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Valley of the Shadow: After the Turmoil, My Heart Cries No More
Published in Hardcover by Creative Arts Book Co (01 February, 1997)
Authors: Erich Anton Helfert and Donald S. Ellis
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Valley of the Shadow - A Missed Opportunity
The Valley of the Shadow by Erich Anton Helfert is a narrative autobiographical history of the author's childhood experiences in Czechoslovakia, focusing on the years 1945 and 1946. The book chronicles the tragic decision to expel most of the minority German speaking population from Czechoslovakia after WWII. The book describes some of the most outrageous aspects of the expulsion including the confiscation of the German's property and most of their personal belongings in the process of the deportation. The author lived in Aussig on the Elbe (now called Usti nad Labem) in north Bohemia and he includes in one chapter a description of a dramatic and violent post-war conflict between the German and Czech speaking population in the city. This story is another descriptive example of how the Allies and the newly liberated peoples emerging from Nazi rule were over-zealous in meting out punishment and revenge against the Germans in the closing stages of the war and thereafter. A balanced biography describing some of the day-to-day experiences of the expelled population would be a very welcome addition since this is a chapter in history that we should understand and never repeat. Unfortunately The Valley of the Shadow overlooks all of the most important facts that led up to the expulsion and the book is filled with inaccuracies. The book begins with the post-war expulsion itself and then flashes back to the closing weeks of the war. Nowhere in the book does Helfert have anything to say about the six years that the Nazis brutally ruled conquered Czechoslovakia. Most educated sources estimate that 200,000-300,000 Czechoslovak citizens were killed by the Nazis in the war years, that under the rule of the Nazis the Czech population was not allowed to attend University due to their 'inferior' slavic status, etc. The war years under this regime were an era of indescribable terror and it was significantly worse in neighboring eastern countries such as Poland. In the book the author's family (Helfert's parents were Nazi party members) speaks critically of Czechoslovakia in the pre-WWII years prior to the invasion of the German army. The key fact is that the German and Czech speaking populations in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia enjoyed democracy, which was the first for these peoples in their history. Prior to the formation of the Czechoslovak nation in 1918 the populations of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia lived in the autocratic Austrian Empire, with some preferences shown to the German speaking population since the empire was ruled from Vienna. Unfortunately in the 1930s almost all of the German speaking population rejected Czechoslovakia and the democracy that had been formed, instead deciding that Hitler's promises of another great German Empire in the east, with a privileged status over the 'inferior' slavic (ie Czech and Slovak) and jewish populations was more important than democracy. The Valley of the Shadow neglects or distorts facts both general and specific. Nowhere in the book does Helfert discuss the general fact that the expulsions occured all over Central and Eastern Europe, in Poland, the Baltic States, Hungary, etc. The expulsions did not occur only in Czechoslovakia and they were encouraged by the victorious Allies (ie especially the communist USSR but also the UK and the US). The expulsion decision was made by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference and later further defined and confirmed in Potsdam in 1945. Unfortunately the nations in this region became over-zealous in the expulsion and many German speakers were harmed and some were even killed in the process. Also, specifically when the author describes the violent conflict in Aussig in July 1945 he fails to point out that fighting between German Nazi sympathizers (so called Werewolves at the time) and Czechs continued for months after the war. The unfortunate riot occured in this violent climate. The Czech population believed that the explosion at the refinery was the work of Nazi sympathizers. I cannot recommend The Valley of the Shadow because it lacks balance and misleads the uneducated reader. A more balanced and accurate narration of the events in this tragic period would have been much more effective in generating sympathy for the expellees and help us understand that indiscriminate revenge including violence and the dipossession of property, even following the most brutal, dehumanizing and violent oppression, is unacceptable. For those of you interested in a very good, balanced and accurate general description of this tragic time period, I suggest you read Die Vertriebenen, Hitler's letzte Opfer by Hans Lemberg and K. Erik Franzen.

Telling the rest of the story!!
According to the estimates of the Goverment of Germany and many mainstream historians such as William Shirer at least 12 million Germans and an untold number of Poles, Ukranians, Russians and citizens of the Baltic states were expelled from their homes in the wake of World War II. Almost 3.3 million Germans were expelled from the Sudatenland, the rest being expelled principaly from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. This land was carved up by Joseph Stalin. He took part for himself including Northern East Prussia and the city of Koenigsberg, today Kaliningrad. The rest was given to Poland as partial compensation for lands taken by Stalin when he invaded Poland in September 1939, after making a secret pact with Hitler. These lands were than "awarded" to Stalin by the victorious Allies in 1945. Most of the German civilian casualties in these expulsions were women, children and the elderly. There was neither plebecite nor self-determination for any of the peoples involved. The loftly principles of Great Britian and France, going to war to ensure "Poland's Territorial integrity" as well as the aims of the Atlantic Charter signed by the U.S. were discarded. Hitler's methods of ethnic cleansing and forced deportations of civilians that were condemned, justly so, as war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials were embraced by his enemies after the war. The history of the brutal acts of Hitler's regime has been told and hopefully will never be forgotten. This book "Valley of the Shadow" attempts to shed light on events that today are seldom discussed and carefully avoided in many academic circles as well as some history books in the west. My father was born in the German Sudatenland in the town of Graslitz, (than under Austria) in 1918. His people were denied self-determination promised by the treaty of Versailles and by fiat forced to live as second-class citizens in a new multi-ethnic state, Czechoslovakia, created by the Allied powers after World War I. The swift and final dissolution and separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia ten years ago is certainly evidence that the Germans were not the only group unwilling to live under Czech rule. The president of the Czech Republic, Vaclev Havel, has called on his people to critically examine their own history. He, amid a storm a criticism from some of his people, among others, has apologized for the expulsions, calling them a war crime. It is time for those who read books that painfully recount tragic events to decide whether they themselves truly reject Hitler's methods or embrace them selectively. I hope this book engenders discussion and thought provoking debate as well as further study of World war II and its terrible toll on the Sudaten Germans along with millions of others who suffered and died at the hands of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Christian Anton Lehrer, M.A.

Tell us your lifes' story !
I feel very greatful to the author for telling his families story to us. My mother was a child when her family was given the choice to either leave or die. Her parents avoided talking about the terrible journey on foot from the Sudentenland to Germany. The few fragments I know from their tragedy resonate with the story E. A. Helfert has documented in his sensitive and enlighting book. He has experienced the terrors caused by mens irresistible urge of indiscriminate revenge and his story is a warning from history. Yet his story is also one of hope and faith in the good qualities of human mankind. And when these qualities manage to surface in the midst of terror and dispair then they appear like loving miracles. I wished that more people of his generation would write down their lifes' story, so the younger generation can break this cycle of revenge and make miracles.


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