Ethnic Cleansing

   Although the term is usually associated with the Bosnian war in the 1990s, it also describes Nazi Germany’s objectives following its defeat of Poland in September 1939. Major shifts of population occurred, resulting in the brutal removal of large numbers of Poles from the annexed Warthegau (western Poland), which became part of the Third Reich, and resettling German minorities living in other areas of Poland as well as those Germans who lived under the control of the Soviet Union, as a part of the understanding between the Soviets and Nazi Germany following the signing of their treaty in August 1939. The Poles were relocated to the General-Gouvernement, which served as a “dumping” ground for Poles and Jews. The Nazi policy of ethnic cleansing was also implemented after the fall of France in 1940 when thousands of French people, in particular Jews, were deported to the unoccupied part of France.