The end of World War II brought in its wake the greatest population upheaval in European history.
Millions of Germans were expelled or fled from Eastern Europe.
Surviving Jews returning from concentration camps found they were unwelcome and had to find a place elsewhere.
Nearly two million Poles were compulsorily transferred from eastern areas of Poland that had been annexed by Russia. Half a million Ukrainians, Belorussians and others were deported from Poland to the Soviet Union.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Croats and others, fearful of reprisals for wartime collaboration, fled westwards from all over Eastern Europe.
Let Europe not forget that its people were once refugees; and that the way forward is living together, not separation.
Human decency dictates that we must purify our thoughts from fear and hatred.
We should have the wish to embrace all humanity and nature and the world.
We must never exclude people in need escaping from war zones, extreme misery and hunger and human rights abuses.