Czech brutality against german civilians, czech savagery towards germans
beneš called in May 1945 in Prague to completely liquidate the Germans in the Czech lands and the Hungarians in Slovakia.
The native German population in Czechoslovakia when Berlin surrendered on 8 May 1945 exceeded three million people. During the spring and summer of 1945 the newly established government in Czechoslovakia under Edvard Benes instituted a brutal campaign of wild expulsions against the country's ethnic German population. The Czechs rounded up ethnic Germans into internment camps and confiscated their property before expelling them from the country with only 60 kilograms of possessions. These initial wild expulsions permanently uprooted more than 700,000 Germans from Czechoslovakia. They also involved considerable violence. On 18-19 June 1945 an anti-German pogrom in Prerov/Prerau killed 71 men, 120 women and 74 children. The Czech authorities enforced a series of measures meant to humiliate and demean its German population as a stigmatized population. They required Germans not already interned in concentration or labor camps to wear white armbands with the letter "N" for Nemec, the Czech word for German. The Czech authorities also banned Germans from using park benches, sidewalks, public transportation, trains and telephones and attending restaurants, cinemas and theatres during this time. The wild expulsions from Czechoslovakia involved a complete denial of civil and human rights to the victimized German population. These expulsions as well as the ones in Poland and Hungary received the official approval of the US, USSR and UK at the Potsdam conference starting on 17 July 1945. The pertinent line from Article XIII of the treaty arising from this conference reads, "the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary will have to be undertaken." This treaty, however, also required that the transfer of ethnic Germans be conducted in an orderly fashion. The conditions for German expellees thus improved somewhat during the second stage of the expulsions, but still remained extremely inhumane.
A number of horrifying atrocities committed by Czechs against Germans after the end of World War II.
These crimes include:
-The death march of some 30,000 ethnic Germans from Brno/Brunn into Austria at the end of May 1945.
-Another particularly stunning example of Czech brutality against German civilians occurred in Usti nad Labem/Aussig an der Elbe on 31 July 1945. Here Czechs massacred dozens of German men, women and children.
These ramifications are still relevant today. Unlike Germany the Czechs have never come to terms with the crimes against humanity perpetrated in their name during 1945 and 1946. Like its larger Slavic cousin Russia the Czech Republic remains a country in denial about the truth of its contribution to human misery in the twentieth century.
Történelmi, archív felvételek videótára: fókuszban a második világháború. Azon belül is Magyarország. A legnagyobb videótár, ami a korabeli felvételek mennyiségét illeti.
