The Prague Post
December 5th, 2008
Prague Property

A wartime ghost ignored

Memorial to massacred Germans rejected

By Matt Reynolds




With the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II barely over, a ghost that refuses to rest in peace has returned to a town in north Bohemia: the postwar treatment of ethnic Germans. In Postoloprty, population 3,800, officials have been confronted by demands for a memorial to commemorate the 1945 massacre of Czech-born Germans.

The persecution and forced exile of 2.6 million ethnic Germans after the war has been a prickly question both for small towns in the area once known as the Sudetenland and national leaders who want to maintain good relations with Germany.

In the case of Postoloprty, the memorial was rejected. "We do not want to resurrect the past," said Deputy Mayor Jaromir Vapenik.

Some accounts say nearly 800 German civilians were rounded up, beaten and shot in Postoloprty in July 1945 — two months after the Third Reich had surrendered. Vapenik said the exact circumstances of the massacre have been lost in a haze of incomplete, destroyed and contradictory records.

The Union of Czech-German Friendship proposed building the monument in 2001. After four years of talks, the town council voted in February to reject the idea. Vapenik said the town had also turned down a group that wanted to build a memorial to Czech partisans. "We wanted to avoid conflict between the two camps," he said.

Many hundreds, perhaps thousands — estimates vary wildly — were killed in the "Brno Death March" to Austria May 30, 1945, as locals forced Germans out of the city. Across the country, 30,000 Germans were killed, according to government documents declassified in 2002.

By the end of 1945 a series of decrees by President Edvard Benes deprived the majority of ethnic Germans of Czechoslovak citizenship and property rights. Most Germans fled the country or were forced out. Only 160,000 remained citizens of the Czech lands by 1950, according to census data, and only 39,000 live in the country today.

German loyalists

As Germany plotted to annex the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938, most ethnic Germans cheered, historians say. But 15 percent of them voted for anti-Nazi parties and hundreds vowed to defend Czechoslovakia. "They formed a military unit called Defense of the Republic," said Charles University sociologist Jirina Siklova. "They took an oath on the main square in Liberec [north Bohemia] — an incredible act of bravery, given the city was [a hotbed of Nazi support]."

Though Czechoslovakia was not present at the signing of the Munich agreement in September 1938, most German-speaking parts of the country were ceded to Germany, and the Defense of the Republic never fought German forces. Most of the unit was sent to fight in Russia, Siklova said. Many survivors were then expelled from the Czech lands.

Siklova is collecting signatures asking the government to thank ethnic Germans who stood up to the Nazis. Meanwhile, the Charter 77 foundation will give its Frantisek Kriegel prize, awarded for civil courage, to "German citizens who rejected Nazism."

"It's a matter of principle," Siklova said. "People should be treated according to how they acted — not what ethnicity they were."

—Kristina Mikulova and Petr Kaspar contributed to this report.



Matt Reynolds can be reached atmreynolds@praguepost.com




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