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Rethinking the postwar expulsions

WWII commentaries note the fate of former Czechoslovak citizens

Ethnic Germans whose citizenship was revoked await their expulsion from Czechoslovakia in 1946.
By Dinah A. Spritzer
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 16, 2005


A forgotten war crime to some and a necessary consequence of Hitler's rampage across Europe to others, the moral questions raised by the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia following World War II simply will not go away.

"It's like a circle, with no end and no beginning," said Charles University political science professor Bohumil Doležal, who believes that those who defend the expulsions suffer from "the absurd residue of 19th-century Czech chauvinism."

The issue was to have been settled in 1997 with a Czech-German declaration that, in a nutshell, said legislators from both countries should avoid opening old wounds, but that is not at all what has happened.

A flurry of recent editorials and activity reveals a new openness in the once-taboo discussion of the often brutal, even murderous state-sponsored expulsion of nearly 3 million Germans between 1945 and '46 who lost their citizenship and property.

An estimated 30,000 ethnic Germans died during the expulsions, which most Czechs still refer to as "the transfers."

"Those punished were women, children and old people. That was no justice — that was revenge. "

Edith Breindl,
Brno death march survivor
Most came from the one-third of Czechoslovakia that was known as the Sudetenland, annexed by Adolf Hitler in 1938, but all of the expellees have since come to be called Sudeten Germans.

Long dissatisfied with their position in Czechoslovakia, many Sudetens supported Hitler, an act viewed by many Czechs after the war as meriting severe punishment. Whether this punishment was just is now under scrutiny not just by Germans, but by Czechs as well.

Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, for instance, wrote in Právo June 8 that the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II is a good time to think about how to recognize the some 30,000 Germans who fought against fascism. And then in an unusual admission for a left-wing leader, Paroubek wrote: "This should be a gesture by which the Czechs would show that they are aware of a certain historical responsibility for the mass resettlement of former Sudeten German fellow citizens under the principle of collective guilt that was understandable at the time but today is completely unacceptable."

Paroubek's statement was a marked contrast to his praise of former President Edvard Beneš at the unveiling of the president's statue one month earlier at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Beneš, a proponent of the expulsions, signed a series of decrees that facilitated the removal of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.

Still, the discourse has come a long way from six years ago, when then Prime Minister Miloš Zeman said an expellee demanding justice should go and bow his head at the Terezín concentration camp.

Another development has been the three-editorial debate at the start of June in a leading Czech daily newspaper between President Václav Klaus and historian Emanuel Mandler.

The latter claims the Czechoslovaks had been trying for decades to get rid of the Germans and used 1945 as a pretext to do just that. Unlike the majority of the public, who in poll after poll stand by the expulsions, Mandler, a highly respected figure in Czech society, states that the sooner his countrymen admit the unjustness of the expulsions, the better off Czech-German relations will be.

Responding to Mandler in the June 6 edition of Mladá fronta Dnes, Klaus wrote: "Our country did not start World War II for the sake of ethnic cleansing; we did not try to enlarge our territory through military force at the expense of our neighbors. With the approval of victorious allies our country made use of the moment and atmosphere dominated by the opinion that those responsible for World War II had to be punished and that a number of preventive measures were required to prevent a new war."

That Klaus refers to punishment and prevention in the same sentence is indicative of the ambivalent attitude of Czechs toward the expulsions.

"In my view, in some aspects both Klaus and Mandler are right, and in some areas both are not right," said Michael Libal, the German ambassador to the Czech Republic who emphasized that he was offering his opinion as a historian, not a diplomat. "The expulsions involved a lot of different motives and there is no essential contradiction between what Klaus and Mandler are saying. I hope the debate contributes to a wider awareness of what happened," he said.

Certainly the fate of the expellees — many were in internment camps for several years, wore armbands identifying them as traitors, were beaten repeatedly with the encouragement of local authorities and died by the thousands from starvation — is still not fully appreciated by the majority of Czech society, expellee advocates argue.

VICTIMS OR TRAITORS

Czechs polled on the 1945-46 expulsion of ethnic Germans:

• Was the expulsion just?

2005 1995
54% yes 52% yes


• The expulsion was based on the Beneš Decrees. Should the decrees remain valid?

2005 1994
64% yes 57% yes


• Do the expulsions call for an apology?

2005 1995
5% yes 3% yes
Source: CVVM polling agency
As for Paroubek's comments, Libal called them "a very encouraging sign."

Changing attitudes

Even one of the most outspoken representatives of the Sudeten cause said he felt a change in the Czech attitude toward the past.

"It is positive that there is a discussion; it is very different and more open, there are different voices and personalities and that is good for the future," said Bernd Posselt, a German member of the European Parliament and president of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, which supports Sudeten interests in Austria and Germany.

There are several other signs that show Czechs are beginning to shake off the communists' anti-German stance toward history.

The mayor of Ústí nad Labem, Petr Gandalovič, sponsored a "Tolerance Instead of Intolerance" conference last year on Czech-German relations with a discussion on the expulsions by Czech and German historians and politicians. At the conference he unveiled an ambitious plan to open a major museum in Ústí devoted to the contributions of Germans in Bohemia over the centuries.

The museum, which would be the only one of its kind in the Czech Republic, would have a unique role in a city that was 80 percent German before 1945 and was the site of a major anti-German massacre after the war.

"We want to address the many centuries of peaceful coexistence between the Germans, Czechs and Jews in Bohemia," said Gandalovič.

Another mayor, Richard Svoboda of Brno, is the first Czech official to have participated in the annual commemoration of what Sudetens call the Brno death march.

In 1946, 20,000 ethnic Germans were forced to walk to the Austrian border from Brno, a distance of 49 kilometers (30.5 miles), without food or water under the threat of whips, rifle butts and rabid crowds. At least 900 died en route.

A survivor of the march who was five at the time, Sister Edith Breindl, says she finds the discussion about the Sudetens' responsibility for the war perplexing and hopes Czechs will do more to see who their "victims" were.

"Guilt? Those punished were women, children and old people. That was no justice — that was revenge," she said.

— Petr Kašpar contributed to this report.



Dinah A. Spritzer can be reached at dspritzer@praguepost.com




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