Object description

Ostlandkreuz or Kreuz des deutschen Ostens is the name of memorial crosses in Germany remembering the large-scale Ethnic cleansing of Central and Eastern Europe of its German-speaking population. After border shifts and population transfers agreed at the Potsdam Conference, German-speakers were expelled from the former Sudetenland areas of Czechoslovakia, from the Former eastern territories of Germany annexed by Poland and the Soviet part of the former Province of East Prussia. While most of these crosses stand in cemeteries, some are erected as landmarks on mountains.