At home, however, President Václav Klaus and the right-wing opposition have condemned the gesture as a dangerous precedent.

Reopening one of the most sensitive chapters in the country's postwar history, long a sore point in relations between Berlin and Prague, Prime Minister Jirí Paroubek's Aug. 24 apology has been one of his most controversial moves. But Paroubek defended the statement as a way of "correcting the injustice toward German antifascists ... who remained faithful to Czechoslovakia."

Paroubek added that his Cabinet unanimously approved the gesture, which comes 60 years after the end of the war — and which likely applies to no more than a few hundred people, since most of the antifascists who were persecuted are no longer alive.

In what are still referred to in Czech history books as "the transfers," vast areas bordering Germany and Austria were depopulated of around 2.5 million ethnic Germans under a law that proved to be the most controversial of President Edvard Benes's postwar administration. Backed by the Benes Decrees, Czechs after the end of the war in 1945 began rounding up and deporting families, often violently, and seizing their property and homes.

The decrees, targeting those who either supported or did not actively resist the Nazis, exempted some categories of ethnic Germans from expatriation — but in some instances, even German-speaking Jews and others who had been imprisoned by the Nazis had property confiscated and were subject to other forms of discrimination because they were deemed not to have resisted.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder praised the apology as one that "can further develop mutual relations," while Georg Schnetzer, a spokesman for the Austrian foreign ministry, said, "We regard the Czech declaration as important."

The Austrian Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, a group that represents the interests of ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after the end of the war , welcomed the government declaration as "a step in the right direction" but criticized the absence of any mention of financial compensation.

President Klaus attacked the Cabinet's gesture as "mistaken," "unnecessary" and "empty" and complained that Paroubek had not consulted him. The Civic Democrats, the senior right-wing opposition, said they worry the move will prompt expectations by Sudeten Germans of further concessions.

Czech historian Emanuel Mandler rejected Klaus's assertion that the apology opens a Pandora's box of future demands but said it would likely open a public debate in this country on the troubled history of Czech-German relations. "Our relationship toward Germans has thus far not settled and continues to boil under the surface," Mandler said. He pointed out that the government statement did not apologize for the Benes Decrees, which were not mentioned by name anywhere in the apology.

Those who were expatriated included not just the ethnic Germans who supported Hitler's 1938 annexation of the border Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia but also perhaps hundreds of people who opposed the Nazis, according to Jan Kren, a historian at Charles University. "Though antifascists were explicitly exempt from expulsion by the Benes Decrees, there were cases of antifascists being expelled. Anti-German passions were running high and [such expulsions] could have been because of the malice of local authorities," Kren said.

He believes the Cabinet's gesture contributes to reconciliation between Czechs and Germans. But public opinion polls indicate this process still has a way to go. According to a survey by the STEM agency in July, some 75 percent of Czechs believe the deportation of Sudeten Germans was fair.

While the government has not promised any compensation — a step that 84 percent of Czechs oppose — the Cabinet has earmarked 30 million Kc ($1.2 million) for a project mapping out the stories and lives of Sudeten German antifascists who suffered unjustly.