Polish Refugees

These refugees, a handful among millions, are waiting for a train that might carry them to a safer destination. The refugee situation was appalling, as ethnic Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Croats, Czechs, and others were driven from areas where in some cases their families had lived for centuries. The goal of many postwar governments was to “ethnically cleanse” regions along the line of thought that grew up with Wilson’s Fourteen Points: that national ethnicities should determine the kind of society and government they would have. (Photo by Fred Ramage / Keystone / Getty Images.)