Heimatvertriebene

Heimatvertriebene (German for "expellees", literally "homeland displaced person") are those around 12 million German citizens (no matter of which ethnicity) and ethnic Germans (no matter of which citizenship) who fled or were expelled after World War II from parts of Germany annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union (today Russia), and from other countries (the so-called einheitliches Vertreibungsgebiet; i.e. uniform territory of expulsion), who found refuge in both West and East Germany, and Austria. Refugees who had fled voluntarily but were later refused permission to return are often not distinguished from those who were forcibly deported. By the definition of the West German Federal Expellee Law, enacted on 19 May 1953, refugees of German citizenship or German ethnicity, whose return to their home places was denied, were treated like expellees, thus the frequent general usage of the term expellees for refugees alike.