losses of property and careers. The Aliens were used in exchange for Americans, soldiers or US civilians abroad. He will exhibit documents, photos, along with discussion of court cases and his personal experiences as an internee from age 17 to age 22 when released.

 

2:00-2:50pm – Mr. Henry Fischer

Bio: Mr. Fischer was born in Kitchener, Ontario in Canada the son of Swabian immigrants from Hungary. He is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. Following a career in the Lutheran ministry during his retirement he has authorized several books related to history of the Danube Swabians, including Children of the Danube, The Pioneers, Strangers and Sojourners and Emigrants and Exiles part of a trilogy: Remember to Tell the Children. He has also translated significant Danube Swabian historical information from German to English which appear on his website. He is married to his wife Jean and has two sons and four grandchildren the latest manifestation of the Children of the Danube in Canada.

Speaking on: “It’s Always Been a Matter of Identity”.

The Danube Swabians facing their self-identity in terms of nationality, ethnicity and their country of residence and the implications and expectations of them by their host countries. I provide a brief historical survey of the problem and I use my own personal experiences growing up in Canada during the Second World War in my attempt to answer the question who am I? There was a parallel situation in Hungary at that time during the census of 1941 when our families were asked what their Mother tongue was and what their nationality was. What did it mean to be German living in Hungary during the Second World War? It was the kind of loaded question like: Do you beat your wife as often as you used to? The answers they gave at the time would have dire consequences and implications for them in the future including deportation to the Soviet Union and expulsion to Germany. What does it mean to be a Danube Swabian now, regardless of where we live?

 

3:00-3:50pm – Mrs. Rosina Schmidt

Bio: Mrs. Schmidt wrote a Families book on her grandfather’s birthplace of Hrastovac. She developed a webpage under the same name, which took a life of its own and it is now a home away from home from all those ethnic Germans of that area, which were blown in all four-wind directions during and after WWII. She is active on Danube Swabian Forums in Germany, Croatia and North America.

Speaking on: “Danube Swabian Lost Children”

Towards the end of 1944 Tito’s government of the newly established Yugoslavia imprisoned the 200,000 ethnic Germans (Danube Swabians) who did not manage to flee their ancestral lands ahead of the Soviet Union’s Red Army invasion, and imprisoned them in various starvation camps. About 45,000 of them were children below the ages of 14. Eventually 20,000 of those children were sent to orphanages across Yugoslavia, to raise them as Tito’s true patriots. What became of those children?

 

4:30pm – The Forgotten Genocide Film

 

 

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