Federal Expellee Law

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The Federal Law on Refugees and Exiles (German: Gesetz über die Angelegenheiten der Vertriebenen und Flüchtlinge, lit. 'Law on the affairs of the expellees and refugees'; abbr. Bundesvertriebenengesetz, BVFG) is a federal law passed by the Federal Republic of Germany on 19 May 1953 to regulate the legal situation of ethnic German refugees and expellees who fled or were expelled after World War II from the former eastern territories of the German Reich and other areas of Central and Eastern Europe. The law was amended on 3 September 1971.

The major force behind the law was the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights party, which had among its supporters – besides German citizens, who had fled or were expelled from formerly German territory annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union – many formerly non-citizens, who experienced by the end of World War II and the post-war years of ethnic cleansing, denaturalisation, robbing and humiliation (1945–1950) carried out by the governments of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia.