Barefoot in the Rubble

Barefoot in the Rubble by Walter, Elizabeth B.. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780965779319.

As a survivor of Ethnic Cleansing, it is clear from here memoir that Elizabeth Walter suffered then, and long afterwards, both for herself and her loved ones. What also comes through her account, however, are less publicized, but resonant and compelling connections between victims of that Ethnic Cleansing and victims of the Holocaust. Elizabeth Walter knew, and suffered with, a few of the two million Volksdeutsche who perished in the Vertreibung. Two million (the currently accepted number for the ethnic German deaths in the Expulsion) is a hefty figure, even by World War II and Holocaust standards, and even for a people whom many in this country still imagine "had-it-coming." Elizabeth Walther also shares with Holocaust victims, and historical slavery and oppression, the knowledge that free and secure people did not really care about her fate. Nobody cared about the Jews in 1942, or in 1943. At least not any body with any power to help them in any significant way. In a similar sense, nobody cared about the Donauschwaben in 1944. If people thought about their situation at all, the "Schwobe" were guilty by reason of race;" just like the Jews since the time of St. Augustine.... and the Haitians since the inception of the slave trade.