They Called Me a Nazi, and I Had to Ask My Mother What That Meant. the Impact of Knowledge Denied in a World War II Forced Migration Population

Background and Purpose: Fifteen million ethnic Germans were violently expelled from their Eastern European homes at the close of World War II. Thousands migrated to the U.S., where no one had knowledge of this population and many considered Germans, regardless of their war experience, Nazis. This study explores intergenerational war trauma communication; how stories were shared and experienced. This exploratory study seeks to expand upon traditional intergenerational trauma theory calling for a grounding in historic context, especially for refugee populations, additionally impacted by limited knowledge of war experiences. This study’s population is complex, and like many war populations,played a dual role of victim and, at times, perpetrator. This population has not been studied in the U.S. and presents a unique lens for social workers to understand the complexities of intergenerational war trauma communication.

Methods: This qualitative study collected twenty-five oral histories via Zoom technology with ethnic German families (survivors, n=3, grown children, n=20, and grandchildren, n=2), living in the U.S. The majority female (76%) sample represents ethnic Germans who spent generations living pre-WWII across Eastern Europe before WWII forced expulsion. Extensive recruitment occurred within German American organizations, genealogy groups, and museums, through email, social media, and e-newsletters. Purposive and snowball sampling was utilized. Interviews elicited participants’ responses to guiding questions including understanding of the family story, how participants learned the story, impact of story knowledge and story telling or silence upon participant, and what had helped participant through this process. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded thematically using ATLAS.ti qualitative software, guided by principles of social constructivism theory and an inductive approach to qualitative analysis.

Results: Data analyses revealed several themes that align with SSWR’s 2024 focus, Recentering and Democratizing Knowledge including feeling “othered” and “misunderstood,” “lack of knowledge of historic context,” “carrying family trauma,” “not allowed to be a victim,” “persistent search to understand identity,” “intergenerational resilience.” The presentation will demonstrate how these themes were experienced intergenerationally. Key themes center on “lack of knowledge” and a need for “democratized knowledge.” Participants speak of feeling “othered,” “alone,” and “misunderstood” growing up in an America that had no knowledge of this story and with parents who intentionally and unintentionally chose what to share with their children. This presentation will provide examples of resiliency methods used by participants and demonstrate the need for ITT to be grounded in historic context when working with refugee populations.

Conclusions and Implications: This study illustrates the impact of intergenerational war trauma communication, in the telling and experiencing, for second and third generation forced migration families. Findings demonstrate a need to expand the often-used ITT framework to understand the historical context of a family’s struggles and to incorporate the messy complexities of families living through a war experience. This study presents opportunities to learn from this population and apply findings to other forced migration populations.